Turning reading notes into structured knowledge: from ABC-active to zettelkasten
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.ค. 2024
- How to convert reading notes into useable knowledge? When you read a lot, you need to take in a lot of information. But information is just that: information. In order to use what you read you need to convert information into knowledge. That means sorting, structuring and connecting the information to what you already know. Thinking tools such as grouping and CaWas can help you with sorting and structuring, while the thinking tool zettelkasten can help you with structuring and connecting. In this video I show a concrete example of what you can do to turn your reading notes into structured knowledge.
0:00 Starting point and approach
2:46 Structuring notes by grouping
3:52 Structering information by active list writing
4:48 Filtering and linking information with CaWas
6:38 Clarifying thoughts with categories and lists
8:21 Interplay: Digital zettelkasten
9:32 Linking ideas with an analogue zettelkasten
16:54 Thinking vs copying
Next Practice by Peter Kruse (in German): www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B08282...
How to solve it by George Polya: www.amazon.com/How-Solve-Aspe...
Birkenbihl on Management by Vera F. Birkenbihl (in German): www.amazon.com/Birkenbihl-Man...
Audio and Image Credits
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African drums - www.twinmusicom.org/
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Hey, you're back!
I always love a good look into people's idiosyncratic systems, especially from people like you and Scott who work on paper. I'm trying to create a mixed Zettlekasten where a less selective version of Luhmann's bibliographic notes are done natively in Obsidian, along with a digital database of art other primary historical documents (my main interest is Art History) and all personal comment, link between and further creative thought (the real Zettlekasten part) is done natively on paper and then backed up into the digital format. Seeing your process helps me anticipate what I would personally like to elevate to manuscript.
Great that it was able to give you some new ideas! Unfortunately, my PhD doesn't leave me as much time as I would like for making new videos.
In the end you need to find a way that works for what it is you want to do specifically. A zettelkasten is a great tool, but only for certain types of tasks. I'm learning more and moroe that it's a great "tought accumulator", but not a good knowledge accumulator. So, it makes sense that you would have a separate database for historical documents which is better suited for the task. I also have a separate database for our experimental data and the analyses built on that and then only take over the insights I gain from these anlyses, not the "raw results".
I watched this for the second time. Please keep doing videos
Great that you like it so much! Unfortunately, I'm currently writing my PhD thesis and that leaves me very little time for TH-cam. Once I get that submitted, I'll make sure to dedicate more time to making TH-cam videos again.
Really enjoyed watching this. I found it easy and engaging to follow your thought processes! I'd love to hear more about your reasons to switching to analogue. I've tried a few digital zettel systems, but always go back to index cards 😂
It forces you to engage with your reading or thoughts on a completely different level. Now I often, as I read something, think "this adds something to this or that topic". Something I never experienced before (and certainly not with a digital zettelkasten). The reason is that you immediately need to think where to file your zettels and that adds an extra layer of processing that is very beneficial.
I also like pushing physical zettels around much more than just interacting with digital zettels. Interacting with digital zettels feels unnatural and cumbersome to me.
And finally, I'm much freer in how I want to structure my zettels. Text, CaGas, CaWas, lists, tables or mixture of several elements together, with or without colour. All that is much easier done with a physical zettelkasten.
What are your reasons?
Great to see you back! Thank you for your continued insights & guidance.
I really enjoy making these videos. It's great to see that people like you find it useful.
So informative, you deserve more likes and subscribers sir!!
Thanks, man.
Can't wait to enjoy watching this tonight! I love seeing the analog notecards 🙂 🗃 📚
Yep, you're the one to blame. It were your videos that convinced me to make the switch. ;-)
You guys are great, love to see the analog revolution
I fully enjoy your videos. Thank you for the information and I like your presentation style as I can relate to it. I am also planning on moving to analog from digital. I appreciate you showing us your system. All the best!
Good luck with that! For me switching was definitely the right decision. Its only been after switching to analogue that the zettelkasten has become an important component of how I work.
Great to see a new video from you. Thank you for all the excellent videos. The detailed info about note taking and processing of books/new knowledge is very helpful. I am finding the ABC lists/method useful - easier, better and more fun! that how I have done note taking in the past. So a big thank you for sharing your knowledge.
In video there is mention of 'ABC-lists for emotional management' - is this talk in English?
Wonderful that they help you so much! Do you want to share how you're using them?
Unfortunately, it's a talk in German. And it was a live talk, so no recording exists. The talk was by a business consulting company who showed how they used ABC-lists with their clients to help them with emotional management.
jjejeje i just can´t sleep in this saturday night, and i took my zettelkasten to think and get better in my notes with your rvideos. thank you for the explanations. im actually ding a theisis in experimental biology and the zettelkasten system in physical form is making it super easy..
Great to hear that the video was useful! How do you use your zettelkasten for PhD?
@@bf-thinking Is for my licenciatura degree, in almost all spanish speaakingf countries wey do a theisis or a investigation project for graduation.
@@bf-thinking i use It for creating bibliography and for having order in the thoughts. Also I use notes for the order of the theisis, what is in what order and in the order side of the table I put all the thinking.
@@tonkjon6296 Great! It sounds like a zettelkasten could be well suited for this. ¡Mucho éxito!
2:27 what is important, how this idea link together, how concentrate this into zettle
What are those little symbols in the ID sequence?
You mean the 甲? It's a Chinese character, one of the heavenly stems (a fixed set of 10 characters that, among other things, used together with the 12 earthly branches as a designation for the current year). The heavenly stems are are in modern times sometimes used in ordered lists (where we would use A, B, C... or 1st, 2nd, 3rd... or similar). For instance in names like Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B, or to designate the Series A in some sports.
I use a rather complicated system for my IDs which, however, comes natural to me: If I write a list and I already know I want to expand these in separate zettels (like in the example I provided), I use a numbered list and designate the corresponding zettels with slash and number. If I want to expand on a certain word, phrase or item of and un-numbered list (i.e. I didn't plan to expand on the list when I initially wrote the zettel), I add a little lower case, superscript letter next to the corresponding word (if the zettel ID already ends in a lower case letter, I use an upper case letter instead). If I want to enrich the thought with an additional zettel, but the idea doesn't directly expand any point made in the zettel, but rather the zettel as a whole, I add a heavenly stem (or an erthly branch, if the zettel ID already ends in a heavenly stem).
Complicated? Yes. Necessary? No, you can get away with a much simpler system. But I find the resulting IDs pleasing to look at and it gives me some opportunity to train my Chinese writing skills. So yeah, just some strange ideosyncracy of mine.
Interesting video on how people do study a book, relate it with other books and then install them in zettelkasten. I hope your finding and understanding would fruit another book so it stays forever. Btw, what is you software you use for zettelkasten? is it free? look interesting.
Thanks! I hope it's useful.
I originally used zkn3 by Daniel Luedecke. It's free and cross-platform (at least Windows and Mac, I think also Linux). Now I switched to physical index cards, which I think are better in most cases.
@@bf-thinking i am still curious why you switch to manual zettelkasten? i am working for digital zettelkasten for my paper project, still looking for the good software. I have MyInfo7, but i dont know this is good for zettelkasten
@@gondala If you look for the thread beneath the comment by "Productivity", you'll find a more detailed explanation. But in short: You need to put in a lot of extra effort with a digital zettelkasten to convert it into the production and thinking powerhouse an analogue zettelkasten is "out of the box".
Vielen Dank für das tolle Video. Ich bin geboren und aufgewachsen in den Niederlanden- wohne seit 20 Jahren in Deutschland und lese sehr viele englische Bücher. Wörter kommen zu mir in allen Sprachen. Wenn ich eine ABC-aktiv Liste mache, soll ich mich dann auf eine Sprache einigen? Dankeschön
Schön, dass dir das Video gefällt!
Ob du das ABC-aktiv in einer Sprache hältst oder ob du Sprachen mischst kommt ganz auf deine persönliche Präferenz an. Ich neige dazu in der Sprache zu denken, in der die Quelle ist und dann fallen mir meist auch die Wörter für das ABC-aktiv in dieser Sprache ein. Manchmal mischen sich aber auch Gedanken in einer anderen Sprache darunter, das ist auch ok.
Ein weiteres Kriterium kann sein, dass du deine Fähigkeit in der Sprache der Quelle (zu diesem Thema) zu denken verbessrn willst (z.B. weil du in der Sprache später reden oder schreiben musst). Dann kannst du dich bewusst dazu entscheiden (heute) nur einsprachig aufzuschreiben.
Aber es gibt keinen tieferen Grund, warum das eine oder andere besser sein sollte. Also: was dir (heute) mehr zusagt ist die richtige Vorgehensweise für dich.
@@bf-thinking Danke Dir! Sprache ist so interessant.
I like your videos...what is the benefit of alphabetic sorting for brain?
The letters act as retrieval stimuli. You can see the same effect when solving crossword puzzles. If someone gets stuck on a crossword puzzle and asks you "do you know any fruit" you'll likely only come up with a handful of standard fruit (which ones depends where you live). But if they ask you instead "do you know any fruit starting with..." you're much more likely to come up with fruit that are not on yop of your mind.
Your illustrations and drawings in your notebook are fantastic. I'm wondering if you can link back to it by creating page numbers in your notebook. For instance call your notebook "J1" for Journal 1. And then if the page is 42, then create a link: "See J1/42"
I've been thinking about this. So far I only link from my notebooks to my zettels. Haven't felt the need yet to also provide a link in the opposite direction, but that might very well change in the future.
@@bf-thinking Yep it could very well be overkill. I share it because I had a similar idea recently, but haven't really found it useful, nor have I needed to do it. That's a good thing. Keeps me focused on developing deeper thoughts in the main Antinet.
Zusätzlich zu Deinen wirklich guten Videos: Welches Buch (Deutsch od. Englisch) würdest Du empfehlen, um die Zettelkasten-Methode zu lernen? Bzw. welche Webseite/Blog, etc.? - Um möglichst schnell in die Praxis zu kommen. Danke!
Schau mal in den Kanal von Scott Schepper rein. Das ist momentan mit Abstand die Beste Resource, die ich kenne: www.youtube.com/@scottscheper
Er hat auch vor kurzem ein Buch veröffentlicht, dass ich leider noch nicht gelesen habe.
@@bf-thinking Danke Dir!
Und bist du nach wie vor zufrieden mit der Entschiedung für den analogen und gegen den digitalen Zettelkasten?
@@petermaier3725 Ja, eindeutig! Ich hätte sofort mit dem analogen Zettelkasten anfangen sollen. Jetzt würde ich jedem raten, einen analogen Zettelkasten anzulegen, es sei denn, es gibt gewichte Gründe für einen digitalen Zettelkasten in diesem speziellen Fall.
@@bf-thinking Danke für die Info.
Ich bin noch am Überlegen, ob in meinem Fall analog oder digital der bessere Weg ist.
Mein Wissensgebiet ist 100% Text (ohne Graphen, Bilder, etc.). Bis jetzt habe ich das ganz einfach in word-Dokumenten gesammelt, mit Bullet-points gegliedert. Würdest du mir in dem Fall eher zu analog oder digital raten?
Und wie locker bist du eigtl. bzgl. Datensicherheit, also falls dem analogen Zettelkasten irgendwas zustoßen sollte (hoffentlich nicht!)? - Beim digitalen wären die Daten sicher.
@@petermaier3725 Wie gesagt, ich würde jetzt in den meisten Fällen zum analogen raten. Nur wenn es gewichtige Gründe für den digitalen gibt (etwa, du bist viel unterwegs und willst mit Kasten arbeiten, während du im Zug bist oder ähnliches).
Das das Wissen nur als Fließtext präsentiert wird, ist kein Argument gegen graphische Zettel. Graphiken verschiedener Art können uns häufig helfen Zusammhäng besser zu verstehen oder kompakter zu speichern. Kennst du das Konzept des KaGa (nach Birkenbihl)? Ich habe dazu auch zwei Videos gemacht, die dich interessieren könnten:
th-cam.com/video/zaCZex2IzfA/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/xdSI9vOsk9U/w-d-xo.html
Ob Datensicherheit eine Rolle spielt hängt davon ab, was für Daten du in deinem Zettelkasten speicherst. Wenn du deine Daten in einem ungesicherten Worddokument oder ähnliches speicherst, dann ist es für entsprechende Malware wesentlich einfacher den Inhalt deiner Dokumente zu crawlen als wenn sie auf Papier sind.
Oder meinst du Backups? Das kann natürlich ein Problem sein. Da sind computergestützte Kästen aber nur dann ein Vorteil, wenn du auch eine gute Backupstrategie implementiert hast. Und Papier hält länger als (einzelne) digitale Speichermedien. (Allerdings gibt es viele Zettelkastenprogramme, die die Daten in einem proprietären Format abspeichern oder auf firmeneigenen Servern und wenn die Software nicht mehr fortgesetzt wird sind die Daten auch futsch.)
Ich weiß aber nicht, ob das wirklich ein großes Problem ist. Wenn du dir z.B. die Notizbücher großer Persönlichkeiten anschaust, die verloren gegangen sind, wirst du feststellen, dass den meistens erst nach dem Tod ihrer Besitzer etwas geschehen ist. Meistens, weil die Erben sich nicht dafür interessiert haben.
Ich habe momentan noch keine Backupstrategie implementiert, spiele aber mit dem Gedanken mir möglicherweise einen speziellen Scanner zu kaufen, mit dem ich den Zettelkasten alle paar Jahre (oder auch einmal im Jahr) einscannen kann. Ich weiß noch nicht ob der Aufwand den Nutzen rechtfertigt.
Anybody remember TH-cam? I don't... But anyway, what do you do to structure and connect the information you read?
Read > linear notes > review notes > convert to zettels > review zk periodically
Check out mister Scott P. Scheper on TH-cam he has so much teaching on the Zettelkasten. Has done an insane amount of research into how Luhmann did it.
Yes, I know Scott. He was the one who convinced me to change from digital to analogue.
@@bf-thinking Haha, okay nice :)
@@bf-thinking If you don't mind me asking, What's the reasoning behind switching from digital to analogue?
@@zias5012 In brief, because an analogue zettelkasten makes it easier to extend your trains of thought. In an analogue zettelkasten you need to immediately think about where to file your zettel. So, you're forced to engage with your reading or thoughts on a completely different level. And that most certainly influences the way you read.
Secondly, as your retrieving zettels from your box, you need to actively remember what keyword you're filed the note under. Having to do this strengthens your memory. This is known as retrieval practice or the test effect and many people use flash cards for that (there're lots of other ways to achieve the same thing, but flash cards are the most popular method).
Yes, you can build a digital system to do the same thing. But you need to jump through a lot of extra hoops while you get all of this baked right into the analogue system. In addition with digital systems you always need to worry about whether the file system used by the programme can easily be converted to other programmes, as the life expectancy of any piece of SW tends to be rather short when compared with that of a zettelkasten.
Thirdly, and this is something not easily reproduceable with a digital system, as you flip through your zettelkasten to retrieve a zettel, you automatically see bits and pieces of the zettels you pass. That way the ideas are triggered again in your mind which again has the potential to strengthen them. That also opens the way for serendipitious discoveries that a digital zettelkasten simply doesn't provide.
You might think that since we can write more quickly on a keyboard and can search much faster this might off-set the drawbacks of the digital method. But writing speed is not the limiting factor when producing zettels. Thinking speed is the limiting factor and that's not altered by switching to a digital system. And again, the fact that you can easily access specific zettels or get a large number of zettels for a keyword is also not really relevant. The reason is that the zettelkasten is not primarily an knowledge management system, but a thought management system. That's a thing that most people don't seem to understand and which I also didn't understand until switching to analogue.
Finally, and that's only something I found after having used an analogue zettelkasten for a little while, going to analogue makes it much easier to design the layout of your zettels: just text, or lists, or CaGas, or CaGas and text together, with or without different colours... Some digital tools provide some of that capability, but then you always have the problem that the file format might not be recognised by any other programme later down the line. Or if you stick to markdown, you're severely limited in the way you can design your zettels.
Long story short: You need to put on a lot of extra effort into a digital zettelkasten to convert it into the production and thinking powerhouse an analogue zettelkasten is "out of the box". And even then they still have their limitations compared to analogue.
@@bf-thinking I see, thank you very much for the response.
would love to see you hooking up with the antinet guy 👉 th-cam.com/users/scottscheper
Scott has some good content. I like his videos. So, let's see...