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The Zettelkasten Method: Examples to help

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Rebecca Williams · Follow
12 min read · Oct 5, 2020

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Update Sep 2021 — My Obsidian graph view. I’m still so fascinated by it!

Writing your first Zettelkasten note is intimidating. Most of the resources on

Zettelkasten are principle-based, with few examples of how to implement the
principles in practice.

The premise is that when you understand the principles, you can then go on to
design your own implementation method.
However, according to the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition (Dreyfus, 1980), people
learn first by following rules until they’ve learned enough that they feel confident in
experimenting with their own way of doing things.

I hope this article helps to get you started with your own Zettelkasten.

Niklas Luhmann and his Zettelkasten

The Zettelkasten method was made famous by Niklas Luhmann, who was a German
sociologist who published over 70 books and 400 academic articles (Ahrens, 2017,
pp.30). Luhmann credited his achievements to his Zettelkasten, which contained
over 90,000 ideas that helped him develop topics by knitting together ideas into a
cohesive whole. His books wrote themselves, idea by idea. Even after his death,
Luhmann’s ideas were combined to publish more books on his behalf.

The word Zettelkasten is German for “slip box”, which refers to a box containing
many slips of paper (Ahrens, 2017). Each slip represents a single, atomic idea that
makes sense by itself, and also in combination with other ideas (similar to how our
brain works, but with a better memory).

Zettelkasten Workflow
The Zettelkasten method has totally changed my approach to learning for the better.
There are five different types of note-taking processes that build on each other. I’ll
go through each of these and demonstrate how I implement them in my own system
below.

1. Fleeting notes
2. Literature notes
3. Permanent notes
4. Index notes
5. Keyword notes

Fleeting Notes
Fleeting notes are temporary reminders of ideas.

These can be ideas that you get in the shower, things you think you might want to
do, questions you have etc. Or they can be ideas that you get from a book, movie,
article, social media etc.

It doesn’t matter where you write these. A notebook or a text-editor file is a good
option. I personally prefer a notebook so I don’t have to be at a device to jot them
down. I love using a Rocketbook, which is a reusable notebook that you write on
with Frixion pens. It can be wiped clean with a damp cloth.

How to take fleeting notes when reading a book

When taking notes from a book, it’s important to keep in mind a couple of things.

First, fleeting notes are reminders of ideas, a ‘hold this thought’ location pin on a
map.

Second, in order to take a fleeting note, it must meet at least one of the following
two criteria:

1. You want to remember the idea permanently.

2. You want to use the idea in your work (in a blog, book or something that will help
you take a step forward in achieving a concrete goal).

When I take fleeting notes from a book, I start by writing the title of the book at the
top of the page.

Then for each idea that meets one or more of the criteria described above, I write
down the page number the idea was inspired by, and a word or a short phrase that
will trigger the full idea in my mind when reviewing the notes at the end of the day
(quick processing is critical for these reminders to work).

Here’s an example:
 Example of fleeting notes in Bear Software.

Literature Notes
At the end of the day, or sooner if you want, go back to your fleeting notes and pick
out the ideas that you really want to keep. I have found that ideas that I thought I
wanted to keep or use become less important when compared to all of the other
fleeting notes on the page. The fleeting notes that spark joy/interest stand out.

The next step is to elaborate those reminders of those ideas into a paragraph that
describes the idea in full.

When doing this, don’t look up the original idea on the page you got it from. Really
try and write it in your own words yourself. It’ll make it really clear to you what you
do and don’t understand yet, and also whether you want to invest the energy in
filling those gaps (for ideas that are really important to you, you will). If you’re really
stumped, make it up, just complete the idea and move on. Don’t interrupt yourself to
research more at this stage, one type of task at a time.

There are five criteria it would be beneficial for your literature note to meet:

1. Write it in your own words.

2. Write it in such away that if you read it 10 years later it would make complete
sense by itself.
3. One idea per note. If you need to define a term for the idea/concept to make
sense, create a term definition card and link to it from the concept note.
4. Include the complete reference for the source you got the idea from.
5. Include the relevant citation (lastName, year, pp.22).

Here is an example of how I write literature notes:

Example of Literature Note in Obsidian Software

Permanent notes
There are a couple of differences between Literature notes and permanent notes:

Literature notes are written in the context of the source they were inspired by.
Whereas permanent notes are written in the context of your own ideas and
interests.

Literature notes only have one connection, to the book they came from. While
permanent notes can have many connections (to individual notes, as part of
multiple topics etc).

These differences are key to understanding how to write permanent notes, because
unlike literature notes, they must be connectable across multiple contexts. This is
why it’s important to capture a single idea on each page.
When you have a single idea, you can click it together with another idea, like a
jigsaw piece with infinite sides. However, the moment you bind two or more ideas
together (into one note), then you lose the ability to take them apart or insert new
ideas between them.

Here are four examples of how I write permanent notes:

Content first topics (writing)

Example of topics forming from content

Embed dynamic content into elements with JSX (programming)

What is perspective (art)
How to connect permanent notes to other permanent notes
Connect notes chronologically

Connecting notes chronologically is where we provide a link to another note that

can be combined with our current note in a way that still makes sense without
needing to modify either of them. Some examples:

A term mentioned in a note which links to a term definition note.

An author mentioned in a note which links to an author biography note.

A note which directly contradicts findings in a note that contains a fact, study,
opinion.

A note which adds something to the existing note.

A personal comment on the idea contained in another note.

Connect notes with a bridge note

Connecting a note through a bridge is where you link two seemingly unrelated ideas
together with a separate note that explains why you think they’re connected. This
prevents you from looking at the notes years later having forgotten why you thought
they were related.

Connect notes with a topic index

A topic index is a note which contains a of links to ideas that are directly relevant to
a specific topic, question or discussion etc. You create topic indexes once your notes
have naturally formed into their own topic clusters (see next section).

Index Notes
An index note represents a cluster of related permanent notes. They are very similar
to an individual article/chapter outline, and they are created from content that
already exists. A really cool thing about index notes, is that you can end up writing
an entire chapter or article just by linking related notes together.

Strategies
Concepts
Keyword Notes
Keyword notes are very similar to index notes in that they contain a list of links to
relevant notes, except at a more general level than index notes. So, while an index
note might represent a table of contents for a chapter or an outline for an article, a
keyword note might represent a table of contents for a book or entry points to many
different sub-topics within a broader area.

In the example below, I used a hashtag to differentiate my keyword note from an

index card. The links in my keyword notes generally lead to index notes that contain
links to relevant notes on each of the sub-topics mentioned.

Art
Writing your first Zettelkasten note
To write your first Zettelkasten note, start with an article about something you’re
interested in. This process will work for books too, but an article is easier to practice
with.

Take fleeting notes, then literature notes. Use the first literature note you write as
your first permanent note. After that, write every new permanent note with an eye
towards how it fits in with what you already have. If it doesn’t, just add it as a new,
standalone note.

When you first get started, you’ll probably find that your initial topic clusters form
quite quickly. It’s going to take time for clusters to start forming between-topics
instead of in-topics, but that’s the whole point of doing this. As long as you make an
effort to connect your current note to relevant existing notes, those will form by
themselves.

Some notes are going to end up getting totally lost in your Zettelkasten, just like how
we forget things naturally. That’s okay. The advantage with a Zettelkasten in this case
is that you can actually scan through orphan (forgotten) notes to see if they spark
reminders that you can turn into connections now and again.
Obsidian for Zettelkasten
When I first tried Zettelkasten, I started with a bunch of flashcards. I hated it
because it caused all sorts of perfectionist issues to flare up. I’m also a minimalist
who moved to Australia with a backpack, and the thought of lugging around physical
notes made me feel opposite of free. That being said, I like to write down my notes
on paper before I add them to my digital Zettelkasten, to get the benefits of both
worlds.

My tool of choice (after trying a couple) is Obsidian for a few reasons.

I like that every time you write a note, it is stored as a markdown file in a folder
that you specify on your computer/cloud etc. So if the software ever breaks
down, you have all of your notes with working links (as a software developer
myself, I wanted to make sure I had full control over my notes in an easy to
backup/use format if the software ever gets discontinued/corrupted).

It’s pretty simple to use, and seems perfect for Zettelkasten.

You can hover over links in your notes and see a preview of the note it links to
without clicking on it (turn this feature on in the settings).

You can add a date and timestamp (like this: 202010051024) to the start of the
filename when you create a new note. This means I can create notes with the
same title (I try not to), but distinguish them by the unique date and timestamp
which acts as an ID.

You can create aliases for notes when you link to them. This is useful when you
want to link to a note as part of a sentence, but the exact phrasing you want to
use for the link doesn’t match the title of the note it refers to. In this case, you
can link to the note as normal, and also provide alternative link text at the same
time. Like this: [[original-title-name|link text you want to use]].

My favorite part of Obsidian is the graph view. At the time of writing, my graph view
looked like the below image (Oct 2020). To see a more recent snapshot (a year plus
later), check out the feature image right at the top of this blog post.
Obsidian graph view features that I love for Zettelkasten:

Each note in your Zettelkasten is represented as a node (small circle) with its
title above it (Showing the title is optional).

You can click on a node to go directly to the note it represents.

The links between notes are represented by arrows (single direction and
bidirectional).

When you hover over nodes, the node and all of its direct connections are
highlighted in a different colour, to make it easy to see connections.
Connections might span clusters (mine doesn’t do this yet):
 Tags (which I use to represent keyword entry points to a series of sub-topics
belonging to a more general area) show up in a different color. In the graph
view, they act as entry points to clusters.

The graph view is a force-directed graph, which connected notes pull towards
each other, and unconnected notes repel each other. This makes topic clusters
really obvious. You can change the force intensity in the settings.

Conclusion
I hope this article helps you get started with your own Zettelkasten. Feel free to ask
questions if anything is still unclear or if you want feedback for your first few notes.
You can reach me on Twitter (@fairylights_io) 🥰
Happy Zettling!

—-

Update: Mon 12 Dec 2022

This article got referenced in the book The Antinet Zettelkasten (published this
week actually), with three main criticisms:

1. Overly focused on the digitized

 2. Include complete inventions first devised by Sönke Ahrens

3. Confuse Luhmann’s numeric-alpha notecard address system by telling readers

to use dates for their notecard IDs.

Full quote: “The next handful of search engine results… contain material overly
focused on the digitized — and in my opinion, compromised — version of the
Zettelkasten. They also include complete inventions first devised by Sönke Ahrens.
They also confuse Luhmann’s numeric-alpha notecard address system by telling
readers to use dates for their notecard IDs.”

^ I’ve been waiting for this book to come out for a while, because I love world-
expanding perspectives around Zettelkasten and PKM. So thought that perspective
was worth sharing, especially because of the criticisms leveraged towards this
article 😄
Update: wed 26 Jan 2022

A commenter on Reddit I think (can’t find it) mentioned that there seems to be two
kinds of Zettelkasten camps:

1. People who follow the process in a linear style (my article falls into this style, it
has a step-by-step approach)

2. People who follow a less linear style (they might use fleeting notes and literature
notes as sparks for permanent notes, rather that following each stage of the
process step-by-step).

This reminded me of a lightbulb moment I had with the Getting Things Done (GTD)
method by David Allen about Next Actions. I used to think that Projects could only
have one Next Action each. But that’s not true. Any project can have multiple next
actions, as long as each of those next actions do not depend on anything else having
been done before it.

Thought I’d share here as food for thought after having read the step-by-step above :)
❤

If you disagree with my approach or have links to resources that challenge or are
just different to mine, share them in the comments (plus a short why explanation)
and I’ll add them to the resources list just below. I find mind-changing experiences
delightful and helpful to share!

(I’m planning on releasing a follow-up article sharing any evolutions in my

Zettelkasten approach in a year or so, once it’s gotten comfy).

Extra Resources
If you have created an article/resource on the Zettelkasten method, please link to
them in the comments. I’ll add them here:

Zettelkasten Method Mistakes and how to avoid them, by Rachel (INFJ twin!)

A Beginner’s Guide to the Zettlekasten Method, by Jessica Arcenas

Software and tools:

Obsidian: A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files. (2020, October
03). Retrieved from https://obsidian.md

Rocketbook Australia. (2020, October 05). Rocketbook Everlast (Core) — Lined

Pages. Retrieved from https://getrocketbook.com

Bear — Write beautifully on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. (2020, September 25).
Retrieved from https://bear.app

References:

Dreyfus, Stuart E.; Dreyfus, Hubert L. (February 1980). “A Five-Stage Model of

the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition” (PDF). Washington,
DC: Storming Media. Retrieved June 13, 2010.

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost
Writing, Learning and Thinking — for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book
Writers. United States: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.

Zettelkasten Notetaking Writing Tips Productivity Hacks Learning

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Written by Rebecca Williams

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Fascinated by solving #startup problems ( @questmateapp ) inc SaaS product analysis, marketing,
development & geeking out with team 🐧 Total #pkm & #vr nerd!

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