Note taking

My learnings

• notes to develop lines of thought not an archive
  • see https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/
• siloed notes, not making connections between notes
  • connections are important, many insights are about connecting two separate ideas
• integrate readings by breaking it down into separate notes, one per idea

Zettelkasten method

• aka 卡片盒笔记法
• for developing thoughts, not building an archive
• used by Niklas Luhmann
• unique id for each note
  • hierachical numbering
  • does not seem to be used today, instead a timestamp is used
  • debate about note sequence Folgezettel
• tags, body with links, references
• links should explain the relationship
• see Schmidt2018 How to Take Smart Notes
• Bob Doto on Zettelkasten

Evergreen notes

• atomic
• concept-oriented
• densely linked
• prefer associative ontologies to hierarchical taxonomies
• write notes for yourself by default, disregarding audience
• https://maggieappleton.com/evergreens

Manfred Kuehn’s digital ZK

• found wiki to be the right fit, easy linking and one thought/fact
• prefer association over hierachy
• prefer wiki links to using numbered ids
• Mills’ “On Intellectual Craftsmanship”
• write in your own words
• blog archive

Beatrice Webb Appendix C: The art of note-taking

• break up reading into individial cards and rearrange them
• atomicity: one sheet one subject-matter/event
• date, source of information
• finding the best arrangemet of notes is part of the discovery process

Antinet

Related literature

• How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think
• Commonplace book
• Building a second brain, PARA
• Hack 17, “Write Magnificent Notes”
• Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method
• Keith Thomas’s working methods
• How to Make Notes and Write by Dan Allosso

Implementation:

• Tiddlywiki
  • needs a plugin for saving locally
  • able to save to github/gitlab
• Fossil’s wiki
  • self-hosted
  • standalone pages or part of the repo
• org-mode in Emacs
  • single file
  • org-mode has shortcuts to easily edit
• org-mode in Vim
  • single file
  • no special support for org-mode
• custom format in vim
  • digital notes

Other tools:

• logseq
• obsidian
• foam
• dendron
• Silver Bullet
• Silicon Notes
• Bangle.io
• https://www.zettlr.com/
• Forester
  • https://www.jonmsterling.com/index.xml

timeline

• earliest note is from 2006-12-29
• repo with org files started 2014-01-13