What's happening in your ZK this month, November 2026?
The idea: a general chat about what we're working on currently.
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From this month onwards there'll be a significant shift in my ZK, as I'll be changing my primary language.
Although English is my native language, I've lived in Germany for 17 years now and have a decent level of German, having passed the C1 exam in the European CEFR levels a few years ago. But I'm still not as good as I'd like to be. The problem is that I've mostly worked either in English, or with English as the primary language. For the job I currently have, I interviewed bilingually as they needed to know I could handle both languages, and I've been doing the job bilingually, although mostly in English.
But when looking at job descriptions, I find myself hesitating to apply when the job is only in German, or with German as the primary language. I still use an online dictionary and translator more often than I like, and am often frustrated by having to look up words and grammar I know I learned before, but forgot from not using the language more.
To remedy this, I've decided that 2027 will be the year that I go 'all in' on German, using it as my primary language at all times, and that includes my ZK. But I'm already starting now this month, I'm not waiting for January.
In the past I ran two experiments with using German in my ZK.
- Experiment 1: Bilingual notes from translated books; in this experiment I used books which had been translated from English to German. I duplicated my notes, with one note in English and one in German, for the same thing. I naively thought this would be a reinforcement of the idea, but it just turned out to be a lot of extra work and extra links. Any benefit I got just wasn't worth the extra time, effort and complication, and it was just too easy to use the English note when looking at the notes later.
- Experiment 2: German only for a couple of books; in this experiment, when there was a topic I wanted to take notes on, I chose an alternative book in German instead of a more obvious choice in English. This was understandably harder, and I had to use a dictionary and online translator more, but I got good benefits from it without unnecessary complication. This was a better experience with better results than experiment 1.
The difference between this German-only experiment and what I'm doing from now on, is that while doing this second experiment I still used other books in English for separate topics. But from now on I will use only German for all topics. I still need to finish a couple of books in English I'm currently working through, and after that I'll be prepared to make a special exception if I need to, but it should be 95% or more only German for any new sources from now on.
I'm starting with Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten schreiben mit LaTeX when there are countless other books on LaTeX in English.
I'm not relying only on my ZK to go 'all in' on my 2nd language though, I'm also switching in other ways. For example, only following German-speaking channels on YouTube, etc..
This will be quite a change, but I need it, and I should've forced myself to switch more to my 2nd language earlier.
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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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I haven't posted about this in a while, but I'm finishing a journey to create a book of personal memories and reflections. The active phase of this work has been ongoing for almost 3 years; I'm down to the final, final edits and slight "reformatting" (to optimize photo size and minimize white space). I expect to finish that and send the book for printing in mid-November, in time for Christmas gifting (kids and older grandkids).
Some of you that are new to the forum might wonder why I'm mentioning this at all, but the project actually started 6 or 7 years ago when I was randomly capturing memories from my younger years in my Zettelkasten. That progressed to writing full (draft) chapters of the personal memories book in my Zettelkasten, and then combining and editing to near final form using Atticus.
Part of the process also included digging up, scanning and including over 100 photos - everything from one from a neighbour showing me at 6 months old, lying on a blanket, to photos of my adult children.
It's been a lot of fun. However, I'd recommend (for anyone so interested) to take your time, while at the same time being-super disciplined, think a lot about what you want to say, involve your friends and family, and most importantly, get a good editor! In my case, that was my adult daughter, who is a creative writing graduate and a well-established author of over 30 fiction books.