Zettelkasten Numbering the Easy Way
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ต.ค. 2024
- My new book is out: www.kathleensp...
Join me for a brief, daily chat, talking about creating believable character portrayals by understanding why people do what they do, and the forces that drive them. I've been on a long diversion driven by your requests and questions into how a Zettelkasten works. Since you need real sources to illustrate a Zettelkasten in action, I am employing my new book as an anchor book and adding other, related, sources to illustration ideas interacting.
If you've ever wanted to start a Zettelkasten or you are wondering what all the excitement is about, this is the series to catch. If you want to follow along and get your Zettelkasten off the ground, you might want to pick up my book.
You are adorable and brilliant. Thank you for this video and for your enthusiasm! I love this system! I’m just getting started.
I'm glad you found something of value in it. Please share your progress as you get underway.
You make me so happy. Thank you for creating valuable content for zettelkasten!
Thank you, Chase. That means a lot to me coming from you, especially since your channel is way larger than mine.
Love this numbering system. Thank you so much for taking the time to share.❤
Good to hear. I hope it will help you with your Zettelkasten.
UPDATE! I'm adding new cards to my Antinett today. I'm using your # system for the new cards.
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Your simplified method relieved stress I had with numbering.
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Thank you! Weight lifted from my shoulders.
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What great news, Bobbi! I am so happy to hear that your Antinet is underway again. Keep me posted on how it goes and let me know if I can answer any questions for you.
Kathleen this was an absolutely wonderful video! I am adopting your easy numbering system into my fledgling Zettelkasten. Thank you!
Thank you, Ray. I am happy that this video was useful for you. Please let me know if you have any questions.
❤😊...I loved the card # quiz.
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Thank you for the directory card trick 🎉
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I love the numbering technique and rules. Thank you 4 sharing.😊
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So helpful🎉
Thank you for your encouraging words, Bobbi.
thank you very much. for the first time i anderstood the secret of numbering in zttelkasten. good lesson. excuse my language. i subscribed.
I am glad that you found it helpful, Reda.
@@KathleenSpracklen It's a great pleasure for me
4:13 "A Zettelkasten is like a mindmap." This one sentence brought instant clarity for me. Not sure why I didn't see it before, but now the whole thing seems so obvious. Thank you!
I'm glad that was helpful for you, Rachel. Let me know if I can answer any questions for you.
I'm glad i've runned through your explanation before I start zettelkasten! Great content! Because reading the book is not enough. It's too abstract. ❤
I am glad this is helpful. Good luck with your Zettelkasten. Ask any questions.
You're a great teacher. Thank you for these videos!
Thank you for the words of encouragement. Please let me know if you have any questions I can answer for you.
cool animation - next level!
Thanks for the encouragement. I'm trying.
Kathleen, love your videos! Thank you for sharing!
Im hesitant to use any letters because it would limit me to 26 options. Am i missing something? Is there a way around this? Or, are you assuming you'll never have more than 26?
Numbers only have 1-9. Letters have A-Z. So there are only 9 numbers (10, if you include zero).
Very limited? No. If we're up to 9 and want one more we go to 10 and take up two spaces. In the same way if we're up to Z and we want one more we go to AA and take up two spaces.
So a card that is 10AA3B-7 is still number~letter~number~letter Dash number.
Are you Drew Alexander the blacksmith? Very cool. (Well actually, very warm.) Do you keep a Zettelkasten?
@@KathleenSpracklen yes I am :) Thanks for asking 😊
I'm just starting my ZK. I love to write and currently have two books in process. 1. A sales book for crafts people. 2. A personal memoir focused on craft.
... I also do a good bit of Bible study. I'm really exited about using this system to help me develop and keep track of my ideas.
Thank you for clearing up this question for me.
I have one more question. Do you think I'd do well to use 4x6 rather than 3x5 cards? Currently I'm using 3x5 cards. I've found that most of my ideas can be expressed on one card, especially if I use the back. If needed I can always double up the cards. One advantage is that they take up less space and will consequently not be as heavy should I ever need to move them. (Just sharing my rational.)
Maybe you have a video on this? I'm still watching yours.
@@drew.alexander If you prefer 3x5 that's fine. The most important thing is that the cards contain your thoughts and ideas, which comes through clearly when you say "most of my ideas can be expressed on one card." Now when you find a captivating Bible verse that you want to add to your Zettelkasten be sure to also include the prayer that rose up inside of you in response. Every card should contain something of you.
I emphasize 4x6 because so many are tracking information that they have learned from a book. A 3x5 card will be full by the time they have captured the author's thought and I want them to also include their thought.
Does this answer your question? If not, let me know and I will try again. How fun to think of you watching the videos I create. It makes the world seem smaller and more personal.
Very helpful! I watched several videos and finally understand how to number the cards. I have a teaching tech question for you. What software did you use for this presentation, if you don't mind me asking?
Thank you, Liala. I used Canva to create the slides and I used Loom to record the video. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you for all your videos! I came across the zettlekasten idea years ago but have only now just begun my own. I’m using your effortless numbering system, and I have a question: when do you decide to use a new number at the front (1,2,3,4, etc)?
Pretty quickly in starting my ZK I have 1-8 and there’s part of me that feels like I’m doing something wrong. As I’m just starting I don’t have a ton of depth within the numbers though some go into number-letter-number already.
I know you say the new card chooses its place/parent card, so when a new card just doesn’t seem to fit in any previous number section, I made a new one. Am I making my categories too narrow? I should add that my cards are not currently from one book or one area of study/interest; they are a bit all over because my brain just wants to write down all the things!
I hope this question makes sense. Thanks for all you do! (Side note: I am a mom of a toddler and I have a background in writing so I just love your story of wanting to help writer moms! We need it!)
How delightful to hear from you, Erin. You are on the right track with your numbering. If the new card has no other that it wants to go with, then it is perfectly appropriate to give it a new number, 8, 9, 10 ... as high as it goes.
Categories make themselves, you don't have to make them. This happens in two ways. One of them you have already seen, since you say some of your cards already have number-letter. The most direct type of category just grows up under one of the cards and keeps growing.
Another type of category forms when a new card has two different cards that it could go with. The new card will pick one as it's parent and the other as sort of a step-parent will link to the new card.
I'll explain this more in the video I record tonight. I will give me joy to make a video to answer your question.
@@KathleenSpracklen thank you so much!
new favorite channel
oh wow! you're famous :O amazing. A pioneer on youtube! :D Thanks so much for these videos :D
@@vrixphillips Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I learned to program in the earliest days of the home computer. I learned from the spec sheets of the chip manufacturer. At the time there weren't any books for the hobbyist, so I wrote one. How is your Zettelkasten coming along?
@@KathleenSpracklen oof, I've started it a few times, but between my ADHD and having to spend more time reading than writing notes... earlier, I found a digital ZK more efficient. Now, I find my Obsidian "Digital Garden" overgrown and my general exam for my doctorate fast approaches! Time to go analog for my sanity. I've just got to slow my brain down by writing it out, I guess.
That's so cool that you wrote a book where you saw a lack. My mom learned BASIC in high school just as they were starting to teach it, but she struggled with it and never really used it. It's always great to see women in the "classically male" sciences. They recently came out with a documentary on the women of the early electronic music scene, which I've been dying to see! So you worked on one of the first home chess programs? That's wild! I'm terrible at the game myself, but I've always enjoyed it :) There's a nice little chess club here at LSU, I might get back into trying to play, since I have a /little/ time this semester. So nice to talk to you! I'll certainly be tuning in ^^
@@vrixphillips Fantastic about your doctorate approaching! What is your field?
@@KathleenSpracklen oh I'm in comparative literature 8] studying tragedy in ancient greek, latin, french, and english and my dissertation is pertaining to political theory and divine justice. So... a ZK should be quite bulky with lots of citations and bibnotes!
Excellent, Kathleen. Thank you. Question - You presented the numbering system for main cards. Does only one thought, idea, quote go on each card? All I have at this moment are unnumbered Bib cards. Where does the content come from that goes on a main card?
What a perfect question, Pam. You set me up so nicely for today's video.
Thanks for the video and bringing clarity to the concept. I have one quick question; would the initial top level numbers signify the title of say the "fuzzy" categories? And would those start as "1, 2, 3 etc." as opposed to "1000" as in your example?
This is a wonderful question, Joe, because it gets to the very heart of what we are doing when we place a new card into our Zettelkasten. We are always going to be placing our new card right after the existing card most closely associated with it. This splits in two right away: Do we have an existing card or not?
1) In a new Zettelkasten we might find that there is no existing card that associates with our new card. That's where having categories might help. (I'm still testing this out to see if they are actually needed.) So we have another split, do we set up categories or don't we?
A) If we set up categories to help our Zettelkasten get off the ground, traditionally they have been numbered 1000, 2000, etc. But that's just tradition. You can name them anything you like and you can give the numbers any meaning you like.
B) If we don't set up categories and our new card has no existing card it is associated with, then it just gets the next free number in the range 1, 2, 3 and so on. "A" is more organized, "B" is simpler. I'm actively debating this issue. Do you have an opinion you'd like to share?
So now we have to take our alternate branch where:
2) We DO have an existing card that most closely associates with our new card.
Now we are thinking of association and not categorization. We must push all thoughts of categories out of our minds, because, if we are faithful in placing our new card by association, we will soon discover that we have cards that do not "belong" to the category name that we used to help us get started.
When that starts happening, congratulations! You are beginning to have a mature Zettelkasten. Throw that category card away. You no longer need it. One day our Zettelkastens may grow to the point where all category cards can be thrown away.
It is for this reason, that I wonder if it is worthwhile to make them in the first place. I would love to hear what you think.
With your permission, I would like to post your question over in LiLLiPub.org so that I can also get the opinion of the members of the Circle for Zettelkasten.
@@KathleenSpracklen Thanks for your throrough and thoughtful reply, and of course you can share it with the community. So this is my personal version/vision for the numbering based on your numeric/alpha/numeric system. I have identified five "Fuzzy" categories and they are; SEEK, PHILO, MACHINE, Scribe and Socio. I won't go into what eeach means because they make sense to me and are deliberately "fuzzy' in trying to keep in the spirit of the original zettelkasten while broad enough for my purposes. But they can be anything including the Academic topics you pointed out. So I would then create the first (out of 5 total) Category Cards - "1 SEEK" then sequentially NOTE NAME 1a, NOTE NAME 1a1, 1a2...then 1b, 1b1, 1b2 etc. I'm using the fuzzy categories as a map to my system so I can quickly file AND retrieve notes form those specific 5 categories. I also plan on color coding the categories for easy reference.
@@joeinfantryman Thanks for the permission. It sounds like you have a terrific system. I enjoyed hearing your approach.
When I attended the Yale's Writers Summer session a few years ago I had hoped for a zettelkasten lecture. It's my humblest of opinions this should be an undergrad level mandatory course for all disciplines. In any case, I just read this is a channel to support writing moms and don't want to intrude. Best-Joe
@@joeinfantryman You are most welcome to be here. Even my course for writer moms was 50/50 men and women. Lately, I've been on a side-bent teaching about the Zettelkasten because I am getting so many people asking questions about it. You are not intruding in any way.
What about a NUMBERING system that only uses.... NUMBERS! No letters needed. Easy. Simple.
1.0,
2.0,
2.1,
2.2,
2.2.1,
2.2.2
... (etc.)
2.14.3.11
3.0
Each group is separated by a dot. "What if I run out of number?" Don't worry, there is always another number. No duplicates, no tricks!
(I have a Table of Contents that lists each topic. On the first card of each topic is a numbered summary card for the topic for a quick overview.
Following my table of contents, is an alphabetical index.)
Too complicated?
If it works for you, then fantastic. There are only three "rules". Every card gets a number. No two cards get the same number. If you drop your box on the floor and all the cards spill out, you can put them back in order by looking at the card numbers. Beyond that, the best system to use is the one that make the most sense to you.