Right now my zettelkasten is kind of chaotic, and i am focusing on molding my Zettels for better recall and retrevial. I think I have a lot of unnecessary idle notes, not necessarily because I don't tag/link them, but because I haven't tagged or linked them well.
@Joshua Ellis Yes, that's an important point. A zettelkasten needs effort and thought to unleash its full potential. When I was still working in industry, we tracked open work and bugs with issues and even though we would work everyday with them we had to set several days aside every few months to maintain an overview over what needed to be done and to make sure we got our priorities right. I think it's a similar situation with maintaining a zettelkasten.
I use the zettelkasten system to write my thesis (just started), it is also very chaotic but it still gave me a wider view on my subject and I agree with you that it is a lot of maintaining and reviewing. Do you recommend having a tag system as well? Thanks for the tutorial, it is very helpful! Can you please make more about the subject?
@Liat C Great that you like it! I'll probably revisit the topic as my zettelkasten grows. Is there anything in particular you think might. be useful? I'm also not too sure about a tag system yet. I've got one but since I just started I didn't yet have to put it to the test, so I don't know whether it's actually any good. I'm trying to come up with some keywords that I think I would be using when I want to find the zettel again (I think that's a tip from Christian Tietze on zettelkasten.de). In addition I also have non-content-related tags such as ".pattern layer", ".interpretation layer", ".integration layer" (these three definitely come from Christian), ".work on" (for zettels that require further working, like the last one I showed in the video), ".index" and ".definition". It might well be though that hub notes will prove more valuable than tags. It's just a hunch, maybe I'm wrong. We'll see...
@@bf-thinking Thank you for the quick reply!! it looks like that tags or something similar can be confusing right now but I do need to revise my entire system. The index pages looks like a very good idea. Looking forward to the video!
Your video saved me. I'm trying to learn Luhmann's method, but I was having trouble understanding the Zettelkasten software. I'll see more of your videos. Congrats on your work.
I've been looking for Zettelkasten's practice videos for a few months now. Because I have been practicing for a few months, I have been having some questions in my mind. Although more than a year has passed since the release of this video, I think it is the best Zettlekasten demonstration video I have seen for researchers. There are no redundant words and it contains a lot of valid information. Many of the other demo videos are not from an academic research perspective or look fine but don't convey more effective information. To anyone else who sees this video review, believe me, I have read a dozen zettlekasten related blog posts and videos and have been practicing zettelkasten for about three months. This author's video includes all the points needed to make it just the best. The one point that I think is most important: there is no perfect platform, and, the paper zettlekasten has its own unique advantages. Do not overindulge in trying the tool, write it up. Also, I have a question for the author: what are the rules for naming the IDs of your cards? I observed that it seems that it is not just the date, but the year plus the number corresponding to the subject?
Thanks for the awesome feedback! If you don't know him already, you might also want to check out Scott P. Schepper's channel. He provides the best tutorials on using a zettelkasten that I know. th-cam.com/users/scottscheper The ID you see in the video is comprised by the data in the form yyyymmdd followed by a sequential number from 00 to 99 depending the how manieth zettel this is on that date. Let's say I write some zettels today. The first zettel would get the ID 2022031000, the next one the ID 2022031001 and so on. I hope that makes sense. That said, I've just done a mojor overhaul of my zettelkasten by switching from digital to analogue. In my analogue zettelkasten the IDs work completely differently and are very close to what Luhmann did.
Ich bin sowas von überfordert mit dem Zettelkasten-System. Es scheint verwaltungstechnisch sehr aufwändig zu sein und ich will es “perfekt” machen, obwohl das Überarbeiten von Notizen einer der Kernideen von dem System ist… Dieses Video war sehr hilfreich aber. Immer noch finde ich die verteilten Zetteln etwas unangenehm, aber ich werde es einfach probieren. Vielen Dank!
Wunderbar, dass das Video hilfreich war und viel Glück! Falls es nicht klappt, mach dir nichts draus. Das Zettelkasten-System ist nicht für jeden und auch nicht für jedes Gebiet geeignet. Letztendlich ist für dich das System das beste, das für dich funktioniert.
Thank you for the explanation I was a little bit lost on how used the zettelkasten. , zkn3 is one of the most complete tool, is open source and free, also is in Linux :).
Great that I could clarify some points! I recently released another video where I show how I use the zettelkasten now in more detail: th-cam.com/video/cwxRqmTpffY/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for this helpful video. I'm in the beginning stages of developing my zettelkasten so it is helpful to see this. In the video you mentioned your zettelkasten is still in its infancy. I would be curious to see a follow-up video that discusses how you developed your methodology over time. And effective you have found this to be over time.
Great that it was helpful! The thing I noticed the most is how the zettelkasten influenced my way of writing down my ideas. Now I ususally give them something like a header when I write them down in my notebook. I originally started that with ideas I later wanted to add to my zettelkasten, but gradually it spead to most ideas. I also tend to write these ideas down in smaller chunks now. As I said that slowly crept in, but it seems to shape my ideas generally in a good way, even if they don't end up in the zettelkasten.
@@bf-thinking This builds on what you mentioned in the video: each zettel is one atomic idea. I tend to start with jotting down one idea. Then I realize I have written two paragraphs with many ideas. Perhaps this will change over time. I've only just started a zettelkasten a couple of weeks ago.
@@goligabooks You're right. I think I'm influenced by atomicity there. Don't worry too much if your thoughts come out atomic or not. I still write them down in a notebook first and only create zettels in a second step at least one to a few days later. And sometimes I spread them over several zettels in the process.
I think would be very interesting to show to your followers how you manage the creation of one entry from begining to the end. How do you do links between files, tags etc Thanks for your channel. Very appreciated. J-François
I know what you mean... I sometimes wish I could start uni again with my current habits, I would get so much more out of it. But on the bright side, that means we're improving, I guess...
Nicht direkt. Ich nutze ABCs und KaWas um die wesentlichen Konzepte zu erarbeiten, zu denen ich dann Zettel erstelle. Zum Beispiel in dem ich durch Kategorisieren mit anschließenden KaWas Zusammenfassungen zu bestimmeten Themen von Büchern erstelle und die dann in den Zettelkasten übernehme (aber als Fließtextzettel). Während ich den Text so bearbeite kommen mir auch oft weitere Ideen, zu denen ich dann auch Zettel schreibe. Es ist momentan ein Video in Bearbeitung, in dem ich zeige, was ich mache. Langfristig denke ich, dass ich auch ABC-Listen in den Zettelkasten einbaue als Zusammenfassung von (Unter-)Themen mit entsprechenden Links zu den relevanten Zetteln.
Hallo, alle meine Videos haben deutsche Untertitel. Wenn es Videos sein sollen, die ganz auf Deutsch sind, empfehle ich die Kanäle Die Birkenbihl-Lehrerin und Magdalena Kuntermann; sowie die Vorträge von Vera F. Birkenbihl selbst.
I have a question: when luhman was taking source/litreture notes did we do: A. Write one idea from the source in one notes Or B. Made one note for the source then put in that note multiple idea. I have this question because what i see a lot of TH-camrs doing they make one page for the source and put in there all the notes in there , but I think" is there a possibility where you can have one note per idea so multiple notes from one source" I hope you know what i am talking about, if you don't i think i can clarify a bit just ask me.
Your option A is sometimes referred to the principle of atomicity. It's also the thing I prefer and Luhmann was more aligned with that idea as well (though not to the extend that some people claim). Luhmann's zettelkasten has been fully digitised and partially transcribed. For now no English translation, but you can use Google translate or something similar). Have a look here (the links to the zettels are at the bottom of the page): niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhaltsuebersicht Here two examples of notes that Luhmann wrote based on his reading (my translation - not everything might make sense due to the way Luhmann wrote it and my limited knowledge of the subject matter, but the important bit here is the formal aspect). Numbers indicate links to other zettels. Zettel 7,2a: niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_7-2a_V Zettel 6,3e1: niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_6-3e1_V At the end of the day you need to experiment and see what works best for you.
2:20 im trying for the long game to do a hybrid. Paper for the feeling and flexibility and digital for the automation. Im thinking about al little Printer for my digital and somthing like a little scanner for my analog, we will see. Its Futuremusic
I started off digital, but then I went fully analogue. It's only after going analogue that I really started to use the zettelkasten and that it has become an important asset in my toolbox.
To be honest, the last half year have been rather stressful. After being delayed lot by the pandemic a lot of things had to be finalised in a short amount of time and that sucked up 95% of my time. Therefore, many other aspects have suffered, including the zettelkasten (I've only been working with that very sporadically). But that's a temporary thing (that I'm now mostly through), not because the zettelkasten didn't work out for me. So, as a result my use of the zettelkasten hasn't evolved very much.I'm still using the same software though. However, using a zettelkasten has definitely changed the way I'm recording some of my ideas. If appropriate, I now break them into smaller chunks as I'm recoding them that can be transferred to zettels more easily.
I've spent the past week experiment with Obsidian, Athens, Joplin and Zettlr and I settled on Obsidian in the end because of its UX and features. It's basically the best designed note-taking app in my opinion. However, the praise is faint because the competition is truly bad it terms of usability, making it tedious to get started with zettlekasten because you have to fight against poorly designed UI.
Obsidian is currently very popular and it's free. I personally use zkn3 which I like a little better in terms of the interface (but exporting zettels to use with another programme requires an extra step). Otherwise just search for zettelkasten software on TH-cam and you find lots of good videos.
@@walidaddas Do you already know my other zettelkasten video? In there I explain more in detail what Luhmann actually did: th-cam.com/video/U2hxygqjx2k/w-d-xo.html In addition, you can have a look at zettelkasten.de. They have 7 years worth of deep dive blog posts on all aspects related to zettelkasten (digital and analogue). Many aspects are the same between digital and analogue zettelkastens. Space becomes more of a limiting factor in an analogue system. Some of Luhmann's zettels run across multiple actual slips of paper (each of them with its own ID). It's also harder to know what's the highest ID you got to, so you need to develop another system of assigning IDs. Luhmann had a rather complicated system, that worked for him. It made it easy to "hone in on" the zettel you're looking for by having several levels of sequential numbering. You need to see whether this system also works for you or whether you want to use a different one. Finally, search-ability becomes a real issue. If you accidentally place a zettel at the wrong position, it's essentially impossible to find it again (there were a number of placeholder zettels in Luhmann's own zettelkasten that said that the original zettel was lost). My guess is that you need to utilise indices and hub notes (see my previous video for what that means) earlier than in a digital zettelkasten. Hope that helps.
What do you think of the Zettelkasten combined with spaced repetition, or your thoughts on using the spaced repetition after making those semantic connections across concepts? I have a feeling that spaced repetition is unnecessary because by learning the concepts mindfully, we already made those connections for memorization.
That's a really good question. You're right, in general the quality of our construction (what we do when we learn information) determines the quality of our reconstruction (when we retrieve the information to use it). As you know from my Learning vs Memorising video, I'm not a fan of spaced repetition. But that is not to say that active recall can't be a useful tool. I usually use ABC-lists and CaWas for that or I I'm talking to other people about what I'm reading. All three options allow me to also think of related concepts and examples and will, thus, help to create more and stronger connections with the rest of your knowledge web. Talking to someone else will provide you with their ideas and examples as well, which can really help to grow your understanding and to see things from a different perspective. All of these techniques have their own benefits, so that for very important information I will use all of them and repeatedly, because they help to think deeper about a topic. (Also they're way more fun than spaced repetition, because you're actually actively thinking.)
Actually if you are using Space repetition(SRS) like ANKI, you dont require any other system, may be perhaps a mindmap to structure your topics or individual atomic ideas. Check out how the famous computer scientiest like Michael Nielsen uses Anki for all his Notes purpose as a life long learning system. He has written a impressive essay on this topic, just google it.
@@bf-thinking Have you checked out Obsidian in 2022? When I first looked at it in 2020 and it was much more limited and rough, but now it's very fluid and makes it extremely easy to link from one note to another and see a graph of your links. I've gone full in now. However, the most important part to a knowledge base in my opinion is actually contributing to it, instead of getting distracted by unnecessary optimizations. So perhaps zkn3 will work well for you long term. Love your videos btw, they are in a class of their own and I can't stop recommending them.
@@ryanwwest Great that you find my videos useful! I tried Obsidian some time last year and as I said above I don't like the way it feels. Among the biggest turn offs for me are that you can only link to complete note titles, rather than to IDs. That makes reading zettels very difficult. I also can't extract lists of zettels through which I can navigate easily (or it might be hidden somewhere). I know everybody is excited about the graph feature, but so far I've failed to see how this adds any value. I might be overlooking something, but this seems to be like an "oh shiny" feature that falls apart when you actually go a bit deeper. With all of that out of the way: I now no longer think that any digital solution is particularly well suited for assembling a zettelkasten. I just recently switched from digital to analogue and that feels just so much better. With actual paper-based zettels the thinking process and assembling trains of thought suddenly take centre-stage. Now I would always recommend using a physical system unless there're some very strong reason for you specifically to use a digital one instead.
@@bf-thinking Those are good points and turned me off from Obsidian in 2020. Just so you know, you can now link to both individual note markdown headings and individual blocks (basically paragraphs) via IDs. As for graph view, I don't personally think the global view is that helpful yet, but I've found that the local view (that only shows tags, links, backlinks etc that relate to the currently viewed note) is a lot more helpful to me. But I see you prefer physical note taking now so I'll stop. That's super interesting; it would be really neat if you made a video on why you decided to go that way and give up digital searchability / ease of editing. I haven't heard of anyone else doing that in modern times and I'm sure you'd have some great points for us all to consider (no pressure).
@@ryanwwest Actually there's a growing community now of people who either directly start analogue or have gone back there from digital. And those who switched from digital seem to report similar things. You should have a look at Scott Scheper's channel: th-cam.com/users/scottscheper
What is your experience with the zettelkasten? How do you integrate it into your workflow?
Right now my zettelkasten is kind of chaotic, and i am focusing on molding my Zettels for better recall and retrevial. I think I have a lot of unnecessary idle notes, not necessarily because I don't tag/link them, but because I haven't tagged or linked them well.
@Joshua Ellis Yes, that's an important point. A zettelkasten needs effort and thought to unleash its full potential. When I was still working in industry, we tracked open work and bugs with issues and even though we would work everyday with them we had to set several days aside every few months to maintain an overview over what needed to be done and to make sure we got our priorities right. I think it's a similar situation with maintaining a zettelkasten.
I use the zettelkasten system to write my thesis (just started), it is also very chaotic but it still gave me a wider view on my subject and I agree with you that it is a lot of maintaining and reviewing. Do you recommend having a tag system as well?
Thanks for the tutorial, it is very helpful! Can you please make more about the subject?
@Liat C Great that you like it! I'll probably revisit the topic as my zettelkasten grows. Is there anything in particular you think might. be useful?
I'm also not too sure about a tag system yet. I've got one but since I just started I didn't yet have to put it to the test, so I don't know whether it's actually any good. I'm trying to come up with some keywords that I think I would be using when I want to find the zettel again (I think that's a tip from Christian Tietze on zettelkasten.de). In addition I also have non-content-related tags such as ".pattern layer", ".interpretation layer", ".integration layer" (these three definitely come from Christian), ".work on" (for zettels that require further working, like the last one I showed in the video), ".index" and ".definition".
It might well be though that hub notes will prove more valuable than tags. It's just a hunch, maybe I'm wrong. We'll see...
@@bf-thinking Thank you for the quick reply!! it looks like that tags or something similar can be confusing right now but I do need to revise my entire system. The index pages looks like a very good idea.
Looking forward to the video!
Your video saved me. I'm trying to learn Luhmann's method, but I was having trouble understanding the Zettelkasten software. I'll see more of your videos. Congrats on your work.
Great that you find it useful! Let me know if you have more questions.
Best explanation of this on the internet by a mile. Many thanks.
Wow, thanks! Glad it was useful.
I've been looking for Zettelkasten's practice videos for a few months now. Because I have been practicing for a few months, I have been having some questions in my mind.
Although more than a year has passed since the release of this video, I think it is the best Zettlekasten demonstration video I have seen for researchers. There are no redundant words and it contains a lot of valid information.
Many of the other demo videos are not from an academic research perspective or look fine but don't convey more effective information.
To anyone else who sees this video review, believe me, I have read a dozen zettlekasten related blog posts and videos and have been practicing zettelkasten for about three months. This author's video includes all the points needed to make it just the best.
The one point that I think is most important: there is no perfect platform, and, the paper zettlekasten has its own unique advantages. Do not overindulge in trying the tool, write it up.
Also, I have a question for the author: what are the rules for naming the IDs of your cards? I observed that it seems that it is not just the date, but the year plus the number corresponding to the subject?
Thanks for the awesome feedback! If you don't know him already, you might also want to check out Scott P. Schepper's channel. He provides the best tutorials on using a zettelkasten that I know.
th-cam.com/users/scottscheper
The ID you see in the video is comprised by the data in the form yyyymmdd followed by a sequential number from 00 to 99 depending the how manieth zettel this is on that date. Let's say I write some zettels today. The first zettel would get the ID 2022031000, the next one the ID 2022031001 and so on. I hope that makes sense.
That said, I've just done a mojor overhaul of my zettelkasten by switching from digital to analogue. In my analogue zettelkasten the IDs work completely differently and are very close to what Luhmann did.
Great job...Very informative and elaborately explained the ZettelKasten method
Thanks! Hope it was useful.
Ich bin sowas von überfordert mit dem Zettelkasten-System. Es scheint verwaltungstechnisch sehr aufwändig zu sein und ich will es “perfekt” machen, obwohl das Überarbeiten von Notizen einer der Kernideen von dem System ist…
Dieses Video war sehr hilfreich aber. Immer noch finde ich die verteilten Zetteln etwas unangenehm, aber ich werde es einfach probieren. Vielen Dank!
Wunderbar, dass das Video hilfreich war und viel Glück!
Falls es nicht klappt, mach dir nichts draus. Das Zettelkasten-System ist nicht für jeden und auch nicht für jedes Gebiet geeignet. Letztendlich ist für dich das System das beste, das für dich funktioniert.
Thank you for the explanation I was a little bit lost on how used the zettelkasten. , zkn3 is one of the most complete tool, is open source and free, also is in Linux :).
Great that I could clarify some points! I recently released another video where I show how I use the zettelkasten now in more detail: th-cam.com/video/cwxRqmTpffY/w-d-xo.html
Very useful content! It's helping me a lot on developing my own ZK! Congratulations!
Glad to help!
Very clear, practical walk through. Thanks so much.
Wonderful that it's useful!
I just discovered your channel and I find it very interesting. Keep it up!
I watched both videos recommended by you Sir, thank you very much, both are useful and informative.
Great that you find them useful!
Exactly the answers to the last questions i had before getting started. You destroyed my procrastination plan 😅
Brilliant, all according to my evil plan!😉
Jokes aside, great that it was useful.
@@bf-thinking thank you for the content :)
@Cornelia Zambila If you got any questions or suggestions, let me know. :-)
Thank you for this helpful video. I'm in the beginning stages of developing my zettelkasten so it is helpful to see this. In the video you mentioned your zettelkasten is still in its infancy. I would be curious to see a follow-up video that discusses how you developed your methodology over time. And effective you have found this to be over time.
Great that it was helpful!
The thing I noticed the most is how the zettelkasten influenced my way of writing down my ideas. Now I ususally give them something like a header when I write them down in my notebook. I originally started that with ideas I later wanted to add to my zettelkasten, but gradually it spead to most ideas. I also tend to write these ideas down in smaller chunks now. As I said that slowly crept in, but it seems to shape my ideas generally in a good way, even if they don't end up in the zettelkasten.
@@bf-thinking This builds on what you mentioned in the video: each zettel is one atomic idea.
I tend to start with jotting down one idea. Then I realize I have written two paragraphs with many ideas. Perhaps this will change over time. I've only just started a zettelkasten a couple of weeks ago.
@@goligabooks You're right. I think I'm influenced by atomicity there.
Don't worry too much if your thoughts come out atomic or not. I still write them down in a notebook first and only create zettels in a second step at least one to a few days later. And sometimes I spread them over several zettels in the process.
@@bf-thinking Thanks for the response!
Great Video. Thanks for walking through your setup, it was very useful.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you, I really appreciate your explanation and your use of { } for ideas to be completed. Thank you!
Wonderful! Glad that you find it useful.
Wonderful
Great that you like it!
Amazing video!!!!
Glad you liked it!!
I think would be very interesting to show to your followers how you manage the creation of one entry from begining to the end. How do you do links between files, tags etc Thanks for your channel. Very appreciated. J-François
I'll think about how I can best do this, thanks.
Meanwhile have a look here: th-cam.com/play/PLHwtkAtdkx1IZoI7FZf1X50qyzRnmw_Vy.html
Another very useful video! I wish we were taught this at medical school. I would have been so much more efficient 😄
I know what you mean... I sometimes wish I could start uni again with my current habits, I would get so much more out of it. But on the bright side, that means we're improving, I guess...
I'm in med school too ( year 1) . Can you please tell me how would this be useful for our studying ?
Thank you for an interestinv video. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, will do!
Sehr gut gemacht
Danke
Gelangen deine ABC Listen oder Kawas auch in den Zettelkasten?
Nicht direkt. Ich nutze ABCs und KaWas um die wesentlichen Konzepte zu erarbeiten, zu denen ich dann Zettel erstelle. Zum Beispiel in dem ich durch Kategorisieren mit anschließenden KaWas Zusammenfassungen zu bestimmeten Themen von Büchern erstelle und die dann in den Zettelkasten übernehme (aber als Fließtextzettel). Während ich den Text so bearbeite kommen mir auch oft weitere Ideen, zu denen ich dann auch Zettel schreibe. Es ist momentan ein Video in Bearbeitung, in dem ich zeige, was ich mache.
Langfristig denke ich, dass ich auch ABC-Listen in den Zettelkasten einbaue als Zusammenfassung von (Unter-)Themen mit entsprechenden Links zu den relevanten Zetteln.
@@bf-thinking danke für deine ausführliche Antwort, das Thema Zettelkasten ist mega spannend
Very clear. Thanks.
Glad it was helpful!
Haben Sie irgendwo Videos auf Deutsch? Vg
Hallo, alle meine Videos haben deutsche Untertitel. Wenn es Videos sein sollen, die ganz auf Deutsch sind, empfehle ich die Kanäle Die Birkenbihl-Lehrerin und Magdalena Kuntermann; sowie die Vorträge von Vera F. Birkenbihl selbst.
@@bf-thinking Hallo! Ich danke Ihnen für die Empfehlungen und sehr guter Inhalt von Ihrem Kanal!
I have a question: when luhman was taking source/litreture notes did we do:
A. Write one idea from the source in one notes
Or
B. Made one note for the source then put in that note multiple idea.
I have this question because what i see a lot of TH-camrs doing they make one page for the source and put in there all the notes in there , but I think" is there a possibility where you can have one note per idea so multiple notes from one source"
I hope you know what i am talking about, if you don't i think i can clarify a bit just ask me.
Your option A is sometimes referred to the principle of atomicity. It's also the thing I prefer and Luhmann was more aligned with that idea as well (though not to the extend that some people claim).
Luhmann's zettelkasten has been fully digitised and partially transcribed. For now no English translation, but you can use Google translate or something similar). Have a look here (the links to the zettels are at the bottom of the page): niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhaltsuebersicht
Here two examples of notes that Luhmann wrote based on his reading (my translation - not everything might make sense due to the way Luhmann wrote it and my limited knowledge of the subject matter, but the important bit here is the formal aspect). Numbers indicate links to other zettels.
Zettel 7,2a:
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_7-2a_V
Zettel 6,3e1:
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_6-3e1_V
At the end of the day you need to experiment and see what works best for you.
2:20 im trying for the long game to do a hybrid. Paper for the feeling and flexibility and digital for the automation. Im thinking about al little Printer for my digital and somthing like a little scanner for my analog, we will see. Its Futuremusic
I started off digital, but then I went fully analogue. It's only after going analogue that I really started to use the zettelkasten and that it has become an important asset in my toolbox.
Thanks for this video. I wonder how your Zettelkasten evolved during the last 10 months. Are you still doing it, do you still use the same sofware?
To be honest, the last half year have been rather stressful. After being delayed lot by the pandemic a lot of things had to be finalised in a short amount of time and that sucked up 95% of my time. Therefore, many other aspects have suffered, including the zettelkasten (I've only been working with that very sporadically). But that's a temporary thing (that I'm now mostly through), not because the zettelkasten didn't work out for me.
So, as a result my use of the zettelkasten hasn't evolved very much.I'm still using the same software though. However, using a zettelkasten has definitely changed the way I'm recording some of my ideas. If appropriate, I now break them into smaller chunks as I'm recoding them that can be transferred to zettels more easily.
@@bf-thinking Hope, things work out well for you. Thanks for your quick response.
@@cantorstaub6834 Things are on the up and up. Thanks!
I've spent the past week experiment with Obsidian, Athens, Joplin and Zettlr and I settled on Obsidian in the end because of its UX and features. It's basically the best designed note-taking app in my opinion. However, the praise is faint because the competition is truly bad it terms of usability, making it tedious to get started with zettlekasten because you have to fight against poorly designed UI.
I'm loving this thing. Do you know about a good free software to do this Zettelkasten that is worth it? Room is out of budget right now 😭
Obsidian is currently very popular and it's free. I personally use zkn3 which I like a little better in terms of the interface (but exporting zettels to use with another programme requires an extra step). Otherwise just search for zettelkasten software on TH-cam and you find lots of good videos.
@@bf-thinking Thank you. I will take a look
If I choose Paper-based platform, can you help me? No computer please.
What is your concrete question? Where do you need help?
@@bf-thinking I need to learn ZettelKasten with no use of a computer. That is the way It was created in 1968. Paper based platform.
@@walidaddas Do you already know my other zettelkasten video? In there I explain more in detail what Luhmann actually did: th-cam.com/video/U2hxygqjx2k/w-d-xo.html
In addition, you can have a look at zettelkasten.de. They have 7 years worth of deep dive blog posts on all aspects related to zettelkasten (digital and analogue).
Many aspects are the same between digital and analogue zettelkastens. Space becomes more of a limiting factor in an analogue system. Some of Luhmann's zettels run across multiple actual slips of paper (each of them with its own ID).
It's also harder to know what's the highest ID you got to, so you need to develop another system of assigning IDs. Luhmann had a rather complicated system, that worked for him. It made it easy to "hone in on" the zettel you're looking for by having several levels of sequential numbering. You need to see whether this system also works for you or whether you want to use a different one.
Finally, search-ability becomes a real issue. If you accidentally place a zettel at the wrong position, it's essentially impossible to find it again (there were a number of placeholder zettels in Luhmann's own zettelkasten that said that the original zettel was lost). My guess is that you need to utilise indices and hub notes (see my previous video for what that means) earlier than in a digital zettelkasten.
Hope that helps.
What do you think of the Zettelkasten combined with spaced repetition, or your thoughts on using the spaced repetition after making those semantic connections across concepts? I have a feeling that spaced repetition is unnecessary because by learning the concepts mindfully, we already made those connections for memorization.
That's a really good question. You're right, in general the quality of our construction (what we do when we learn information) determines the quality of our reconstruction (when we retrieve the information to use it).
As you know from my Learning vs Memorising video, I'm not a fan of spaced repetition. But that is not to say that active recall can't be a useful tool. I usually use ABC-lists and CaWas for that or I I'm talking to other people about what I'm reading. All three options allow me to also think of related concepts and examples and will, thus, help to create more and stronger connections with the rest of your knowledge web. Talking to someone else will provide you with their ideas and examples as well, which can really help to grow your understanding and to see things from a different perspective. All of these techniques have their own benefits, so that for very important information I will use all of them and repeatedly, because they help to think deeper about a topic. (Also they're way more fun than spaced repetition, because you're actually actively thinking.)
Actually if you are using Space repetition(SRS) like ANKI, you dont require any other system, may be perhaps a mindmap to structure your topics or individual atomic ideas. Check out how the famous computer scientiest like Michael Nielsen uses Anki for all his Notes purpose as a life long learning system. He has written a impressive essay on this topic, just google it.
You, sir, look like Niklas Luhmann.
😉
You must be a fan of Luhmann that even the look has been copied.
obsidian is better option
Obsidian has its advantages. I don't like working with Obsidian, though... somehow zkn3 feels more "natural" for me...
@@bf-thinking Have you checked out Obsidian in 2022? When I first looked at it in 2020 and it was much more limited and rough, but now it's very fluid and makes it extremely easy to link from one note to another and see a graph of your links. I've gone full in now. However, the most important part to a knowledge base in my opinion is actually contributing to it, instead of getting distracted by unnecessary optimizations. So perhaps zkn3 will work well for you long term. Love your videos btw, they are in a class of their own and I can't stop recommending them.
@@ryanwwest Great that you find my videos useful!
I tried Obsidian some time last year and as I said above I don't like the way it feels. Among the biggest turn offs for me are that you can only link to complete note titles, rather than to IDs. That makes reading zettels very difficult. I also can't extract lists of zettels through which I can navigate easily (or it might be hidden somewhere). I know everybody is excited about the graph feature, but so far I've failed to see how this adds any value. I might be overlooking something, but this seems to be like an "oh shiny" feature that falls apart when you actually go a bit deeper.
With all of that out of the way: I now no longer think that any digital solution is particularly well suited for assembling a zettelkasten. I just recently switched from digital to analogue and that feels just so much better. With actual paper-based zettels the thinking process and assembling trains of thought suddenly take centre-stage. Now I would always recommend using a physical system unless there're some very strong reason for you specifically to use a digital one instead.
@@bf-thinking Those are good points and turned me off from Obsidian in 2020. Just so you know, you can now link to both individual note markdown headings and individual blocks (basically paragraphs) via IDs. As for graph view, I don't personally think the global view is that helpful yet, but I've found that the local view (that only shows tags, links, backlinks etc that relate to the currently viewed note) is a lot more helpful to me.
But I see you prefer physical note taking now so I'll stop. That's super interesting; it would be really neat if you made a video on why you decided to go that way and give up digital searchability / ease of editing. I haven't heard of anyone else doing that in modern times and I'm sure you'd have some great points for us all to consider (no pressure).
@@ryanwwest Actually there's a growing community now of people who either directly start analogue or have gone back there from digital. And those who switched from digital seem to report similar things.
You should have a look at Scott Scheper's channel: th-cam.com/users/scottscheper
You look like liuhman