The Zettelkasten note taking methodology

I've recently finished the book "How to take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens. It's describing a note taking methodology, used by the famous scholar and researcher Niklas Luhmann, and later popularized with the rise of software apps like Obsidian, Logseq, and Room Research.

Luhmann never talked about his methodology explicitly, but he wrote more than 70 books and nearly 400 scholarly articles published on a variety of subjects, including la w, economy, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. Because of this, the University of Bielefeld started researching the methodology in more detail. What exactly makes this method so good?

People assumed Luhmann was a genius (which could be), but the productivity came from his note taking methodology. It's called Zettelkasten, based on a set of crates/boxes with slips (Zettel in German). It's a knowledge retrieval system, based on notes taking by you, in a specific way.

TL;DR:

All your thoughts and notes are temporary. They become permanent notes when you rewrite them in your own words, attach a unique ID to it and link these notes if they are connected. Once connected, the notes guide you to new thoughts and let you find quickly past thoughts.

Let me explain more about the system.

What I've found fascinating is how the system was created. For first the whole idea is built on the things we should forgot. You as a person should never remember anything, instead you have to delegate it to your notes. And the second important part is, to create notes that are used from bottom-up instead of top-down. The system discourages you to use projects or folders.

All the notes are loosely put inside a box, but linked together via a unique ID system (you can use whatever your want). Each note has a number (a unique ID), which are incremented based on whether it's a new concept or linked to the previous note. You'll find your starting point by using an index, which tells you which note to find where. That's your initial starting point, after that you follow the notes. It's one of the earliest analog models of the Hyperlinks we know.

How does one start collecting notes:

There are three different note types:

• Floating/Fleeting notes: These are your everyday thoughts. Thoughts that come to your mind while you're walking, or taking a shower. Thoughts that you talk with your friends. The goal is to immediately capture this. Write it down somewhere.
• Consumption notes: These are notes while we consume contents, such as Books, Articles, Podcasts, etc. (They are called Literature/Reference notes in the book, but I think consumption is a better word). Things that can be consumed, and you want to remember are part of this. Everything that has a start and beginning, and that can be "referred" in the future. The author discourages for example underlining important details in a book, instead take a note with a reference, you're going to use that later. Three things are important though. They should be concise (short and on point), they should be written by our own words, and lastly they should have a way to link back to the source (article name, book name and line, podcast link with their minute/seconds.)
• Permanent Notes: This is where our ideas and information ends up. We combine fleeting and literature notes, and create new Permanent notes. After creating a permanent note, you throw away the old notes. One important aspect here is, we should write it in a way that someone with no context can understand it. Never copy the temporary note directly to a permanent note. Lastly, permanent notes can be linked together. This is the main idea of the Zettelkasten system. To recap: A Permanent note has an ID/Number that uniquely describes the note, the content of your idea in your own words, and lastly any reference (no reference means it's your own thought).

That's the main gist from what I've understood by reading the book. There are a few details (such as how to do the numbering). Reading the book is highly recommended if you're interested in this system.

Thoughts

I like the idea of floating ideas and literature notes becoming a single permanent idea. I agree that writing a note isn't that useful. What are we going to do with a few lines of thoughts?, or quotes from a book that is shelved in good knows in which page of your notebook. A few months later you won't remember anymore what you note you took.

I immediately thought about my blog. When I write a lengthy blog post, it's a bunch of temporary notes I take and later I go over it, and write it down in my own words. This blog post you're reading is a perfect example of it.

The system encourages you to "permanently" store your notes in a way that helps you to grow and build. It's like growing a tree in your yard. Instead of throwing thousands of seeds around and hoping one of them will stick around, the Zettelkasten approach wants you to tend and grow a big tree with leaves, that is able to grow fruits (this blog post is a fruit you're currently enjoying!). Where you can learn with time, and build on top of it your knowledge empire.

Second, the system's main selling point is that the more permanent notes you have, the easier it'll be to find the right connections, and come up with a good idea. Creativity is never born out of air, and creatives are inspired by other ideas. That's how life works. Zettelkasten allows us to build on top of this core concept.

Most people use tools Digital tools like Obsidian, Logseq or Room Research which brings the whole concept to a whole another level. (Together with the book became Zettelkasten popular amongst people) However that's the part I'm not sure I want to be a part of. Lately I'm more and more inclined to use analog tools. There is something magical writing in an analog fashion. Second, I feel the system to be more suited for Academics who do research, or who always have to work on new things constantly.

Third, it's not a good system for journaling your life. As an example, if I want to read how I felt a year ago, or what happened during that time, Zettelkasten would be a poor system, because notes are not sorted historically (the digital tools allow you to retrieve the notes in an historical way, but on paper that wouldn't be easy unless we write the date we create a permanent note).

Verdict

The Zettelkasten system is a great concept for when you are constantly working and creating academic/technical work on a constant basis. The linking system is perfect. Back then, the world didn't have hyperlinks, but software has changed that. The only caveat I could find is that it requires discipline to write and constantly create permanent notes. If you can do it, I think the benefits are great; however, it might not be for everyone. 

For me, I'm going to take the good (or the things I believe are good) parts in my note-taking journey. For example, the idea of creating permanent notes is great (which I partly do in the public via blogging). I think having a bunch of book quotes is indeed not helpful, but summarizing them and making them accessible is a better outcome. I should do it more.