Just today I was reviewing Schmidt's chapter in Cevolini's Forgetting machines, and I am surprised to see that this video echoes the same thoughts I was entertaining: The link between writing projects and the use/notetaking with the Zettelkasten is often absent in discussions about the Zettelkasten technique because of the mistaken assumption that Luhmann's books and articles are a collage of Zettels. As you and Schmidt point out, some cards were created simultaneously as Luhmann worked on a specific writing project (say, a conference paper), so that the Zettels' creation does not predate the writing project. Luhmann's Zettelkasten was really a thinking/writing partner: whoever thinks that Luhmann's books and articles "wrote" themselves is mistaken
SERIOUSLY THANK YOU!!! I never could wrap my head around zettelkasten and how to take smart notes (from online) although I never read the book either and I came up with my own writing system and didn’t realize it was similar to Luhmann until I looked at how he produced so many articles and after doing so I realized his system was FOR WRITING. You learn while your write and even moreso with completed thoughts where you are explaining things in your own words and not just collecting all the time and doing little with it while taking disconnected notes all the time. I looked back at my obsidian vault and noticed that the MAJORITY of my notes weren’t notes but were drafts for my blog but I could only “see” them as notes and they were never finished in my eyes because you get sucked into evergreen methodology, atomic note taking, how to structure your note, what tags to organize the note with. It’s all a waste when you publish little to no meaningful work! I would just write down my ideas of my own and I never really cared to reference highlights and stuff but I no longer care to use obsidian, Notion, etc. Now I use Heptabase and Remnote but still love writing by hand. It helps you to slow down in this fast paced world and if people did that more before making videos about zettelkasten there would be less people repeating the same made up note taking systems that sound good in theory but most are garbage in application for deep work and self reflective writing while keeping you stuck in learning phase and collectors fallacy phase. You can’t even notice it’s a form of procrastination and productivity porn while sucked in it until you get out of it because you are still learning but I think it’s similar to the self help guru cult. Without application (publishing) or teaching what you learned you just moved from being a human printer taking notes (about others thoughts) to a computer printer taking notes in Roam, obsidian, logseq, etc. (about others thoughts). I believe so many peoples’ notes vaults are filled with confirmation bias knowledge while many boast about a graph view that is filled of nodes that I wonder is any of their own thinking or is it just Readwise reader highlights? I guess this isn’t so bad for people who are studying for a specific degree because they have a focus of notes that they make but for me who writes to publish I just see a lot of this second brain movement as a knowledge cult comprised of perfectionists (former perfectionist here) receiving validation from dopamine rushes of mental stimulation and probably many are subconsciously trying to prove to themselves that they weren’t just a 17 ACT score person or a C- person. The extra plug-ins, themes, and css playing with these apps just is the icing on the cake to remain lost in knowledge because it is making them confident. God says knowledge puffs up...but are they receiving the full truth. And then what would happen when, not if, EMP happens? All that hidden “knowledge work” gone. Even though I publish online I still aim to print my articles. Anyway sorry for the rant. I can see how most TH-cam channels when you look in their eyes they look drained, look like they haven’t slept in a week, or have huge bags under their eyes while others’ eyes look glossy and glazed. It’s eery. When people who aren’t sucked in the cult say something I see the retailing (even kindly) that they aren’t a cult because they aren’t forcing anyone to change their minds or keeping people attached to apps against their will but they don’t “see” that talking passionately about theories and philosophizing methods while ONLY mentioning extreme infatuation for an app as the single source of truth is an extreme form of sharing your habits. It’s idolatry. Only God above is the source of truth not a notes vault that where you collect information from other sources...
Great video. I was getting hung up on note taking which really is a distraction from writing for me. I do like the idea of the numbering structure and am incorporating that. What I am finding is that a hybrid approach like you describe is working well for organization purposes on individual projects. Mindmapping helps much like an outline but giving myself the freedom to make changes to the structure in an organic way has allowed me to focus and be more productive. From the mindmap I can create a basic starting workflow. Love your ideas and videos. Thanks.
Excellent and great work. I was reading the brilliant 'Where does Niklas Luhmanns's card index come from by Alberto Cevelino 2018' and Luhmann's own comment about people who visited him to look at his notes, perhaps hoping to find the "Holy Grail", said "People come, they see everything and nothing more than that, just like in porn movies; consequently they leave disappointed" And of course he captured this on a slip 9/8,3
I hear what you’re saying but this underlies to me how many students do not understand the purpose of note taking. Note taking is a step in composition. Your notes should reflect discourse with the original work-rephrasing, responding, reframing evidence for your own arguments, etc. I think one of the issues is that teachers try teaching this in schools but because students tend to be product focused as that is what is graded, they neglect to listen to what the teacher is trying to tell them about process.
I'm very interested what the Zettelkasten is about. When I made my Video about the Zettelkasten, I came to the conclusion it is about being creative and have fun, which makes you become more productive. I will report after I watched this what I think!
Great stuff scott. Loving the book. Still early in my antinet, and really enjoying it. Question: Where can I get a card catalog similar to yours, or something else you might recommend? I'm outgrowing the dollar store plastic holder, but struggling to find something with drawer that's the correct size
@@scottscheper Therefor a guide to market a Zettelkasten has to focus on telling people the truth of releasing Products AND give them the desire to actually do it. Many People (including my past self) are just dreamers, anxious to wake up.
@@scottscheper Lol, yeah. I am sure it's not, but at about the 00:32 mark there's something on the floor that looks like a disposable diaper. It's probably just a plastic shopping bag, but for half the video I was wondering if you had a baby and I missed the news.
Yeah that's a shopping bag. My lunch that my earth angel girlfriend made for me. I'll be sure to tell her you said her lunch looks like someone took a dump in a diaper.
I do not like Ryan Holiday, but I do not understand why one Box cannot link to another? Has he really no numbers at all? Crazy. I think the learned that system by Robert Greene, or does anyone knows more about it?
I don't see a lot of output from the TH-cam zealots, who are more focused on notetaking and organizating than thinking and creating. Also, to benefit from a system like Luhmann's, you also need a brain like Luhmann's. A brilliant system isn't going to make you smarter.
It is a composition system.. it is all about writing process towards a project with a single focus... brilliant point! Thank you!
Just today I was reviewing Schmidt's chapter in Cevolini's Forgetting machines, and I am surprised to see that this video echoes the same thoughts I was entertaining: The link between writing projects and the use/notetaking with the Zettelkasten is often absent in discussions about the Zettelkasten technique because of the mistaken assumption that Luhmann's books and articles are a collage of Zettels. As you and Schmidt point out, some cards were created simultaneously as Luhmann worked on a specific writing project (say, a conference paper), so that the Zettels' creation does not predate the writing project. Luhmann's Zettelkasten was really a thinking/writing partner: whoever thinks that Luhmann's books and articles "wrote" themselves is mistaken
SERIOUSLY THANK YOU!!! I never could wrap my head around zettelkasten and how to take smart notes (from online) although I never read the book either and I came up with my own writing system and didn’t realize it was similar to Luhmann until I looked at how he produced so many articles and after doing so I realized his system was FOR WRITING. You learn while your write and even moreso with completed thoughts where you are explaining things in your own words and not just collecting all the time and doing little with it while taking disconnected notes all the time.
I looked back at my obsidian vault and noticed that the MAJORITY of my notes weren’t notes but were drafts for my blog but I could only “see” them as notes and they were never finished in my eyes because you get sucked into evergreen methodology, atomic note taking, how to structure your note, what tags to organize the note with. It’s all a waste when you publish little to no meaningful work!
I would just write down my ideas of my own and I never really cared to reference highlights and stuff but I no longer care to use obsidian, Notion, etc.
Now I use Heptabase and Remnote but still love writing by hand. It helps you to slow down in this fast paced world and if people did that more before making videos about zettelkasten there would be less people repeating the same made up note taking systems that sound good in theory but most are garbage in application for deep work and self reflective writing while keeping you stuck in learning phase and collectors fallacy phase. You can’t even notice it’s a form of procrastination and productivity porn while sucked in it until you get out of it because you are still learning but I think it’s similar to the self help guru cult. Without application (publishing) or teaching what you learned you just moved from being a human printer taking notes (about others thoughts) to a computer printer taking notes in Roam, obsidian, logseq, etc. (about others thoughts). I believe so many peoples’ notes vaults are filled with confirmation bias knowledge while many boast about a graph view that is filled of nodes that I wonder is any of their own thinking or is it just Readwise reader highlights?
I guess this isn’t so bad for people who are studying for a specific degree because they have a focus of notes that they make but for me who writes to publish I just see a lot of this second brain movement as a knowledge cult comprised of perfectionists (former perfectionist here) receiving validation from dopamine rushes of mental stimulation and probably many are subconsciously trying to prove to themselves that they weren’t just a 17 ACT score person or a C- person. The extra plug-ins, themes, and css playing with these apps just is the icing on the cake to remain lost in knowledge because it is making them confident. God says knowledge puffs up...but are they receiving the full truth.
And then what would happen when, not if, EMP happens? All that hidden “knowledge work” gone. Even though I publish online I still aim to print my articles.
Anyway sorry for the rant.
I can see how most TH-cam channels when you look in their eyes they look drained, look like they haven’t slept in a week, or have huge bags under their eyes while others’ eyes look glossy and glazed. It’s eery. When people who aren’t sucked in the cult say something I see the retailing (even kindly) that they aren’t a cult because they aren’t forcing anyone to change their minds or keeping people attached to apps against their will but they don’t “see” that talking passionately about theories and philosophizing methods while ONLY mentioning extreme infatuation for an app as the single source of truth is an extreme form of sharing your habits. It’s idolatry.
Only God above is the source of truth not a notes vault that where you collect information from other sources...
Great video. I was getting hung up on note taking which really is a distraction from writing for me. I do like the idea of the numbering structure and am incorporating that. What I am finding is that a hybrid approach like you describe is working well for organization purposes on individual projects. Mindmapping helps much like an outline but giving myself the freedom to make changes to the structure in an organic way has allowed me to focus and be more productive. From the mindmap I can create a basic starting workflow. Love your ideas and videos. Thanks.
You are so good at explaining this. I ordered your book and can't wait. Thanks so much.
Thank you!
Excellent and great work. I was reading the brilliant 'Where does Niklas Luhmanns's card index come from by Alberto Cevelino 2018' and Luhmann's own comment about people who visited him to look at his notes, perhaps hoping to find the "Holy Grail", said "People come, they see everything and nothing more than that, just like in porn movies; consequently they leave disappointed" And of course he captured this on a slip 9/8,3
Can you break down the monetization for those of us who also aspire to create?
I hear what you’re saying but this underlies to me how many students do not understand the purpose of note taking. Note taking is a step in composition. Your notes should reflect discourse with the original work-rephrasing, responding, reframing evidence for your own arguments, etc. I think one of the issues is that teachers try teaching this in schools but because students tend to be product focused as that is what is graded, they neglect to listen to what the teacher is trying to tell them about process.
I'm very interested what the Zettelkasten is about. When I made my Video about the Zettelkasten, I came to the conclusion it is about being creative and have fun, which makes you become more productive. I will report after I watched this what I think!
Great stuff scott. Loving the book. Still early in my antinet, and really enjoying it.
Question: Where can I get a card catalog similar to yours, or something else you might recommend? I'm outgrowing the dollar store plastic holder, but struggling to find something with drawer that's the correct size
Search "Vaultz"
@@scottscheper Perfect, Thank you!
So I am almost through, good point, without releasing Products a Zettelkasten is just a fancy Hobby which gets more sad over time.
Exactly. It's why people stop using it.
@@scottscheper Therefor a guide to market a Zettelkasten has to focus on telling people the truth of releasing Products AND give them the desire to actually do it. Many People (including my past self) are just dreamers, anxious to wake up.
I need to understand the diaper.
Haha the diaper?!
@@scottscheper Lol, yeah. I am sure it's not, but at about the 00:32 mark there's something on the floor that looks like a disposable diaper. It's probably just a plastic shopping bag, but for half the video I was wondering if you had a baby and I missed the news.
Yeah that's a shopping bag. My lunch that my earth angel girlfriend made for me. I'll be sure to tell her you said her lunch looks like someone took a dump in a diaper.
@@scottscheper Perfect.
lmao
I do not like Ryan Holiday, but I do not understand why one Box cannot link to another? Has he really no numbers at all? Crazy. I think the learned that system by Robert Greene, or does anyone knows more about it?
Yes I've talked about this elsewhere. There's a section in my book on its downsides.
@@scottscheper Thank you, the book exist only physical I assume? As a digital Nomad I does make sense for me to purchase more things)
I don't see a lot of output from the TH-cam zealots, who are more focused on notetaking and organizating than thinking and creating.
Also, to benefit from a system like Luhmann's, you also need a brain like Luhmann's. A brilliant system isn't going to make you smarter.