Hello all - new forumite from Birmingham, UK
So here I am, 6 days after picking up a copy of Sönke Ahren’s book!
Before I got here, I decided to update my home hardware and plumped for the iOS system with a new 12.9” iPad + magic keyboard, so my Zettelkasten journey will be based in this ‘ecosystem’, and maybe a mac desktop too when I splash some more cash. I can use a windows 7 PC at work and a windows 7 work laptop from home.
I was a devoted user of the Palm system in the early 2000s. Sadly, all my notes, which seemed easy to store, given that the pocket device had a stylus-handwriting recognition system making the entries easy to make, are all lost. 
It matters now to me to have a note-taking system that is:
- transferable (who knows what system will be popular in the future)
- regularly updated and reviewed - this will be down to my habit
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
1. Software on iOS. I tried Notion, and it just doesn’t work. I’ve just downloaded Bear, so now I need to work out a way of creating a template for my Zetteln. I didn’t like Notability. I’m not keen on Evernote - I need to think strategically about note-taking. As Ahren’s says: differentiate between fleeting notes, permanent notes, and project notes. I think Evernote seems to function as a datadump. The inspiration to use Bear comes from MentalPivot’s webpage here
2. For the latter, I will use Scrivener for iOS, and Googles Paperpile app integrates well with this on iOS
3. For better essay writing, some inspiration here from criticalthinkeracademy.com webpage
4. Mind-mapping software to help me learn new concepts
I’ll be scouring the forum here for tips on Bear use, Zettel templates and I guess I shouldn’t be too precious about making errors, and u-turns as I go. I think I can stay within iOS ecosystem, but perhaps some of you will look at the above, and say: just use your PC. Any advice gratefully taken on-board. I’ll still be using paper for those fleeting notes when I’m at work during the daytime!! For example, I’d never heard of markdown till I came here and I think I’ve tried some above with the italic typeface
And my topic areas:
1. Work-related
- Medicine - palliative medicine is my area
- Human factors - enrolled on a MSc programme (University of Derby Online Learning) and my note-taking has to get better if I’m to raise my coursework grades!!
- Regularly teaching other colleagues on the above two areas (and after covid - all powerpoints are going online...!)
- Other academic interests
- Sociology, social sciences methods
- Ethics in relation to virtue, leadership skills, and teaching
- Flute-related literature
- Proud owner of a large library of flute-music. The catalogue is done, but I could learn and take a lot of notes about all the composers!
Best wishes,
Milind
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Welcome to the forums Milind. Hope you can wrestle something useful here.
This is a vote for plain text and portability as a key factor in a zettelkasten. May of us have made this mistake in the past. Some of us don't recognize that we continue to make this mistake with out software choices.
Yes, Evernote is a dump but a pretty one. I use it for some things: warrenties, user manuals, personal daily journaling, as a read-it-later web clipping service, backpacking trip reports and stuff that I think doesn't fit in my zettelkasten.
This is a great attitude, not "too precious about making errors, and u-turns as I go."
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
First - welcome to the forum and to the world of Zettelkasten users! A few thoughts from a relative newby that hopefully will be useful to you.
I've been a Bear user for several years and put a lot of notes into it, until I ran into the idea of a Zettelkasten. I still use Bear a bit, but most of my work has shifted to The Archive.
I also use Scrivener - a lot. Mostly for taking voluminous notes during various engineering review meetings and storing within a project not just the notes but also related PDFs, spreadsheets, Word files, etc. Then later I have to write a report giving my opinion on various aspects of the engineering work. Scrivener is perfect for this - it is dream software for a writer. However, it is not great software to create a Zettelkasten; The Archive works much better for that.
The other day, I wrote an article on Friendships for my children and grandchildren. It's something about which I've been thinking for months, with about 10 Zettels on various aspects of it. So - The Archive was used to bring different thoughts and ideas on this topic into my Zettelkasten. When I did decide to write the article, I pulled all the relevant notes from The Archive into Scrivener (drag and drop the text files from my Zettelkasten folder into a Scrivener project) and then proceeded to write the article. It was a simple and effective process.
I could have planned to do something like that from the start, i.e., picked a general topic and then wrote various Zettels as I thought about and/or researched different aspects of it, but in this case I just wrote the Zettels because they appealed to me as something useful to put into the Zettelkasten, and then later I realized I had a larger "story" to tell my kids. In that sense, my Zettelkasten allowed me to discover the larger story from the smaller insights.
Regarding the different types of notes: It think those concepts are misleading because they imply that they are all truly different entities and seem to shift the focus to the superficial layer of "note" and away from the actual thing we want to do (creating/connecting knowledge).
There is only one distinction necessary to make the process of the Zettelkasten Method flow: Notes that a part of the Zettelkasten (via ID and established connection) and notes outside of the Zettelkasten.
See my pile of paper:
Those are not different notes (literature, fleeting, project, whatever). It is just part of my inbox which needs to be processed. From the perspective of the process they are all the same because they invoke the same behavior: I sit at my desk and file them away (in my GTD, my research.org, Zettelkasten etc).
I talked with Christian about this phenomenon. The more you are able to think in processes the more you can take action. The more you think in things the less you can take action and will therefore just think more because your brain works as if you still need more thinking (resulting in a feeling of being stuck)1.
Which is quite a good term for the problem because your thinking starts in the right hemisphere of the brain, then goes to the left and needs to return to the right. Thinking in things could be framed of the left hemisphere holding on to thoughts that should be given to the right hemisphere. (Iain McGilchrist - The Master and his Emissary) ↩︎
I am a Zettler
@Mpapers I just remembered there was some discussion on tagging in Bear in an earlier post; if interested, you could check it out:
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1184/interesting-tagging-idea-from-bear#latest
I’ve also used Bear a fair bit for this sort of thing, and given you still have notes there @GeoEng51 it may be useful to point out that Bear does have an implementation of wiki-style linking. Details here. To my mind at least, this deals with the problems you noted in your first post about rigid structure and lost notes.
Hello! I am located an hour down the M5 from you. Welcome to the forum.
Thank you for that link and suggestion! I wasn't aware of that feature and it is certainly useful.
Thank you for the welcome and the helpful comments.
As I thought - some u-turns have occurred: my workflow is quite different to how I thought it would be when I wrote my introductory post in early September.
My digital/paperless study workflow (reading and then taking fleeting notes, and then creating ‘Zetteln’) is as follows:
Some reflections so far
BUT - I am clearly a markdown virgin, and so far I’m puzzled about the Archive’s interface for tagging/linking Zetteln to each other. I think I’m also getting muddled with hypertext linking to websites, versus hypertext linking to other Zetteln in my particular copy of the Archive.
Can someone share with me a link in the forum to the nuts and bolts of using the Archive interface? I realise I need to find my own way through practice, but a steer on “getting started” would be great! I somehow keep (unintentionally) returning to handy pages here about the principles behind the Zettelkasten method.
Yet I’m certain buried in those pages are steps outlining
Many thanks!
M
It has been a while since I installed The Archive but I remember it installing with a note tiltled "201802121037 Welcome to The Archive.md". It is a quick start guide. Look for this note.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
I am probably being pretty dumb, but the “201802121037 Welcome to the Archive” is rather tricky for me to decipher:
text changes (some markdown conventions seem to be about formatting, and some are about linking, right?):
I haven’t worked out ‘saved searches’ yet....
I think the Zettel is presenting the Archive’s ‘tools’ to me, but I think I need an example to show me how they work/don’t work...!
I highly recommend this 10 minute tutorial on MarkDown.
Forget the repeating hash symbol. I have over 1000 notes and not one repeating hash symbol
I think I know what you are referring to. The repeated hash symbols are for the different levels in an outline list. They are for visual formatting and not linking.
Lists are created on a new line with numbers (for ordered lists) or the
-symbol (for unordered list).Blockquotes are created on a new line with a
>symbol and a space. A return ends a blockquote.Using a 'single hash' is a way of signifying a tag that is applied to a group of notes. All notes with the same tag will populate the Note List (left side of the application window.)
#exampleUsing square brackets is a way to link a particular note to other notes.
[[201802121037]]As an example: I have several notes about rubber all with the tag
#rubber. And the two notes on thermoplastic elastomers would both have the tag as they were both about rubber but because one expanded on the other they are more intimately tied together with a note to note link (square brackets).The colors are not the focus. The colors are controlled by the themes and there are lots of custom options available.
GIF of a couple of themes. See how it changes the link colors?
I would worry or even think about saved search until you had 50-100 notes. You may or may not even use saved searches. The Omni Bar is a search weapon and saved searches are a way of remembering complex or convenient searches.
Here is a sample zettel.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Will, many thanks for plugging so many ‘gaps’ - especially about the coloured plain text - white, black and blue is fine for me at the moment!
The video is brilliant too! I’d never known academic writing can be done entirely in plain text + markdown!
But that’s for another chapter in my life. I’ll keep pressing on, playing with tags and double-bracket links to discover the powerful tools of the Archive
Welcome to the forum from another relative newbie. I found it took two adjustments to my way of thinking to start appreciating a Zettelkasten and using The Archive.
The first was that the system and process are both simple. In our "modern" way, we seem to want to complicate things, but in fact, that is not necessary. Simple works really well and has the nice side effect of allowing us to focus instead on ideas.
The second is that "simple" is not equivalent to "weak", but rather just the opposite. A Zettelkasten created using plain text files in The Archive, of course following all the good advice on writing different types of Zettels, is an amazingly powerful way of capturing what you think now and in the future building upon those ideas.
Good luck with your efforts; I look forward to you sharing your experiences on the forum.
@GeoEng51 I, too, am a Bear user and almost a week in on discovering both The Archive and Zettelkasten.
Have you moved your notes from Bear into The Archive? If so, how did you export chunks of notes, so they structure correctly into The Archive?
I love Bear for its visual beauty and simple markdown. I also used Bear's note linking before I knew the ZettelKasten method.
I love the future-proof features of Th Archive: Zettels as individual files with unique ID's that are linked.
But I also love how easily Bear syncs between MAC OS and IOS.
In addition to asking how you moved your notes from Bear to The Archive, I'd love to know, if I may ask, where are you now in your markdown/notetaking journey?
I ask because I have rudimentary markdown skills (I learned a bit from Bear and Ulysses) and love the ability to future-proof structurally linked text files.
Cheers,
Charles
Hi Charles - you may find the first part of my answer a bit disappointing, but I just copy text in Bear and paste it into The Archive. Not very elegant but it's functional. I had about 15 notes in Bear that I wanted to port over; in the Zettelkasten world, they were all split into atomic parts and became 40+ Zettels. So the idea of copying and pasting wasn't that theoretically distasteful - after all, they were going to be carved up, re-structured, and to some extent re-written anyway.
I still use Bear for a lot of notes that I don't ever intend bringing into my ZK - things like a daily exercise routine, passwords, how to access various amateur radio services, references (unrelated to anything in my ZK), general quotes that I find amusing or interesting (at present, unrelated to anything in my ZK; if that changes, they will get ported over), copies of several old e-mails that I thought worth preserving (and easily accessing), etc. Bear is a good place to store those, especially with the nested tagging. Believe it or not, I've never tried Bear's note-linking - I'll have to up my game there, once I stop obsessing about The Archive and trying to build up my ZK.
It took me a while to sort that out - what I wanted in my ZK and thus in The Archive, and what didn't need to go into my ZK and could stay in Bear. It's a work in progress but it's a lot clearer now than when I first started on this ZK journey (6 months ago).
I also use iA Writer - partly to read or edit zettels when I've only got access to my iPad. However, I mostly use it to write fleeting notes when reading or watching or listening to something (they may later be processed and transformed into zettels) or to capture "fleeting thoughts" (something rattling around in my brain that is poorly formulated and not yet ready to be turned into a zettel). So, in a sense, iA Writer is a springboard for bringing ideas into my ZK. I also write a lot of zettels directly; there's maybe a 50/50 split between the two methods.
When I first encountered Markdown I thought it was an odd novelty but for some reason dug in a bit and learned how to use it. Fortunately, it isn't that difficult. Then when I started using Bear and later The Archive and iA Writer, I realized how simple and powerful Markdown is. Whatever I write is now done either in Scrivener or in some note-taking app that has Markdown capabilities (and Scrivener can export markdown files). I hardly ever use a formal word processor because in most instances I don't need them. Of course, if I do need the fancier formatting capabilities, I will - mostly Pages or Mellel, but if really under duress from a client, Word. But most of the time, it's plain text files and Markdown for me. That even applies to preparing Mathematical equations, although I do less of that now than I used to.
Hopefully that answers some/most of your questions. Feel free to ask any more
Cheers.....John @GeoEng51
P.S. You will find that learning about Zettelkasten and how to use The Archive is a gradual process. You can start simply, gain experience, and regularly glean this forum for the gems that it produces daily. After a few months, you'll feel very comfortable with the tools and you will have been able to develop a workflow that suits your interests and personality. There is not just one way to do things in this world; I enjoy the diversity of ideas and suggestions that I find in the forum.
@GeoEng51 Thanks for clarifying your export process. I’m testing Bear and The Archive simultaneously for keeping a ZettelKasten. Bear’s speed, note-linking, and syncing make it more desirable of the two since I work on an iPad most of the time.
I love how within The Archive, Zettel's UID and title both make up the file name and display is the sidebar, but only the UID is the link. As much as I love_Bear_, I would like to see this functionality, so I link to notes, just the UID shows instead of both UID and title.
PS. I exported Bear notes containing bith UID and title, and they imported fine into The Archive.
@WoodruffCoates I should have mentioned that I used Bear for several years before encountering Zettelkstening and The Archive. I pretty quickly decided not to duplicate things in both apps, so I moved what I wanted in my ZK from Bear into TA, and continued to use Bear for items that I didn't want in my ZK.
@Will
Thanks so much for posting this video on Markdown. Nicholas is so clear and polished with his content and presentation.
I also came to using the Zettelkasten method recently having made notes in a variety of apps over the years (the latest of which is Bear).
I am only using my Zettelkasten for "deep study" topics and like @GeoEng51 I still use Bear for general life useful things (which I can also read on my iPhone)
For me this split of where I store my notes also has the benefit that I can version control my notes using GitHub for my Zettelkasten.