What's happening in your Zettelkasten this month, July 2026?
The idea: a general chat about what we're working on currently.
This month I'm working through The Odin Project (out of personal interest, I don't want to become a web developer) and early in the curriculum is this interesting section.
Counterproductive note-taking: The Odin Project does not recommend taking a lot of notes throughout your web development educational journey because it can be time-consuming and often leads to wasted effort.
Solution: Instead of taking notes to use as direct references, make notes that can serve as prompts for further research. It is important to get comfortable with reading documentation, which essentially acts as pre-existing notes made by someone else.
I'm taking this to heart, as in the past I have unfortunately wasted time making exactly this mistake... taking notes on things I could look up in a manual or other documentation. Having said that, it might still be faster to look up things that I think would be 'key notes' in my desktop app, but I certainly shouldn't be taking hundreds of notes like that.
As for notes that can serve as prompts for further research, the question is how to do that without going down lots of rabbit holes? I would need to put some kind of limit around it. For example, I'll only take those prompts for further research if I can tie that further research back to what I was trying to do in the first place, or connect it back to my existing notes. I've noticed a few little 'islands' of notes in my ZK which are only connected to each other and not my ZK as a whole. I think I'm not getting the full benefit of a ZK while that is the case. I need to do a better job of connecting fewer notes in a meaningful way.
And how is it going for the rest of you? What's happening in your Zettelkasten this month?
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Among other projects, I am bringing the https://github.com/flengyel/Zettel repository and wiki up-to-date. My Zettelkasten software inventory is automatically generated and posted to the wiki with version numbers when these can be parsed from the software installation. A working example may be helpful to others. Other than that, I have a few math papers I am working on in parallel.
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
The URL of the Zettelkasten software inventory in the Zettel Wiki is updated. Some of the original page naming was awkward. My interest is in documenting and maintaining my own system.
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thanks for that.
I notice you've used Obsidians plugins quite a bit. Have you had any negative experiences with updates breaking the plugins? That's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to use plugins, as I don't know how well they'll be maintained.
And are there any in particular that you recommend as being the best, or among the best?
An embarrassment.
Yes. Two instances.
My Library.jsonexport file and would not work until I renamed the exportMyLibrary.jsonwithout a space. I haven't checked whether the plugin options accept single-quoted directory paths to account for spaces. This is a nuisance. Having a drop-down list for Zotero citation keys in Pandoc citations is helpful.More like plugins I use and put up with. I don't want to become absorbed with plugins. What I would like to know is the minimal list that Sönke Ahrens uses in his online course.
The fewer plugins the better. I use the Calendar and Periodic Notes plugin for Weekly Notes. I use the Atom theme since I cannot stand the Obsidian default Solarized theme, but the Atom theme requires the Style Settings plugin. The Lazy Loader plugin helps on startup. Since my note filenames have the form
<ID>.mdI use the Front Matter Title plugin so that I can see note titles in the file explorer, graph view, and search. Otherwise, I would see only IDs. My Zettel template relies on seeing thetitle:property value instead of the filename. That feature is a configuration in Zettlr, which I stopped using.Of the plugins listed, I only use a few. The Argument Map with Argdown plugin is aspirational. I'll remove some of them and regenerate the inventory. A repository script scans the Obsidian vault plugins subdirectory for installed plugin manifests to populate the software inventory page. Unfortunately, this means that it imports spelling and grammatical errors from plugin manifests. †
There is no shortage of sites showcasing the Best Obsidian Plugins for Academics.‡ On the recommendation of the linked site--beware the upsell--I installed the ZotLit direct Zotero integration plugin. For me, this plugin is more effort than it is worth, so I am uninstalling it.
My writing philosophy lately is to reduce the attack surfaces. Internet forum discussions lend themselves to cheap shots and low-effort selective quotation. Less is more in that case. And so it is with plugins.
†I could override some plugin descriptions in the software inventory with my own, which means adding exceptions to the
MANIFEST.software.yamlfile that drives the software inventory markdown generation utility, which would also need updating to handle rewritten plugin descriptions. The point would be to avoid defending the Wiki against the sneering accusatory animadversion that imported ungrammatical and misspelled plugin descriptions might attract from all corners of the Internet. But life is short enough without such busywork, and I have more important projects.‡Not to mention the best plugins for philosophasters and hyper-literalists (pardon the paralipsis).
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
I'm experimenting with writing styles.
On the one hand, I'm exploring a more technical language. I'm trying to understand and apply what I read in textbooks on logic. The goal is clearer thinking.
On the other hand, I'm exploring a more narrative style inspired by a recent book recommendation about mnemonics. The goal is better memorization.
I'm curious how this will all fit together. :-)
I'm learning a lot in our forum here, especially from people who have other points of view. :-)
Edit: For example when I read a proposition that relies on all instances being true, I do a quick check for counterexamples. When I find a counterexample, the proposition can't be true.
So in my zettelkasten I'd attribute the "all" proposition to the source: "A claims that all X require Y" (with a well-sourced quote of that claim). I'd contrast it with a counterexample: "B explicitly states that some X don't require Y" (with a well-sourced quote).
Great! I use the Atom theme as well, I love the minimalism of it. I can't go back to the default theme anymore. I wish they would include a range of built-in themes to select from, to prevent us from the hassle of plugins which might break. But at least they're giving us the option of a plugin if we need it.
Ditto.
Now the Zettel repository tests check repository contracts, not just Python functions. The Zettel Wiki is updated. It's laborious work.
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
I'm a late adopter, so forgive me if this is something too obvious.
I recently discovered the Extract Note plugin. More correctly, I saw it when plugins were first announced but didn't see a compelling use. Today I saw how it can really be handy.
Imagine you're going to write some notes that deserve to fly in close formation. Open a note to serve as a structure note. Write a topic line, then write a new note in-line in the structure note.
Not what you want, but you can highlight the intruding note and use Extract Note to move it to its own note, nicely linked from the structure note. I was going to rewrite the plugin to put a backlink from the new note to the structure note it came from, then I realized that really isn't necessary with link-via-search.
I hail from more complex software environs and generally gravitate toward a profile of too much power is never enough. That's not always necessary, though.
The Archive is addictive. Power comes from how you use it, not from a zillion features, and I suspect it is about as reliable as laws of nature.
The closest Obsidian plugin is Note Refactor. I'll try it.
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
This week I'm lost in the Observation-Proposition-Question loop.
More about: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/3506/a-tiny-experiment-with-note-types
Edmund Gröpl — 100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
Good luck! I hope it's not an infinite loop and more like GPS loops which end when you arrive at the destinations you've selected.