Comments

• harr

  9:54AM edited 10:12AM

  @emiwid said:
  I have put a few rabbit hole-hours in zettelkasten youtube, even bought and (sloppily) read the Antinet Zettelkasten book.

  Youtube is full of Zettelkasten videos that contradict each other. My recommendation is to pick one teacher and learn their system well, before you include other perspectives.

  Scheper's Antinet is quite faithful to Niklas Luhmann's style of working with paper index cards. You can learn a lot from him about Luhmann's system.

  The question is, if Luhmann's system makes sense for you.

  Your expectations

  @emiwid said:
  (…) I enjoy having a format that allows me to sit down and interact with my material after I have read it

  You don't need a Luhmannian Zettelkasten to do this. Others use other tools.

  @emiwid said:
  (…) I do have a few (maybe one) thought that my zettelkasten allowed me to produce, that I likely would not have thought otherwise (…).

  You don't need a Luhmannian Zettelkasten to do this either. Any kind of note-taking system will have this effect, if you use it with that intention. Some teachers tend to hype "Zettelkasten" as some magic creative machine. I wouldn't take them too seriously. Many of them just want to sell their books and classes.

  The question is, what you want to get out of your zettelkasten.

  Paper vs digital

  @emiwid said:
  My setup

  • Analog Zettelkasten - With inspiration from Scott P. Scheper, Kathleen Spracklen and Forrest Perry.

  Some Zettelkasten teachers tend to gloss over the differences between paper and digital. I think they are two very different beasts.

  As a rule of thumb I'd say that paper works best, if you like to write few and concise notes. If you have a more verbose style or want to capture lots of information, digital might be easier for you. I'm curious why you chose paper!

  Folgezettel

  @emiwid said:

  • A few base categories so far (10-15)

    • 10: History; 11: History of ideas; 12: history of religion; 13: My owh thoughts (this will hopefully not survive as a category); 14: ontemporary polotics; 15: society. 14 & 15 have btw become almost indistinguishable.

  • Alter between numbers and letters when going "deeper". E.g 15.1a1b - This, with inspiration from Kathleen Spracklen.

  This numbering system is unique to Luhmann. It's a recurring topic in this forum. Search for "Folgezettel" or "Luhmann ID", if you're curious. :-)

  As far as I know only few people stick to this system after trying it out:

  • A digital zettelkasten works well without this system. There are other and more flexible ways to connect notes.
  • A paper zettelkasten also works well without this system. Of the millions of people who worked with paper index cards in the last 200+ years, only very few worked with Luhmann's system.

  @emiwid said:
  Aither way, I have noticed that my cards rarely go very deep. With every card, I increase the index with 1 – and thats it. I have a few branches with a depth of 2-3 (e.g 10.1a1), but in most cases the depth does not stem from interesting connections made throughout multiple books, or even a singe book. They are the result a single argument I put down from a single page in a single book.

  Folgezettel don't have "depth". That's one of the many differences to other systems.

  Simply counting up the index was Luhmann's default.

  @emiwid said:
  From the reading/listening I have done on Zettelkasten, I get a sense that its often recommended not to create further category/folder cards, but instead just put down the ideas and let the stack of cards grow dynamically, connecting ideas as they are created rather than trying to set precise folders and categories.

  Yeah, that's a basic principle of the Folgezettel technique.

  @emiwid said:
  This is intreguing, but I feel now that most of the things I put down is quite specific (because I dont ever try to create higher level category cards), which makes them hard to build upon. I do not doubt that I might be able to create nice links between cards in the future (linking them by writing another cards number on the backside), but I was hoping to see more depth of layers, or local clusters of single topics.

  I find that much easier with digital notes. For example you can query your notes by keywords.

  @emiwid said:
  Most of my Zettelkasten is built on these kind of specific facts/ideas, which seems hard to build upon. If I ever read an interesting passage in the future about tax havens, the card above is likely too specific to have this new tax haven idea under it.

  Another reason, why a digital approach might work better for you.

  @emiwid said:
  Let's say I produce a new card about tax havens which is not directly related to the above fact. In my mind it would not make sense to create a new 15.11a card. Its too loosly realted. To have it as 15.10 or 15.12 would make sense, but in my Zettelkasten, those numbers would likely already be taken by completely unrelated cards. I have no real way of distinguishing "loosly related" and "direcly related" by pure card numbering.

  I use a digital tool for such notes. I'd simply add such factoids to a note called "tax havens", without any special IDs.

  I think of paper index cards with Luhmann IDs as a fringe technique. It has its fans. The rest of us can easily do without. :-)
• tomp

  2:31PM

  @emiwid said:
  Hi. I just joined here, I think because of some insecurities with my Zettelkasten. I thought to dump it all here and hope that anyone is kind or interested enough to comment. I have put a few rabbit hole-hours in zettelkasten youtube, even bought and (sloppily) read the Antinet Zettelkasten book. It seems though, im still confused.
  
  What I like about Zettelkasten so far:

  • Even if my whole zettelkasten turns out to be a huge unsuable failure, I enjoy having a format that allows me to sit down and interact with my material after I have read it.

  • Contrary to the impression the rest of this post will give you, I do have a few (maybe one) thought that my zettelkasten allowed me to produce, that I likely would not have thought otherwise (for the interested: that Christians throughout history seems to have used Aristotle to justify a lot of shit).

    My setup

  • Analog Zettelkasten - With inspiration from Scott P. Scheper, Kathleen Spracklen and Forrest Perry.

  • A few base categories so far (10-15)

    • 10: History; 11: History of ideas; 12: history of religion; 13: My owh thoughts (this will hopefully not survive as a category); 14: ontemporary polotics; 15: society. 14 & 15 have btw become almost indistinguishable.

  • Alter between numbers and letters when going "deeper". E.g 15.1a1b - This, with inspiration from Kathleen Spracklen.

  My fears
  I'm putting a lot of work into this now, and 3 books in, i'm starting to get a sense that im doing something wrong, not sure what.

  I suggest that you get Bob Doto's book "A system for reading". In chapter 5 he gets into using that kind of numbering system and has some good examples. And visit his web site, https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten/. Some pages that speak to your concerns are

  https://writing.bobdoto.computer/how-to-use-folgezettel-in-your-zettelkasten-everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started/

  https://writing.bobdoto.computer/linking-new-notes-and-fearing-lost-ones/

  https://writing.bobdoto.computer/question-i-just-finished-reading-a-book-and-took-lots-of-notes-now-what/

  https://writing.bobdoto.computer/how-to-handle-facts-in-your-zettelkasten/

  < ...

  
  To give an example, here is one card I created (15.11):

  Share of securities portfolio held in tax havens:

  Around 10–20% of the securities portfolios of Europe and Latin America are held in tax havens. The corresponding > figure for Russia and the Gulf states is between 30% and 50%.

  Most of my Zettelkasten is built on these kind of specific facts/ideas, which seems hard to build upon. If I ever read an interesting passage in the future about tax havens, the card above is likely too specific to have this new tax haven idea under it.

  The thing here is that the most value of having notes like this is in the work you put in to digest it. Why did you bother to save this one factoid? How does it fit into the body of your notes? That's what a note like this should be about. It will work best when it is written in you own words.

  Yes, there is a place for keeping note of bits and pieces for use when you want to develop them into something bigger. And you could put them all into a holding section for this purpose. But chances are there is some reason why this factoid caught your interest enough for you to want to keep it. There is some context here and capturing that context would be valuable. If the title can hint at it, that will help. Otherwise when you revisit this note much later, you may wonder "What was I thinking? Why did I capture it?"

  Luhmann had a lot of notes he didn't revisit, so don't feel bad.

  In this case, you might have thought -

  That's quite a difference between the two groups. Why is that?

  or

  Russia and Gulf States? What do they have in common that could account for this?

  or

  Does the share of portfolios tell us something important?

  or

  I wonder if I should keep some of my own portfolio of a tax haven?

  or

  Are tax havens safe for the long term?

  Make the card and its lead sentence or title be about that.

  Let's say I produce a new card about tax havens which is not directly related to the above fact. In my mind it would not make sense to create a new 15.11a card. Its too loosly realted. To have it as 15.10 or 15.12 would make sense, but in my Zettelkasten, those numbers would likely already be taken by completely unrelated cards. I have no real way of distinguishing "loosly related" and "direcly related" by pure card numbering.

  It's not too important to distinguish "loosely" vs "directly" related. In fact, being too precise can work against discovering new ideas. For times when you need to be specific about a link, put the link inside the card along with the reason for it. If you follow a Luhmann system closely - as illustrated by Doto - you might have a series of cards like this (I'm going to indent instead of making up numbers but just replace the indentation by your numbering system's numbers):

  . facial tissues are for blowing the nose and wiping the eyes
  .. UK usage for "facial tissue": "tissue" (or "paper tissue")
  .. Kleenex is a famous brand of facial tissue
  .... Kleenex has become the generic word for facial tissues, especially in the US
  ...... There is some dispute as to whether using a facial tissue is more or less sanitary than using a handkerchief.
  ........ Public sanitation improvements have made the largest contribution to human health of any health measures.
  .......... John Snow stopped the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak by removing a pump handle.
  ............ There is some dispute as to whether this action was really the cause of stopping the outbreak.
  .... "Hoover" is another brand name that has become generic.

  As you riffle through the cards you will notice these wandering trails and you won't need any more specific link indication than that. If you have a more general number for something like "Public Sanitation" you could link the card "Public sanitation improvements" to it using a link inside the card.