What's happening in your Zettelkasten this month, August 2026?
The idea: a general chat about what we're working on currently.
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This month I'm doing overdue, but important, reworking.
The big revisit and rewrite
I've had a ZK for over three years now, and there are many groups of notes I always knew I should revisit and rework in some way. Finally, something has pushed me to stop putting it off and really do that.
I've decided to start looking for a new job. I have notes from three years ago that I made from books about cover letters, psychometric testing, and interviewing skills. These are some of the oldest ZK notes I have. They were never well organized or deeply linked, as at the time it was rushed work. But I always put off revisiting them because I didn't need them anymore after finding a job, so they were no longer a priority.
But now that I'm going to search for a new role, they've become some of the most important notes I have.
Today I started reworking them one by one. The main work is rewriting, and synthesizing different sources, but also I'm taking the opportunity to organize them better and have better links. However, some of them need to be updated so much that they actually need to be replaced with notes from completely new sources. Here are two examples of things that have changed a lot in three years:
- We used to write cover letters and resumes thinking about how the human on the other side would read them. Today, companies use AI to screen applicants, and the AI creates the shortlist for a human to look at. So we need to think about how an AI would interpret our documents.
- As it's almost always electronic these days, some of the old 'golden tips' are meaningless today. E.g. printing your cover letter and resume on expensive paper and practicing a beautiful ink signature.
Now that I'm getting some momentum on reworking these older notes, I want to keep up that momentum afterwards and revisit all older notes that I haven't looked at for a while.
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And how is it going for the rest of you? What's happening in your Zettelkasten this month?
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Comments
I'm clearing up the boundaries of my slipbox against other methods.
One of the main reasons I had for starting a slipbox was that I felt I had a lot of thoughts that were fleeting and ultimately lost, as well as knowledge nuggets from different sources that I couldn't remember. Thus I wanted a way to organize those and track/archive them. The problem I faced is that a lot of these thoughts and/or tidbits of information did not deserve the full processing pipeline of the ZK Method and resulted in busy work. I realized that some type of journaling system was more appropriate for that stuff.
After taking a turn towards analog paper systems—only keeping the slipbox digital, as Org files in Emacs—I ended with an overall system that I think works for me.
An overview diagram generated by ChatGPT follows:
A correction is that not everything will go through the pocket notebook first, it's just a catch-all for when I don't have access to the corresponding notebook.
I believe this system will allow the slipbox to shine through on what it does best, i.e. connections between atomic ideas for writing and research, while the rest of the system will deal with more low-effort/low-process stuff and personal reflections.
Probably like others on this forum, I've run various experiments on what could go into my ZK, but like you I've concluded that not everything fits in there. Sometimes a paper notebook for temporary notes is just what you need in the moment. A journal can be very private, so it might be better to keep it separate (I encrypt mine, as I'm a very private person).
But the main thing is that we have a system, and it looks like you've worked out your system quite well.
There will be other things in the future where I'll have to figure out how to handle them, but I feel like my ZK gives me a strong basis, and we can learn a lot from others here on the forum.
That was my main problem when I was really excited about the ZK method at the beginning, I was adding all kinds of things, including low-effort/low-process stuff. But I've learned to focus on the essentials a lot more.
Good luck with your evolving system.
@wjenkins81 Thanks a lot! You as well!
I continue to build out my knowledge about "house", how they are built, but also how multiple layers overlap everywhere.
Feels like SimCity 2000, sometimes, I think of construction, and of the pipes running underneath; electricity; but then there's also pollution (noise between rooms; smell from kitchen; overall unpleasantness of toilets in view); there's ergonomic considerations like work triangles in kitchen, logistics, traveling through rooms; light and shade, heating and cooling.
As a software systems engineer, it feels like I have prepared all my life for this
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
One thing I've been wanting to study for a while is systems thinking. I already have the Donella Meadows book Thinking in Systems: A Primer but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
But it would probably help me to connect things, so I should probably prioritize it.
@wjenkins81 Yes, but also the school of cybernetics and dynamic systems that e.g. our revered Luhmann picked up can help a lot to provide concepts in the abstract. I wouldn't know where to start -- things clicked together after a while from 'total immersion' in topics like that.
Making software then becomes practical systems engineering (without any material cost!) where you then can see what it means that structure influences processes: from writing code (creating structures) to influence the runtime of an application (process), and then have processes create structures during the app's runtime (state that depends on user input and so on) that influence it further.
It makes it easier to grasp for me, who's interested in the realm of things (not people) more than the norm, maybe
For the technologically inclined, I can recommend picking up a "fun" (they are all somewhat tough to work through) book on a Scheme or Lisp programming language, because the language is almost made from nothing, no syntax to learn, and data and code are the same, so the software can also write and evaluate itself. That sounds much weirder than seeing it action. It does something to the mind, I believe, but I'm not sure what!
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
There's an iOS app for that. :-)
"(LispLab)" by Craic Design is a well designed learning app for Scheme. It includes a REPL where you can run your code.
Or FORTH, which is also self-constructing.
I am working on changing my way of life, using Karl Pillemer's "30 Lessons for Living" and Charlie Munger's speeches and writings as source material. I am establishing my worldview and engaging in learning to collect or create mental models that are useful to me, applying them whenever relevant situations arise.
I am organizing the content above using the outline format from @Sascha's "long thinking session" comment, and it is well-organized and enjoyable.
As I have become accustomed to selecting research questions first based on the book recommended by @wjenkins81 before conducting research, my knowledge and thoughts—which were previously scattered sporadically—have now taken on structure and formed a system, unlike in the past when I merely collected data.
I am happy to have this opportunity at such a young age.
Is it going well?
I did this with Common LISP and then Closure years ago. I still have some of the code in my GitHub gists, wherever those are.
Writing FORTH was my first job, in the 20th Century.
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've only just started, but AI has turned out to be helpful in refining a cover letter. After feeding it a draft, and re-prompting a few times about how to improve it, it really did give me a version which is improved by a lot. It can tailor things in ways I wouldn't have thought of, based on the industry and conventions of the role you're applying for, and even the culture of the location of the role. For example, it suggested valid adjustments for British vs. American English and the kind of language used in a large institution with an international culture vs. a small company with a local culture.
I will run the same experiment with my CV next.
I'm fortunate to be able to apply selectively, because I'm currently employed and will only move on when I find something better.
Thanks for asking.
I've often thought that every beginner who asks "which language should I learn" shouldn't always be told either Python or Javascript. Starting with some Lisp dialect could also be a good choice to learn fundamental ideas, even if it's just a short course. The learner can always move on to an industry language later, but every idea they encounter won't be completely new.
Among other things, including a formalization in Lean of parts of "Arithmetization of metamathematics in a general setting" by Solomon Feferman (1960), the forum discussion led me to "Writing Philosophy: A Guide to Professional Writing and Publishing" by Richard A. Watson.
My background isn't in philosophy, a study that, for most people, ought to be undertaken seriously over years under the guidance of professional philosophers (who are competent experts in the cognitive parts of the subject!). At this stage, I doubt this option is available to me or that I would want to pursue it. I lack the ambition and have no hope of writing publication-grade philosophy that could withstand peer-review. Most of my writing on this forum doesn't withstand scrutiny.
Nevertheless, I find the discussion in Watson useful and relevant.
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 love that book! I bought and read it over ten years ago. I did learn a thing or two. :-)
I hadn't read this book before. Thanks for the recommendation. I like the tone of the book.
FORTH is very cool and under-appreciated! Antique, too, I get that, but what a nice, easily bootstrapped environment.