Comments

• harr

  5:19PM edited 5:26PM

  Reference notes

  Reference notes have been discussed previously in this forum under different names, eg reading notes, literature notes, source notes, bibliographical notes…

  Personally I like to keep reading notes in the same tool as my zettels. They are a good place for all the questions, observations, quotations, paraphrases, etc. that come up while reading a book. Some parts of those notes might eventually move to other notes. Or they stay where they are. :-) Reading notes are permanent notes.

  Other people in this forum strongly recommend to keep reference-related information in a separate tool.

  Fleeting notes

  I agree with Bob Doto's initial description (Section 1.2 of his 2024 book):

  Fleeting notes form the basis for much of what you’ll create inside your zettelkasten, though they themselves will not make it past the velvet rope.

  I disagree with Bob Doto on the next step, where he talks about a "transformation" and that fleeting notes can "become" main notes.

  I prefer Sönke Ahrens's concept (Chapter 6 of the 2nd edition of his book):

  Fleeting notes are there for capturing ideas quickly while you are busy doing something else. (…) They will very soon become completely useless – unless you do something with them. If you already know that you will not go back to them, don’t take these kind of notes in the first place. Take proper notes instead.

  I treat fleeting notes conceptually as something that exists outside the Zettelkasten. I capture most of my fleeting notes in daily notes. I used to keep those daily notes in the same Obsidian vault as my Zettelkasten, but that blurred the conceptual boundary. So I moved them to a separate vault. I also experimented with an inbox, but that also blurred the conceptual boundary. I moved the inbox to the other vault. In my experience, an inbox is a horrible way to manage new notes.

  I use my Zettelkasten vault only for non-fleeting content. That doesn't mean that all notes in the Zettelkasten are fully formed or will remain unchanged for ever. It means that they are "permanent" in the sense of being relevant for a long time.

  And it means that the "velvet rope" marks an important boundary. I don't "transform" fleeting notes into main notes. I use fleeting notes only as prompts to write proper notes.

  The trick is that I know exactly what elements I consider necessary for a "proper note". For me they are a clear note-type, an ID, a creation date, a meaningful name and at least one meaningful link to another note in my ZK. That's it. Others consider other information essential.

  My recommendation is to draw a clear boundary between fleeting notes and permanent notes.
• tomp

  6:53PM

  @John said:
  Hi all,

  It's certainly been a long time since I've posted. I have recently started using The Archive again, pulling my ZK out of hibernation. The first new notes have landed there in over three years. Not that there hasn't been any reading, thinking or notetaking but simply not in any coherent or structured fashion.

  I recently started reading Bob Doto's book A System for Writing, after having re-read Sonke Ahrens' book again.

  In Doto's approach (which I'm not sure is useful yet, having only come to chapter 3 so far) he speaks about two types of notes.

  1. One of these is recognisable for me: the Reference note.
     For me those are Bibliography notes, and in my ZK I have been using those.

  But I'm curious how you are using them? Do you just list the reference, like this:

  [#heft2017a]: Heft, H. (2017). William James’ psychology, radical empiricism, and field theory: recent developments. Philosophical inquiries, 5, 111-130.

  Or do you elaborate in the note itself?
  And what about the name you give the note?

  I think the key thing about a note (or a candidate note) is what you expect it to do for you, and how you want to use it. Another consideration is what kind of operations your ZK system supports in an easy way. I'm less interested in drawing fine distinctions between kinds of notes, such as "is this 'fleeting' or not?".

  In the case of "literature" references, I am guided by what I want when 1) I encounter a reference or citation in reading, and 2) what I need when I want to put a citation into some piece of writing. Suppose I come across a reference in an article or paper like [Jones 2007]. I want to look at it, or at least know how to find it. If this is in an area of interest to me, and I might want to look it up again or link to it from another note, I will want to create a note for it. So I create a note titled Jones 2007 and store it in a section of my ZK called "Citations". My ZK is based on an outliner and the "Citations" node is at the top level.

  That note contains a reference to the work being cited, and I may also include a formatted citation ready to plunk into a piece of writing (or I might not create one until I need to have it).

  Now I can link to this Citation note from any note that needs it.

  At the other end of formality there is the browser bookmark. For the most part these are created quickly on the fly while browsing or searching. Most likely they represent something I can use to avoid doing an ab initio search in the future. IOW, they have been curated and I don't want to lose that value.

  I keep my bookmarks in a separate application which I call a "ZK-light" because it has all the search and categorization features of a ZK but I don't do any linking. I had been using one or another implementation of my bookmarks manager for some 15 years before I ever heard of a Zettelkasten and I don't see any value in moving the bookmarks into my ZK.

  2. Then Doto talks about another type of note, but this is one he keeps apart from the main ZK: the Fleeting note.

  The bookmark could be considered to be the ultimate in a "fleeting" note. The only thought involved is the act of curation.

  Once again, I would be guided by the purpose of a "fleeting" note. If it is a note or quote quickly jotted down, or a Post-it note marking a page, then it it's temporarily valuable but not permanent and not the result of much thought or processing. So it's not a candidate z-note. OTOH, if your ZK system makes it easy to keep such notes together and makes them easy to find, then why not - as long as you can get rid of them when they have served their purpose. You can use the ZK system's strengths to use and develop any of them as you like.

  If your system can't distinguish these provisional entries from any other kind, if they add to clutter instead of being helpful, then don't put them in. Take a cue from my bookmarks manager and keep them somewhere else, if you want to keep them at all.

  I haven't done this so far but if I were to get into the situation of generating a lot of transient notes, I might start a separate system that has the same software as my ZK and put them into it. The aim would be to use them while processing the ideas I eventually want to get into my ZK.

  OTOH, I've had really good experiences with creating papers, and the supporting notes for them, inside my ZK. Because my system is based on an outliner, and the way search results are presented, it's been easy for me to keep this kind of work quasi-separate but still able to take advantage of the other material in the ZK. Your system may differ. That's an example of what I meant when I wrote "Another consideration is what kind of operations your ZK system supports in an easy way."
• ZettelDistraction

  7:05PM

  NOTE: this is a revised copy of an article first posted on Zettelkasten.de. The post—as is this revised copy—is CC BY-SA 4.0 by F Lengyel.

  Terminological troubles beset the account of note categories in the English translation of How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens (Ahrens 2017). This review aims to settle the terminology.

  Note categories named and unnamed

  Ahrens discusses five categories of notes. There are three main descriptive categories: fleeting notes, permanent notes, and project notes. There are two subcategories of permanent note: literature note and main note.

  Term	Taxonomic role	Location	Function	Fate
  Fleeting note	Main descriptive category	Paper, notebook, or other temporary medium	Captures ideas quickly	Discarded after one or two days
  Permanent note	Main descriptive category	Reference manager or slip-box	Preserves information in a permanently understandable form	Kept
  Literature note	Subcategory of permanent note	Reference manager	Records a bibliographic reference, optionally with attached notes	Kept in the reference manager
  Main note	Subcategory of permanent note	Slip-box	Records a self-contained thought, written as if for print	Kept in the slip-box
  Project note	Main descriptive category	Outside the Zettelkasten	Supports a writing project	Kept, changed, or discarded with the project

  Literature notes and main notes are permanent notes. Literature notes are stored in the reference manager; main notes are stored in the slip-box.

  Zettelkasten components

  A Zettelkasten consists of three components: a slip-box, which may be implemented in editing and note-linking software such as The Archive, Logseq, Obsidian, Roam Research, Zettel Notes, or Zettlr; a reference manager, such as Zotero or Mendeley; and a pen and notebook or paper for fleeting notes (Ahrens 2017, 29–31).

  Ahrens includes a fourth component, an editor (Ahrens 2017, 31). In software, the editor is usually combined with the slip-box function; I count three components. Here “slip-box” means the corresponding software component.

  Workflow

  The Zettelkasten Method describes the standardized note formats used and the workflow of notes and source references among the components of the Zettelkasten (Ahrens 2017, 23-24, 41, 45). The workflow starts with handwritten notes and ends with permanent notes in the slip-box or reference manager, or with project notes for writing projects based on the contents of the Zettelkasten (Ahrens 2017, 23, 41–45).

  Niklas Luhmann’s workflow

  In Ahrens’s account of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten workflow, Luhmann first wrote brief literature notes and used these to write self-contained permanent notes called Zettels, which Luhmann wrote carefully, as if for publication (Ahrens 2017, 17–18, 43).

  Ahrens’s workflow

  For Ahrens, the Zettelkasten workflow begins with fleeting notes. These may be rewritten as literature notes or as main notes. When one’s thoughts are fully formed as if for print, the preliminary steps can be skipped, and one writes a main note directly (Ahrens 2017, 23).

  Ahrens misses an opportunity to revisit Luhmann’s workflow in terms of the descriptive categories he identifies and to relate Luhmann’s workflow to the workflow he presents in section 2.1 (Ahrens 2017, 23). Examples and diagrams of the workflow would have helped.

  Note categories in detail

  Fleeting notes

  Fleeting notes are handwritten notes to be discarded after one or two days, once recast for inclusion in the Zettelkasten as permanent notes. Ahrens assigns the fleeting note to its own category to emphasize its function and the habits he wants users of the Zettelkasten Method to adopt. “Fleeting notes are there for capturing ideas quickly while you are busy doing something else” (Ahrens 2017, 43).

  Ahrens advises reading with paper and pen in hand and advises against highlighting, marking up books, and leaving slips of paper around (Ahrens 2017, 29, 85, 87). Ahrens also expects fleeting notes to be written judiciously on the spot, rewritten as main notes or literature notes, and discarded within a day or two (Ahrens 2017, 43). This is crucial: for Ahrens, failure to cultivate the habit of reading with pen and paper in hand is failure to follow the Zettelkasten Method (Ahrens 2017, 146).

  Ahrens refers to the “fleeting literature note” as the handwritten precursor to the literature note (Ahrens 2017, 44). There is no name in Ahrens for the fleeting note that is rewritten as a main note.

  The fleeting notes play a normative role in Ahrens’s account of the Zettelkasten Method. For Ahrens, the Zettelkasten Method is a systematic approach to academic research and nonfiction writing. The first step in the method is to jot down fleeting notes while reading, attending lectures and seminars, or doing something else (Ahrens 2017, 23, 41, 43).

  Aside: instrumentalism

  Ahrens advises writers to act “as if nothing counts other than writing” (Ahrens 2017, 38). Taken literally, this maxim commits the writer to an instrumental approach to life: experience becomes material for a workflow that begins with the fleeting note.

  Permanent notes

  Permanent notes are self-contained notes that end up in the slip-box or in a reference manager. Ahrens defines permanent notes as follows:

  Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way. They are always stored in the same way in the same place, either in the reference system or, written as if for print, in the slip-box.

  (Ahrens 2017, 41)

  Ahrens recommends that permanent notes be written in “your own words” (Ahrens 2017, 23, 24, 37).

  Literature notes: a subcategory of permanent notes

  A literature note is a source reference in a reference manager, optionally with one or more attached notes.

  The term “literature note” derives from the note cards on which Niklas Luhmann recorded bibliographic references (Ahrens 2017, 18). Occasionally Luhmann wrote brief remarks on the reverse of these cards (Ahrens 2017, 18, 43; Schmidt 2013, 170). Despite the terminology, a literature note is a reference in a reference manager like Zotero, optionally with attached notes. In Ahrens, the reference manager is where literature notes go (Ahrens 2017, 43).

  Main notes: a subcategory of permanent notes

  Main notes are the permanent notes in the slip-box. Ahrens refers to “the main notes in the slip-box” in exactly one place (Ahrens 2017, 44). Ahrens’s categories imply the definition: a main note is a permanent note that is not a literature note.

  Ahrens does not provide examples of main notes or a standard template for them. I offer a template at Zettel.

  Project notes

  Ahrens mentions project notes in four places (Ahrens 2017, 42, 45, 46, 71). These notes do not have a standard format and reside outside the Zettelkasten for writing projects that use the Zettelkasten (Ahrens 2017, 23).

  Acknowledgement

  I wish to thank @taurusnoises for professional editorial assistance and encouragement. He offered his assistance, he said, to have somewhere to refer people puzzled by the terms Ahrens uses. @zk_1000 alerted me to the term “fleeting literature note” and pointed out that permanent notes subsume literature notes. @ctietze suggested additional citations.

  References

  Ahrens, Sönke. 2017. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace.

  Schmidt, Johannes F.K. 2013. “Der Nachlass Niklas Luhmanns – eine erste Sichtung: Zettelkasten und Manuskripte.” Soziale Systeme 19 (1): 167–83.

  GitHub. Erdős #2. I returned to my cubicle, and saw under fluorescent light that the rat race is not to the swift, nor the memo to the wise, neither yet an increment to the meritorious, nor yet favour to men of skill; but payroll and chance happeneth to them all. — Ecclesiastes 9:11 CC BY-SA 4.0.