- Apr 2023
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Local file Local file
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Of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit.SAMUEL JOHNSON
link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/hkyPEtm9Ee21MFP9ynnj0g
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one must also submit to the discipline provided by imitationand practice.
Too many zettelkasten aspirants only want the presupposed "rules" for keeping one or are interested in imitating one or another examples. Few have interest in the actual day to day practice and these are often the most adept. Of course the downside of learning some of the pieces online leaves the learner with some (often broken) subset of rules and one or two examples (often only theoretical) and then wonder why their actual practice is left so wanting.
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any easy strategies to improve my notetaking?
reply to u/all_flowers_in_time_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/12g3idj/any_easy_strategies_to_improve_my_notetaking/
In many ways I was just like you in school...
Some of it depends on what your notes are for. Are you using them to write things in your own words to increase understanding and tie them into other ideas? Are you using them as reminders? Are you using them to build material for later (papers, articles, write a book, other?) For memorization?
Your notes look like they've got a Cornell Notes appearance, so perhaps more formally structuring your pages that way will help? Creating sample test questions afterward for practice and recall can be highly useful and force you to create answers which is dramatically more productive than simply reviewing over notes which usually creates a false sense of familiarity.
If you're using them for memorization, then perhaps convert the notes after lecture into flash cards (physical cards, Anki, Mnemosyne, etc.) that you can use for spaced repetition.
If you're using them to later create other content, then perhaps a commonplace book or zettelkasten structure may be helpful for cross indexing ideas. If you're not familiar with these, try out the following book which covers all of these use cases and mores:
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.
I wish I had been able to do so when I was a student.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Benefits of sharing permanent notes .t3_12gadut._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/bestlunchtoday at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12gadut/benefits_of_sharing_permanent_notes/
I love the diversity of ideas here! So many different ways to do it all and perspectives on the pros/cons. It's all incredibly idiosyncratic, just like our notes.
I probably default to a far extreme of sharing the vast majority of my notes openly to the public (at least the ones taken digitally which account for probably 95%). You can find them here: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich.
Not many people notice or care, but I do know that a small handful follow and occasionally reply to them or email me questions. One or two people actually subscribe to them via RSS, and at least one has said that they know more about me, what I'm reading, what I'm interested in, and who I am by reading these over time. (I also personally follow a handful of people and tags there myself.) Some have remarked at how they appreciate watching my notes over time and then seeing the longer writing pieces they were integrated into. Some novice note takers have mentioned how much they appreciate being able to watch such a process of note taking turned into composition as examples which they might follow. Some just like a particular niche topic and follow it as a tag (so if you were interested in zettelkasten perhaps?) Why should I hide my conversation with the authors I read, or with my own zettelkasten unless it really needed to be private? Couldn't/shouldn't it all be part of "The Great Conversation"? The tougher part may be having means of appropriately focusing on and sharing this conversation without some of the ills and attention economy practices which plague the social space presently.
There are a few notes here on this post that talk about social media and how this plays a role in making them public or not. I suppose that if I were putting it all on a popular platform like Twitter or Instagram then the use of the notes would be or could be considered more performative. Since mine are on what I would call a very quiet pseudo-social network, but one specifically intended for note taking, they tend to be far less performative in nature and the majority of the focus is solely on what I want to make and use them for. I have the opportunity and ability to make some private and occasionally do so. Perhaps if the traffic and notice of them became more prominent I would change my habits, but generally it has been a net positive to have put my sensemaking out into the public, though I will admit that I have a lot of privilege to be able to do so.
Of course for those who just want my longer form stuff, there's a website/blog for that, though personally I think all the fun ideas at the bleeding edge are in my notes.
Since some (u/deafpolygon, u/Magnifico99, and u/thiefspy; cc: u/FastSascha, u/A_Dull_Significance) have mentioned social media, Instagram, and journalists, I'll share a relevant old note with an example, which is also simultaneously an example of the benefit of having public notes to be able to point at, which u/PantsMcFail2 also does here with one of Andy Matuschak's public notes:
[Prominent] Journalist John Dickerson indicates that he uses Instagram as a commonplace: https://www.instagram.com/jfdlibrary/ here he keeps a collection of photo "cards" with quotes from famous people rather than photos. He also keeps collections there of photos of notes from scraps of paper as well as photos of annotations he makes in books.
It's reasonably well known that Ronald Reagan shared some of his personal notes and collected quotations with his speechwriting staff while he was President. I would say that this and other similar examples of collaborative zettelkasten or collaborative note taking and their uses would blunt u/deafpolygon's argument that shared notes (online or otherwise) are either just (or only) a wiki. The forms are somewhat similar, but not all exactly the same. I suspect others could add to these examples.
And of course if you've been following along with all of my links, you'll have found yourself reading not only these words here, but also reading some of a directed conversation with entry points into my own personal zettelkasten, which you can also query as you like. I hope it has helped to increase the depth and level of the conversation, should you choose to enter into it. It's an open enough one that folks can pick and choose their own path through it as their interests dictate.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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To buy or not to buy a course? And, if the latter, which one? .t3_12fowjy._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionSo, I've been considering buying an online course for Zettelkasten (in Obsidian). Thing is... There are a bunch of them. Two (maybe three) questions:Is it worth it? Has anyone gone down that path and care to share their experience?Any recommendations? I've seen a bunch of options and really don't have any hints on how to evaluate them.
reply to u/Accomplished-Tip-597 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12fowjy/to_buy_or_not_to_buy_a_course_and_if_the_latter/
Which "industry", though? Productivity? Personal Knowledge Management? Neither of these are focused on the idea of a Luhmann-esque specific zettelkastenare they?
For the original poster, what is your goal in taking a course? What do you want to get out of it? What are you going to use such a system for? The advice you're looking for will hinge on these.
Everyone's use is going to be reasonably idiosyncratic, so not knowing anything else, my general recommendation (to minimize time, effort, and expense) would be to read one of the following (for free), practice at some of it for a few weeks before you do anything else. Then if you need it, talk u/taurusnoises into a few consultations based on what you'd like to accomplish. He's one of the few who does this who's got experience in the widest variety of traditions in addition to expertise in the platform you want (though I'd still recommend him if you were using something else.)
- https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/
- https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/ (just 1-7, though the rest is profitable)
- https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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after decades of using the Zettelkasten it might become impossible to access it from your place at the desk. To mitigate this issue, it is recommended to use normal (thin) paper instead of (thick) index cards.
After having used his zettelkasten for 26 years, Luhmann mentions that he chose normal paper as his substrate for note taking over thicker index cards to save on storage space and particularly to make it possible to keep more material closer to his desk rather than need to store it at larger distances within his office. This allows more slips per drawer and also tends to have an effect on productivity with respect to daily use and searching.
One might need to balance this out with frequency of use and slip wear, as some slips in his box show heavy use and wear, especially at the top.
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If you have to write anyway, it is pragmatic to exploit this activity by creating a system of notes that can act as a competent communication partner.
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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Fast, Sascha. “Field Report #5: How I Prepare Reading and Processing Effective Notetaking by Fiona McPherson.” Zettelkasten Method (blog), March 29, 2022. https://zettelkasten.de/posts/field-report-5-reading-processing-effective-notetaking-mcpherson/.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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There is no real difference if you think about the boundaries between reading and notetaking. Moving the eyes over text: Sounds like reading. Highlighting key words while reading: Still sounds like reading. Jotting down keywords in the margins: Some writing, but still could count as reading. Writing tasks in the marings (e.g. "Should compare that to Buddhism"): Don't know. Reformulating key sections in your own words: Sounds like writing. But could be just the externalisation of what could be internal. Does make a difference if you stop and think about what you read or do it in written form?
Perhaps there is a model for reading and note taking/writing with respect to both learning and creating new knowledge that follows an inverse mapping in a way similar to that seen in Galois theory?
Explore this a bit to see what falls out.
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How do I store when coming across an actual FACT? .t3_12bvcmn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionLet's say I am trying to absorb a 30min documentary about the importance of sleep and the term human body cells is being mentioned, I want to remember what a "Cell" is so I make a note "What is a Cell in a Human Body?", search the google, find the definition and paste it into this note, my concern is, what is this note considered, a fleeting, literature, or permanent? how do I tag it...
reply to u/iamharunjonuzi at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12bvcmn/how_do_i_store_when_coming_across_an_actual_fact/
How central is the fact to what you're working at potentially developing? Often for what may seem like basic facts that are broadly useful, but not specific to things I'm actively developing, I'll leave basic facts like that as short notes on the source/reference cards (some may say literature notes) where I found them rather than writing them out in full as their own cards.
If I were a future biologist, as a student I might consider that I would soon know really well what a cell was and not bother to have a primary zettel on something so commonplace unless I was collecting various definitions to compare and contrast for something specific. Alternately as a non-biologist or someone that doesn't use the idea frequently, then perhaps it may merit more space for connecting to others?
Of course you can always have it written along with the original source and "promote" it to its own card later if you feel it's necessary, so you're covered either way. I tend to put the most interesting and surprising ideas into my main box to try to maximize what comes back out of it. If there were 2 more interesting ideas than the definition of cell in that documentary, then I would probably leave the definition with the source and focus on the more important ideas as their own zettels.
As a rule of thumb, for those familiar with Bloom's taxonomy in education, I tend to leave the lower level learning-based notes relating to remembering and understanding as shorter (literature) notes on the source's reference card and use the main cards for the higher levels (apply, analyze, evaluate, create).
Ultimately, time, practice, and experience will help you determine for yourself what is most useful and where. Until you've developed a feel for what works best for you, just write it down somewhere and you can't really go too far wrong.
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- Mar 2023
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www.edutopia.org www.edutopia.org
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Werberger, Raleigh. “Using Old Tech (Not Edtech) to Teach Thinking Skills.” Edutopia (blog), January 28, 2015. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/old-tech-teach-thinking-skills-raleigh-werberger.
link to: https://boffosocko.com/2022/11/05/55811174/ for related suggestion using index cards rather than Post-it Notes.
This process is also a good physical visualization of how Hypothes.is works.
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twitter.com twitter.com
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<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>I do my thinking with pen on paper. Digital tools, even (or especially?) the note-taking ones, are just not for me. <br><br>They may be easy to access or carry around, but what’s the point if they constrain the output?
— Julia Pappas (@JuliaPappasJoy) March 30, 2023A common issue of many digital note taking apps is that while they may have ease for cutting and pasting data into them, moving data around, visualizing it in various forms, and exporting it into a final product may be much more difficult. At the opposite end of the spectrum, physical index cards are much easier to sort, resort, and place into an outline form to create output.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.comYouTube1
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Hypothesis Animated Intro, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkm0lL-6lc.
This was an early animation for Hypothes.is as a tool. It was on one of their early homepages and is (still) a pretty good encapsulation of what they do and who they are as a tool for thought.
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mastodon.social mastodon.social
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Ein Zettel, auf den kein anderer Zettel verweist, ist kein Zettel
—Detlef Stern, 2023-03-21, https://mastodon.social/@t73fde/110062851811483123
A note not referenced by another note is not a note. (translation mine)
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one can protect by using dictionaries of synonyms and then create enough referencesheets (e.g. Astronomy: cf. Science of the Stars). The only premise for this is that one knowsbeforehand the one location where the sheet belongs in the box.
use of theausaurus to limit subject headings...
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Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens. (Sektion 1.2 Die Kartei) Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.
annotation target: urn:x-pdf:00126394ba28043d68444144cd504562
(Unknown translation from German into English. v1 TK)
The overall title of the work (in English: Technique of Scientific Work) calls immediately to mind the tradition of note taking growing out of the scientific historical methods work of Bernheim and Langlois/Seignobos and even more specifically the description of note taking by Beatrice Webb (1926) who explicitly used the phrase "recipe for scientific note-taking".
see: https://hypothes.is/a/BFWG2Ae1Ee2W1HM7oNTlYg
first reading: 2022-08-23 second reading: 2022-09-22
I suspect that this translation may be from Clemens in German to Scheper and thus potentially from the 1951 edition?
Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens; eine Anleitung, besonders für Studierende. 8., Umgearb. Aufl. 1931. Reprint, Berlin: R. Kiepert, 1951.
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web.archive.org web.archive.org
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Die Erfahrungen Ermans und seiner Mitarbeiter lehren nur zu deutlich, dass die Buchform der Präsentation eines solchen Materialbestands durchaus nicht entgegenkommt.
For some research the book form is just not conducive to the most productive work. Both the experiences of Beatrice Webb (My Apprenticeship, Appendix C) and Adolph Erman (on Wb) show that database forms for sorting, filtering, and comparing have been highly productive and provide a wealth of information which simply couldn't be done otherwise.
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Auch die Korrektur einer Textstelle ist in der Datenbank sofort global wirksam. Im Zettelarchiv dagegen ist es kaum zu leisten, alle alphabetisch einsortierten Kopien eines bestimmten Zettels zur Korrektur wieder aufzufinden.
Correcting a text within a digital archive or database allows the change to propagate to all portions of the collection compared with a physical card index which has the hurdle of multiple storage and requires manual changes on all of the associated copies.
This sort of affordance can be seen in more modern note taking tools like Obsidian which does this sort of work with global search and replace of double bracketed words which change everywhere in the collection.
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Local file Local file
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By looking at practices of note-taking for their ownsake we can get a better idea of how people performed intellectual work in the past, what caughttheir attention and how they moved from reading to producing a finished work, often via note-taking.
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Blair, Ann M. “The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe.” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 3 (August 4, 2010): 303–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492611.
Annotation target: urn:x-pdf:202007e9836543a7b69e7045c81f5965
Hypothes.is: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A202007e9836543a7b69e7045c81f5965
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archive.org archive.org
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Wigent, William David, Burton David William Housel, and Edward Harry Gilman. Modern Filing and How to File: A Textbook on Office System. Rochester, N.Y.: Yawman & Erbe Mfg. Co., 1916. http://archive.org/details/modernfilingate02compgoog.
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archive.org archive.org
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Watts, Charles J. The Cost of Production. Muskegon, MI: The Shaw-Walker Company, 1902. http://archive.org/details/costproduction01wattgoog.
Short book on managing manufacturing costs. Not too much of an advertisement for Shaw-Walker manufactured goods (files, file management, filing cabinets, etc.). Only 64 pages are the primary content and the balance (about half) are advertisements.
Given the publication date of 1902, this would have preceded the publication of System Magazine which began in 1903. This may have then been a prototype version of an early business magazine, but with a single author, no real editorial, and only one article.
Presumably it may also have served the marketing interests of Shaw-Walker as a marketing piece as well.
Tangentially, I'm a bit intrigued by the "Mr. Morse" mentioned on page 109 who is being touted as an in-house consultant for Shaw-Walker.... Is this the same Frank Morse who broke off to form the Browne-Morse Co.? (very likely)
see: see also: https://hypothes.is/a/Sp8s4sprEe24jitvkjkxzA for a snippet on Frank Morse.
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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Hierbei handelt es sich um eine Sammlung von Notizen, die Luhmann vermutlich zwischen 1952 und 1961 angelegt hat (mit einzelnen späteren Nachträgen; Notizen insbesondere zum Themenkomplex Weltgesellschaft wurden allerdings noch bis ca. 1973 durchweg in diese Sammlung eingestellt). Die insgesamt ca. 23.000 Zettel verteilen sich auf die ersten sieben physischen Auszüge des Kastens sowie auf kleinere Registerabteilungen, die im 17. Auszug der zweiten Sammlung (physischer Auszug 24) stehen. Die Notizen sind im Wesentlichen in der Zeit entstanden, als Luhmann als Rechtsreferendar in Lüneburg bzw. als Regierungsrat im Kultusministerium in Niedersachen gearbeitet hat und dokumentieren seine Lektüre verwaltungs- bzw. staatswissenschaftlicher, philosophischer und zunehmend auch organisationstheoretischer sowie soziologischer Literatur.
According to the Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, Luhmann began his first zettelkasten in 1952 likely when he was working as a legal trainee in Lüneburg or as a government councilor in the Ministry of Education in Lower Saxony.
This timeframe would have been just after Johannes Erich Heyde had published the 8th edition of Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens in 1951.
Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/Jn9elsk5Ee2hsLP5WWBEBw on dates of NL ZK - https://hypothes.is/a/CqGhGvchEey6heekrEJ9WA aktenzeichen - https://hypothes.is/a/4wxHdDqeEe2OKGMHXDKezA Clemens Luhmann link
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twitter.com twitter.com
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https://twitter.com/raulpacheco/status/1067406555455389697 by Raul Pacheco-Vega
See also related blog post with most of the contents of this thread. (I just read it before this.)
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I also “thread” index cards, particularly when they’re all associated with the same journal article or book chapter (or book). Note that I number my index cards “1/“, “2/“, until I know the total number of cards I will use. To store them, I collate them with a paper clip.
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www.pikeschool.org www.pikeschool.org
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https://www.pikeschool.org/uploaded/Library/Files/takingnotesusingnotecards.pdf
found via:
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Here are a few links to resources (in PDF format) to different models, strategies and techniques to take notes in index cards: https://t.co/tIVaeRA5nS and https://t.co/1CLkiyekzq
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 26, 2018
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www.raulpacheco.org www.raulpacheco.org
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Note-taking techniques I: The index card method<br /> by Raul Pacheco-Vega
What does his full collection look like? Does he have a larger filing cabinet or boxes or are they all smaller modular boxes?
How does he handle the variety of sizes here? Particularly the differences between 4 x 6 and 5 x 8 as it sounds like he may use them similarly outside of their size difference.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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"Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit"
reply to jameslongley at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2532/personal-knowledge-management-is-bullshit
I find that these sorts of articles against the variety of practices have one thing in common: the writer fails to state a solid and realistic reason for why they got into it in the first place. They either have no reason "why" or, perhaps, just as often have all-the-reasons "why", which may be worse. Much of this is bound up in the sort of signaling and consumption which @Sascha outlines in point C (above).
Perhaps of interest, there are a large number of Hypothes.is annotations on that original article written by a variety of sense-makers with whom I am familiar. See: https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/ Of note, many come from various note making traditions including: commonplace books, bloggers, writers, wiki creators, zettelkasten, digital gardening, writers, thinkers, etc., so they give a broader and relatively diverse perspective. If I were pressed to say what most of them have in common philosophically, I'd say it was ownership of their thought.
Perhaps it's just a point of anecdotal evidence, but I've been noticing that who write about or use the phrase "personal knowledge management" are ones who come at the space without an actual practice or point of view on what they're doing and why—they are either (trying to be) influencers or influencees.
Fortunately it is entirely possible to "fake it until you make it" here, but it helps to have an idea of what you're trying to make.
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Notes Rafting
Inspired by Shime's Word Raft, Haikal Kushahrin has created a note raft with several people as a means of keeping them all accountable for writing at least 15 notes per week.
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www.google.com www.google.com
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General instructions for using a Memindex
HOW IT IS USED <br /> Things to be done today, jot on face card. Things to be done tomorrow or next Friday, jot on card for that day. Things to keep before you until done, jot on opposite front card. A matter for January 10th jot on a short card put under the band till you return to your desk, then file next to card for January 10th when it will come out and refresh your memory.
Things to be done when in New York or Chicago jot on card "N" or "C." The new address of Mr. Jones, under "J." Ideas on advertising jot on card tabbed "adv." Things for your clerk to do, on his card , etc., etc. Retire today's card tonight, carrying forward things not completed and put next card in the file in has proved that almost back of pocket case. The alphabet enables one to index all jottings for instant reference. This system is very comprehensive yet perfectly simple. You soon the learn to depend on it every hour of every day.
Within the general instructions in a 1904 Memindex advertisement (next to an ad for "Genuine Edison Incandescent Lamps") we see the general ideas of indexing things into the future and carrying undone tasks forward, just as is done in the bullet journal method.
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Howard L. Wilson, Manufacturer, 45 State St., Rochester, N. Y.<br /> (next to an ad for "Genuine Edison Incandescent Lamps")(p.2 in a 2/3 page ad)
Carleton, Hubert, ed. St. Andrew’s Cross. Vol. 19. Brotherhood of St. Andrew., 1904.
Specific issue: Nov-Dec 1904 Vol. 19, No 2-3, Pittsburgh, PA
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takingnotenow.blogspot.com takingnotenow.blogspot.com
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Not sure why Manfred Kuehn removed this website from Blogger, but it's sure to be chock full of interesting discussions and details on his note taking process and practice. Definitely worth delving back several years and mining his repository of articles here.
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/<br /> archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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Poem from the inside back cover of a 1913 Memindex Catalog:
JUST JOT IT DOWN.
If you’re going to meet a man<br /> Jot it down<br /> If you’ve got a little plan<br /> Jot it down<br /> If you never can remember<br /> Your requirements for September<br /> ’Till October or November<br /> Jot ’em down.
If you’ve got a note to pay<br /> Jot it down<br /> If its due the first of May<br /> Jot it down<br /> If collections are so slow<br /> That to meet the note you know<br /> You must dun old Richard Roe<br /> Jot it down
If you have a happy thought<br /> Jot it down<br /> If there’s something to be bought<br /> Jot it down<br /> Whether duty calls or pleasure<br /> If you’re busy or at leisure<br /> It will help you beyond measure<br /> Jot it down
If there’re facts that you’d retain<br /> Jot ’em down<br /> If you’ve got to meet a train<br /> Jot it down<br /> If at work or only play<br /> If at home or far away<br /> In the night or in the day<br /> Jot it down
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TheCalculagraph
Beyond having people make direct copies of cards by hand or using carbon paper, The Calculagraph Company manufactured a copying machine for duplicating data.
There is an accompanying picture (which I haven't copied here). Advertisement from 1906 System Magazine:
The Calculagraph<br /> Makes individual records of actual<br /> working time on separate cards<br /> which may be used interchangeably<br /> for Cost Accounting, for Pay-rolls and<br /> for a number of other purposes with-<br /> out copying or transcribing a single<br /> figure, by simply assorting the cards<br /> and adding the records directly from<br /> their faces.<br /> A card containing all the work<br /> records of one man for a week may<br /> be useful for pay-roll purposes, but it<br /> is utterly worthless for learning the<br /> cost of products, until all the items<br /> have been copied or transcribed for<br /> classification.<br /> The Calculagraph requires a large<br /> number of cards in a factory employ-<br /> ing several hundred persons, but it<br /> Saves Clerical Labor. (In one<br /> factory it saves $150.00 per week).<br /> Cards Are Cheaper Than Labor<br /> The Calculagraph Makes No<br /> Clerical Errors.<br /> Let us send you our printed matter.<br /> CALCULAGRAPH COMPANY<br /> 1414 JEWELERS BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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1930s Wilson Memindex Co Index Card Organizer Pre Rolodex Ad Price List Brochure
archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20230310010450/https://www.ebay.com/itm/165910049390
Includes price lists
List of cards includes: - Dated tab cards for a year from any desired. - Blank tab cards for jottings arranged by subject. - These were sold in 1/2 or 1/3 cut formats - Pocket Alphabets for jottings arranged by letter. - Cash Account Cards [without tabs]. - Extra Record Cards for permanent memoranda. - Monthly Guides for quick reference to future dates. - Blank Guides for filing records by subject.. - Alphabet Guides for filing alphabetically.
Memindex sales brochures recommended the 3 x 5" cards (which had apparently been standardized by 1930 compared to the 5 1/2" width from earlier versions around 1906) because they could be used with other 3 x 5" index card systems.
In the 1930s Wilson Memindex Company sold more of their vest pocket sized 2 1/4 x 4 1/2" systems than 3 x 5" systems.
Some of the difference between the vest sized and regular sized systems choice was based on the size of the particular user's handwriting. It was recommended that those with larger handwriting use the larger cards.
By the 1930's at least the Memindex tag line "An Automatic Memory" was being used, which also gave an indication of the ubiquity of automatization of industrialized life.
The Memindex has proved its success in more than one hundred kinds of business. Highly recommended by men in executive positions, merchants, manufacturers, managers, .... etc.
Notice the gendering of users specifically as men here.
Features: - Sunday cards were sold separately and by my reading were full length tabs rather than 1/6 tabs like the other six days of the week - Lids were custom fit to the bases and needed to be ordered together - The Memindex Jr. held 400 cards versus the larger 9 inch standard trays which had space for 800 cards and block (presumably a block to hold them up or at an angle when partially empty).
The Memindex Jr., according to a price sheet in the 1930s, was used "extensively as an advertising gift".
The Memindex system had cards available in bundles of 100 that were labeled with the heading "Things to Keep in Sight".
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friendsofdarwin.com friendsofdarwin.com
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He was kind enough to inform me that, for his notes, he had himself employed exactly the same process of loose slips that my father and I have followed, and which I have spoken of in detail in my Phytographie
De Candolle use the same method as Darwin. He describes it is his book. It would be nice to hace a English translation of it
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In other words, in modern note-making parlance, Darwin: gathered loose slips of information in a number of different filed folders dedicated to particular topics of interest. These slips included notes, speculations and draft fragments of his own; interesting snippets from, and comments on, stuff he had read; and extracts from personal correspondence; made brief source/literature notes which he filed either: a) in the back of the book concerned; or b) in a dedicated file (i.e. drawer). Note: As we shall see from his son Francis’s account of Darwin’s note-taking system, Darwin sometimes also filed particular source/literature notes in the appropriate topic-related folder(s).
Modern terminology of Darwin Method
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sacredkarailee.medium.com sacredkarailee.medium.com
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That’s it. That’s what Luhmann did with his Zettelkasten. The magic began when he built up a critical mass of interconnected notes. That’s what will ultimately happen provided you keep at it.
Somehow building up a critical mass will create "magic"?
No rhyme or reason here, just "magic"... 🤪
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The date and time (YYYYMMDD hhmm) form a unique identifier for the note. As I get it using this unique identifier is a way to make the notes "anonymous" so that "surprise" connections between them can be found that we wouldn't otherwise have noticed. In other words, it removes us from getting in our own way and forcing the notes to connect in a certain way by how we name them. A great introduction to the system can be found at zettelkasten.de. The page is written in English. The origional numbering system is discussed in the article. The modern computerized system uses the date and time as the unique identifier. I hope this helps.
reply to u/OldSkoolVFX at https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/11jiein/comment/jb6np3f/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I've studied (and used) Luhmann and other related systems more closely than most, so I'm aware of zettelkasten.de and the variety of numbering systems available including how Luhmann's likely grew out of governmental conscription numbers in 1770s Vienna. As a result your answer comes close to a generic answer, but not to the level of specificity I was hoping for. (Others who use a timestamp should feel free to chime in here as well.)
How specifically does the anonymity of the notes identified this way create surprise for you? Can you give me an example and how it worked for you? As an example in my own practice using unique titles in Obsidian, when I type
[[
and begin typing a word, I'll often get a list of other notes which are often closely related. This provides a variety of potential links and additional context to which I can write the current note in light of. I also get this same sort of serendipity in the autocomplete functionality of my tagging system which has been incredibly useful and generative to me in the past. This helps me to resurface past notes I hadn't thought of recently and can provide new avenues of growth and expansion.I've tried the datetime stamp in the past, but without aliasing them all with other titles, things tend to get lost in a massive list of generally useless numbers in an Obsidian folder—i.e. looking at the list gives me absolutely no information without other actions. Further the aliasing to remedy this just becomes extra administrative work. I've also never experienced the sort of surprise you mention when using datetime stamps, or at least not as the result of the timestamps themselves. As a separate concrete example in this video https://share.tube/w/4ad929jjNYMLc6eRppVQmc?start=49s using Denote, there is a clever naming method which simultaneously uses timestamps, Luhmann IDs, titles, and tags. However in this scheme the timestamps is one of the least useful (other than for simply searching by creation date/time, as in "I remember doing this on my birthday last year", or "it was sometime in Winter 2015"...) compared with the Luhmann identifiers, the title, or the tag for search and discovery within the search functionality. Consequently, I'm looking for concrete reasons why people would use datetime stamps and affordances they provide other than to simply have an identifier.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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A sentence "this is furthered by note xy." is almost as good of an indicator that the opportunity was passed on as "reminds me of" if there is not exploration. On the contrary, if there is "reminds me of" and a thorough exploration of the connection follows it is perfectly fine.
One can make links between ideas more explicit using words like x ["supports", "contradicts", "supports", "challenges", "extends", "contradicts", etc] y. However it can be even more useful and beneficial to not only state the connection in the loosest of terms, but to explore and develop what that connection is and how it works. The more explicit one can be, the better.
If it's a metaphor, analogy, or abstraction, how far can one push those relationships before they collapse? Can the abstraction be encompassed in a mathematical sense that one case completely consumes another?
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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a Structure Note can make use of a TOC form, a normal table, a mind map, a flow diagram, a straight list, or even a picture.
Structure notes can take a variety of forms including lists, diagrams, mind maps, tables, and tables of contents.
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chat.openai.com chat.openai.comChatGPT1
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Yes, you can definitely use a card index for note-taking. In fact, many people find card indexes to be a useful and convenient tool for organizing and storing notes. Here are some tips for using a card index for note-taking:Choose a system: Decide on a system for organizing your cards. You could organize them alphabetically, by topic, by date, or by any other method that works for you.Choose the size of cards: Choose the size of cards that works best for your needs. Common sizes include 3" x 5", 4" x 6", and 5" x 8".Use one card per idea: Write one idea or piece of information on each card. This will help keep your notes organized and easy to reference.Include keywords: Include keywords on each card to make it easier to find relevant information later.Use dividers: Use dividers to separate different topics or sections in your card index. This will help keep your notes organized and easy to navigate.Carry it with you: A card index is a portable tool, so you can take it with you wherever you go. This makes it easy to take notes on the go and to refer to your notes when you need them.Overall, a card index can be a useful and efficient tool for note-taking, especially if you prefer a physical, tangible way of organizing and storing information.
Q: Can I use a card index for note taking?
ChatGPT does a reasonable bit of advice on how one would use a card index for note taking.
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- Feb 2023
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.comYouTube2
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Stop Procrastinating With Note-Taking Apps Like Obsidian, Roam, Logseq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc by Sam Matla
sophisticated procrastination - tweaking one's system(s) or workflow with the anticipation it will help them in the long run when it is generally almost always make-work which helps them feel smart and/or productive. Having measurable results which can be used against specific goals will help weed this problem out.
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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMiCg48VN5JcFvSl4D20w6b16UgMtDCep
One or two interesting tidbits in this playlist. Many I've already trolled through.
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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I don’t think it is the best choice to realize Luhmann’s principles. Yet it is the best application adapting his techniques I know so far.
Sascha Fast appreciated Lüdecke's ZKN3 application as one of the best for adapting Luhmann's techniques to a digital space, but felt that it could have gone further in realizing Luhmann's principles.
Some of the tension in this debate is that between the affordances of analog (paper) versus digital information storage and tagging.
Paper lacks easy corpus text search while simultaneously requiring additional manual indexing to make up for it. Paper also doesn't have the discovery value of autocomplete. On the opposite end paper forces one to more regularly review physical associative trails through one's past work while digital allows one to skip over some of this review process.
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Folgezettel
Do folgezettel in combination with an index help to prevent over-indexing behaviors? Or the scaling problem of categorization in a personal knowledge management space?
Where do subject headings within a zettelkasten dovetail with the index? Where do they help relieve the idea of heavy indexing or tagging? How are the neighborhoods of ideas involved in keeping a sense of closeness while still allowing density of ideas and information?
Having digital search views into small portions of neighborhoods like gxabbo suggested can be a fantastic affordance. see: https://hypothes.is/a/W2vqGLYxEe2qredYNyNu1A
For example, consider an anthropology student who intends to spend a lifetime in the subject and its many sub-areas. If they begin smartly tagging things with anthropology as they start, eventually the value of the category, any tags, or ideas within their index will eventually grow without bound to the point that the meaning or value as a search affordance within their zettelkasten (digital or analog) will be utterly useless. Let's say they fix part of the issue by sub-categorizing pieces into cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, etc. This problem is fine while they're in undergraduate or graduate school for a bit, but eventually as they specialize, these areas too will become overwhelming in terms of search and the search results. This problem can continue ad-infinitum for areas and sub areas. So how can one solve it?
Is a living and concatenating index the solution? The index can have anthropology with sub-areas listed with pointers to the beginnings of threads of thought in these areas which will eventually create neighborhoods of these related ideas.
The solution is far easier when the ideas are done top-down after-the-fact like in the Dewey Decimal System when the broad areas are preknown and pre-delineated. But in a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten, things grow from the bottom up and thus present different difficulties from a scaling up perspective.
How do we classify first, second, and third order effects which emerge out of the complexity of a zettelkasten? - Sparse indexing can be a useful long term affordance in the second or third order space. - Combinatorial creativity and ideas of serendipity emerge out of at least the third order. - Using ZK for writing is a second order affordance - Storage is a first order affordance - Memory is a first order affordance (related to storage) - Productivity is a second+ order (because solely spending the time to save and store ideas is a drag at the first order and doesn't show value until retrieval at a later date). - Poor organization can be non-affordance or deterrent which results in a scrap heap - lack of a reason why can be a non-affordance or deterrence as well - cross reference this list and continue on with other pieces and affordances
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Part 2: Search & Inspect. Denote as a Zettelkasten, 2023. https://share.tube/w/4ad929jjNYMLc6eRppVQmc.
His file naming convention and search operation in this is really fantastic:
20230226155400==51a3b--note-title__tag1_tag2.org
This allows one to search the file by date/time, signature, title or tags, by using the =, - or _ along with text.
Beyond this however, there's a fair amount of context to build to use this system including using regex search.
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protesilaos.com protesilaos.com
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ᔥ u/gxabbo in r/Zettelkasten - Video Series: Denote as a Zettelkasten (accessed:: 2023-02-26 02:52:52)
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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level 2A_Dull_SignificanceOp · 2 hr. agoYes! When I run across a comment on a book I haven’t read yet but seems interesting I make a little card with the comment and book title2ReplyGive AwardShareReportSaveFollowlevel 2taurusnoises · 2 hr. agoObsidianSo, you keep the titles of books you want to read organized in folgezettel (you give them an alphanumeric ID?) among your ZK notes? That's really interesting!
I've done something like this when I think a particular reference(s) can answer a question related to a train of thought. But I keep cards of unread sources at the front of my sources section so that it's easier to pull it out frequently to prioritize and decide what I should be reading or working on next. These will then have links to the open questions I've noted, so that I can go back to those sections either as I'm reading/writing or to add those ideas into the appropriate folgezettel. These sorts of small amounts of work documented briefly can add up quickly over time. Source cards with indications of multiple open questions that might be answered is sometimes a good measure of desire to read, though other factors can also be at play.
That to-read pile of bibliographic source notes (a mini antilibrary) is akin to walking into a party and surveying a room. I may be aware of some of the people I haven't met yet and the conversations we might have, but if there are interesting questions I know I want to ask of specific ones or conversations I already know I want to have, it can be more productive to visit those first.
This sort of practice has been particularly helpful for times when I want to double check someone's sources or an original context, but don't have the time to do it immediately, don't want to break another extended train of thought, have to wait on materials, or may have to make a trip to consult physical materials that are singular or rare. For quick consultative reading, this can be a boon when I know I don't want or need to read an entire work, but skimming a chapter or a few pages for a close reading of a particular passage. I'll often keep a pile of these sorts of sources at hand so that I can make a short trip to a library, pick them up, find what I need and move on without having to recreate large portions of context to get the thing done because I've already laid most of the groundwork.
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curtismchale.ca curtismchale.ca
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When an idea feels like too much work to write down, you just told yourself it wasn’t valuable enough.
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curtismchale.ca curtismchale.ca
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Dendron is shutting down active development. (discord)
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I started capturing everything directly in Obsidian but it has two major drawbacks. The first is that I will inevitably end up taking a lot of fleeting notes that I don't want to be included in the literature note. By taking the fleeting notes and highlights in Zotero, and then exporting a copy to Obsidian, I have the piece of mind that much raw material (that I might possibly need one day) is in Zotero, but that a more polished and reduced version is in my literature notes. The clutter stays in Zotero, in other words, while Obsidian is the home of the more processed notes.
Keeping one's fleeting notes separate from their permanent notes can be useful for managing the idea of clutter.
Luhmann generally did this by keeping things in different boxes. Modern academics may use different digital applications (Zotero/Obsidian, Hypothes.is/Zettlr, etc.as examples) for each as long as there is some reasonable dovetail between the two for data transfer when necessary.
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If you want one final piece of (unsolicited) advice: if you bulk-import those Kindle highlights, please do not try to create literature Zettels out of everything. I did it and I DO NOT RECOMMEND. It was just too much work to rehash stuff that I had already (kind of) assimilated. Reserve that energy to write permanent notes (you probably know much more than you give yourself credit for) and just use the search function (or [^^]) to search for relevant quotes or notes. Only key and new papers/chapters you could (and should, I think) take literature notes on. Keep it fun!
Most veteran note takers will advise against importing old notes into a new digital space for the extra amount of administrative overhead and refactoring it can create.
Often old notes may be: - well assimilated into your memory already - poorly sourced or require lots of work and refactoring to use or reuse them - become a time suck trying to make them "perfect"
Better advice is potentially pull them into your system in a different spot so they're searchable and potentially linkable/usable as you need them. If this seems like excessive work, and it very well may be, then just pull in individual notes as you need or remember them.
With any luck the old notes are easily searchable/findable in whichever old system they happen to be in, so they're still accessible.
I'll note here the conflicting definitions of multiple storage in my tags to mean: - storing a single note under multiple subject headings or index terms - storing notes in various different (uncentralized locations), so having multiple different zettelkasten at home/office, storing some notes in social media locations, in various notebooks, etc. This means you have to search across multiple different interfaces to find the thing you're looking at.
I should create a new term to distinguish these two, but for now they're reasonably different within their own contexts that it's not a big problem unless one or the other scales.
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I find it very tiring haha. As I said in another comment, processing a single chapter can take me a full day or two. However, I keep reminding myself that I would rather spend a day processing a chapter well, and have literature notes to serve me a lifetime (potentially, at least), rather than reading a chapter in two hours and not remember a single thing the next day. When I REALLY need a reminder of this, I just look at my "Backlog" folder which contains old "notes" that are now pretty much useless: I didn't use a reference manager consistently during my first two years of PhD so there are a lot of citations which are unreliable; I didn't really summarise texts, I only read them and highlighted; I didn't use the cloud for a long time, so I lost a lot of notes; and I didn't have Obsidian, so a lot of my notes are just contained within the context of the place I read them, rather than being connected. Seeing three years worth of useless materials, and knowing that I read a couple hundred of articles/chapters but I have nothing to show for it, that makes me more patient when writing my literature notes now. However I also find it very exciting that I can future-proof some of my notes. I feel like I'm working for my future self.
A partial answer to note taking why.
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sometimes I’m afraid I’m more fighting the tools than doing research. Sometimes it seems to me there’s too much friction, and not the productive kind.
relation to Note taking problem and proposed solution?
This seems to be a common reality and/or fear.
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I finished processing the 22 page chapter. It took me about 10 hours total to read, take notes, polish notes, and connect them to 39 permanent notes (6 new notes and 33 existing notes). Bear in mind, this is an extremely important reference for me, so it's by far one of the most-linked literature notes in my vault.
Tags
- anecdotal evidence
- clutter
- productivity
- importing notes
- note taking why
- idea links
- tools for thought
- multiple storage
- note taking advice
- digital card index
- digital notes
- zettelkasten for academia
- note taking faq
- note reuse
- card index as memory
- fighting with tools
- future self
- examples
- before and after
- fleeting notes
- note taking
- permanent notes
- time
- note taking affordances
- friction
- zettelkasten
- information processing
Annotators
URL
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spectator.org spectator.org
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WHILE REAGAN was governor, I will never forget his taking time out of his schedule after a television taping to show me—a 15-year-old high school student—how he could instantly arrange his packs of anecdote-filled index cards into a speech tailor-made for almost any audience. I still use a variation of Reagan’s system to construct my own speeches.
John H. Fund wrote that while he was a a 15-year old high school student, Reagan taught him how he arranged his index card-based notes to tailor-make a speech for almost any audience. In 2011, Fund said he still used a variation of Reagan's system for his own speeches.
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“These cards are the tools of his trade. He can take any speech and insert some of these zingers and one-liners. Let’s say he’s speaking to a Kiwanis Club. He knew what to put in. If he was talking to a group of firemen, he had a joke about putting out a fire. If you’re really looking for the hand of a president, and how his mind is working, all of these note cards together, in a way, give you the magic of Ronald Reagan.”
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takingnotenow.blogspot.com takingnotenow.blogspot.com
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What makes note taking exciting?
- serendipity
- surprise
- creativity
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Should You Have One Zettelkasten or Many?<br /> by Christian Tietze
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Of course the metaphor of the bees and their honey is the biggest which we've all failed to mention! It's my favorite because of its age, its location within the tradition of rhetoric and sententiae/ars excerpendi, its prolific use through history, and the way it frames collecting and arranging for the use of creativity and writing.
In the his classic on rhetoric, Seneca gave an account of his ideas about note-taking in the 84th letter to Luculius ("On Gathering Ideas"). It begins from ut aiunt: "men say", that we should imitate the bees in our reading practice. For as they produce honey from the flowers they visit and then "assort in their cells all that they have brought in", so we should, "sift (separate) whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading" because things keep better in isolation from one another, an idea which dovetails with ars memoria, the 4th canon of rhetoric.
"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Vergil says: 'pack close the flowering honey And swell their cells with nectar sweet.' "
Generations later in ~430 CE, Macrobius in his Saturnalia repeated the same idea (he assuredly read Seneca, though he obviously didn't acknowledge him):
"You should not count it a fault if I shall set out the borrowings from a miscellaneous reading in the authors' own words... sometimes set out plainly in my own words and sometimes faithfully recorded in the actual words of the old writers... We ought in some sort to imitate bees; and just as they, in their wandering to and fro, sip the flowers, then arrange their spoil and distribute it among the honeycombs, and transform the various juices to a single flavor by some mixing with them a property of their own being, so I too shall put into writing all that I have acquired in the varied course of my reading... For not only does arrangement help the memory, but the actual process of arrangement, accompanied by a kind of mental fermentation which serves to season the whole, blends the diverse extracts to make a single flavor; with the result that, even if the sources are evident, what we get in the end is still something clearly different from those known sources."
Often in manuscripts writers in the middle ages to the Renaissance would draw bees or write 'apes' (Latin for bees) in the margins of their books almost as bookmarks for things they wished to remember or excerpt for their own notes.
Of course, neither of these classical writers mentions the added benefit that the bees were simultaneously helping to pollenate the flowers, which also enhances the ecosystem.
- Seneca (2006) Epistles 66-92. With an English translation by Richard G. Gummere. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 277-285.
- Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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https://boffosocko.comБлог Криса Алдрича со множеством статей об управлении знаниями. Алдрич невероятно дотошный исследователь. Если вы заинтересованы в серьезном изучении истории вопроса, вам сюда.
translation:
Chris Aldrich's blog with many articles on knowledge management. Aldrich is an incredibly meticulous researcher. If you are interested in a serious study of the history of the issue, you are here.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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On Ahrens' shipping container analogy to the zettelkasten
@ZettelDistraction said Perhaps the shipping hub is a better analogy for the Zettelkasten than the shipping container (Ahrens, 40).
We should be careful to separate the ideas of analogy and metaphor. Analogies are usually more direct and well-defined in scope.
While there's an apt and direct correlation between shipping containers and zettelkasten as boxes, Ahrens was making the analogy with respect to the shift that shipping containers made to the overall system:
shipping containers : shipping industry and globalism :: zettelkasten : thinking and writing/content creation
As with many analogies, stretching it the way one might stretch metaphors isn't usually fruitful or even possible.
In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to.
He's saying one needs to consider how one's note taking method fits into their work in a more integrative way. Without properly integrating it into one's workflow seamlessly the system will fail. This is also one of the most difficult problems many zettelkasten aspirants have. In addition to creating a zettelkasten, they're often also simultaneously trying to integrate new (digital) tools into their process at the same time and they get distracted by them rather than focusing on the move to increasing writing/creating and creativity overall (globalism).
To focus on Ahrens' analogy a bit, if Obsidian, for example, is your "ship", is it as custom built for your specific purpose the way a container ship would be for a cargo container? Might you be better off with something like The Archive, ZKN3, or simple index cards that help to limit you to only do the function you want rather than all the other possible functions (wiki, blog, to do list, calendar, journal, kanban, etc.)? Obsidian and many other applications can be a proverbial row boat, a yacht, a tugboat, a steamer, a cruise ship, and even a warship in addition to a container ship, so one has to be extra careful how they choose to use it.
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dl.acm.org dl.acm.org
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Döring, Tanja, and Steffi Beckhaus. “The Card Box at Hand: Exploring the Potentials of a Paper-Based Tangible Interface for Education and Research in Art History.” In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, 87–90. TEI ’07. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1145/1226969.1226986.
This looks fascinating with respect to note taking and subsequent arranging, outlining, and use of notes in human computer interaction space for creating usable user interfaces.
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Local file Local file
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As a graduate student, hemaintained a card index of his own. When Marcus’s friends wrote of his travels abroad,they declared that ‘When we think of that card index by now we shudder. What propor-tions it must have assumed’. 18
Example of a student who saw/learned/new a zettelkasten note taking method from a teacher.
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Certainly, computerizationmight seem to resolve some of the limitations of systems like Deutsch’s, allowing forfull-text search or multiple tagging of individual data points, but an exchange of cardsfor bits only changes the method of recording, leaving behind the reality that one muststill determine what to catalogue, how to relate it to the whole, and the overarchingsystem.
Despite the affordances of recording, searching, tagging made by computerized note taking systems, the problem still remains what to search for or collect and how to relate the smaller parts to the whole.
customer relationship management vs. personal knowledge management (or perhaps more important knowledge relationship management, the relationship between individual facts to the overall whole) suggested by autocomplete on "knowl..."
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Deutsch’s close friendJoseph Stolz, writing of the Chicago rabbi Bernard Felsenthal (1822–1908) who hadpenned a history of that city’s Jews and was instrumental in the 1892 formation of theAmerican Jewish Historical Society, noted that Felsenthal ‘was not the systematic orga-nizer who worked with a stenographer and card-index’ (Stolz, 1922: 259).
Great example of a historian implying the benefit of not only a card index, but of potentially how commonplace it was to not only have one, but to have stenographers or secretaries to help manage them.
Link this to the reference in Heyde about historians and others who were pushed to employ stenographers or copyists to keep their card indexes in order.
Given the cost of employing secretaries to manage our information, one of the affordances that computers might focus on as tools for thought is lowering the barrier for management and maintenance. If they can't make this easier/simpler, then what are they really doing beyond their shininess? Search is obviously important in this context.
What was the reference to employing one person full time to manage every 11 or 12 filing cabinets' worth of documents? Perhaps Duguid in the paper piece?
Tags
- Gotthard Deutsch's zettelkasten
- knowledge relationship management
- card index
- artificial intelligence
- stenographers
- relationships
- customer relationship management
- Jacob Rader Marcus
- office management
- historical method
- personal knowledge management
- examples
- card index for research
- secretaries
- note taking affordances
- Jacob Rader Marcus' zettelkasten
- note taking transmission
Annotators
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www.markbernstein.org www.markbernstein.org
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This volume is filled with finely-written, accessible and engaging pieces on such topics as Gibbon’s style, his library and note-taking practices, and his knowledge of the city of Rome.
The Cambridge Companion To Edward Gibbon by Karen O’Brien and Brian Young, eds.<br /> by Mark Bernstein
Oh, do tell!
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Some systems require a unique identifier, but the people who are using a datetime stamp or random number anywhere in their (Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten title (here's a good example) are leading you astray. Doubly so if it occurs at the beginning of the title. There are no affordances in this practice and it's more likely to cause problems at scale. Just say no! (Note this is not the same as using a Luhmann-esque identifier at the start of a title as a means of providing a sort order of one's notes held in an individual folder.)
Are there any reasons for someone to do this?! - perhaps for file name conflicts when digitally inserting notes into a system using third party clients with titles which may cause conflicts (though these could/should be removed later for easier reading); - counterexample: https://hypothes.is/a/Jux0pq7yEe2Uqj9mFXS3nQ - Another potential issue is in shared or collaborative note taking spaces where collision is more likely because others don't have the shared context. - perhaps for forcing sort orders on daily notes or recurring meetings MeetingA YYYY-MM-DD, etc., though these are probably in a separate area of one's box and not in their zettelkasten section.
The point of a zettelkasten is to provide one help in ordering and building their knowledge, not in ordering their notes by time created. This will rarely (sans database-related use cases perhaps) provide any insight and digital systems have other easier and better ways of doing this if you need it.
Worse, some systems may not do autocompletion on words in the middle of titles, so starting a card with a datetime can hamper this functionality. One should check this against their particular system.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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To cover my knowledge management process would distract you from what works for you. Your question needs more context to be actionable.TL;DR; Whichever knowledge management system gets you paid.I've got 13 notes with the term "knowledge management," 15 with "information gathering," and 7 with "strategic intelligence." Without finishing a MOC, here's off the top of my head:Have a purpose or reason for learning.Ask helpful questions that solve problems.Answer questions as stand-alone notes.Learn from primary sources. Even boring ones.Take notes for your intended audience.Serve a specific audience (get paid.)Write about what people care about.Become a subject matter expert in target areas.Deliver what you know as a service first.Build on your strengths. Knowledge is cheap.It's not a process. More like tips. If demand exists, I'll write a book on the topic in a few years. Might be a good podcast topic.“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” -- Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel JohnsonRemember, there is no shortage of knowledge. Managing information is like masturbation; it feels good but doesn't do much. Focus on making information drive goal achievement.
Some useful and solid advice here.
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I have worked in paper format, hundreds of reference books, and a massive marketing swipe file. A recovering r/DataHoarder who realized piles were causing stress.
Example of an inveterate note taker who indicates they've got a "massive marketing swipe file".
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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How long do you spend in a single note-taking session? .t3_112k929._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionBasically, just curious how much time people spend writing down notes in a typical session, as well as how many notecards you usually finish. If you can give me an idea of how long a single lit/permanent note takes you to write, even better
reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/112k929/how_long_do_you_spend_in_a_single_notetaking/
Quite often my sessions can be in small 5-10 minute blocks doing one or more individual tasks that compose reading, writing, or filing/linking things together. Usually I don't go over a couple of hours without at least a small break or two.
Like Luhmann “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” Incidentally by "easy" here, I think Luhmann also includes the ideas of fun, interesting, pleasurable, and (Csikszentmihalyi's) flow.
For my lowest level reading I'll only quickly log what I've read along with a few index terms and a short note or two, if at all. For deeper analytical reading (as defined by Adler & van Doren) those sessions are more intense and I aim to have a direct "conversation with the text". Notes made there can sometimes be 2 - 10 minutes in length. I can often average about 50 annotations in a given day of which maybe 2 or 3 will be longer, fileable zettels. Most of my notes start as digital public annotations which one can view at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich if they like. On the topic of notes per day, I have a collection for that, some of which is given as a synopsis with some caveats here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day%20comparison.
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www.deepdwn.com www.deepdwn.com
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Markdown editor and organizer for Windows, Mac and Linux
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Beginner question .t3_112wup1._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I see that a lot of people have the main categories as natural sciences. Social sciences etcCan I switch it toReligionActivitiesFoodOrganizationMad weird thoughtsCommunication
reply to u/Turbulent-Focus-1389 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/112wup1/beginner_question/
I'd recommend you do your best to stay away from rigid category-like classifications and see what develops. For specifics see: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/
If it's easier to conceptualize, think of it all like a map which may have place names, but also has numerical coordinates. Sometimes a specific name like Richard Macksey's house is useful, but other times thinking about a specific coordinate and the general neighborhoods around them will be far more useful in your community development plan. A religion-only neighborhood without religious activities, religious food, religious organization or communication will be a a sad one indeed. If you segregate your communities, they're likely not to be very happy places for co-mingling of ideas and the potential resultant creativity you'll get out of them.
Bob Doto also suggests a similar philosophy in some of his work, particularly with respect to folgezettel: https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten/
I'll note that this is an incredibly hard thing to do at the start, but it's one which you may very well wish you had done from the beginning.
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Local file Local file
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Francesco Erspamer
Interestingly Erspamer doesn't mention any prior history or traditions of this sort of practice, just that it works for creating theses within the humanities very well. How does he miss this as motivation?
Presumably for him it's a "cultural practice" and Eco delineates it well. Erspamer learned from Eco and it's just what he does... The only questioning done is how 90s technology fit into the picture and that was only surface level questioning...
There's definitely something off about this as a recommendation for the overall system.
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He understood that the writing of a thesis forcedmany students outside of their cultural comfort zone, andthat if the shock was too sudden or strong, they would giveup.
The writing of a thesis is a shock to many specifically because information overload has not only gotten worse, but because the underlying historical method of doing so has either been removed from the educational equation or so heavily watered down that students don't think to use it.
When I think and write about "note taking" I'm doing it in a subtly different way and method than how it seems to be used in common parlance. Most seem to use it solely for information extraction and as a memory crutch which they may or may not revisit to memorize or use and then throw away. I do it for some of these reasons, but my practice goes far beyond this for generating new ideas, mixing up ideas creatively, and for writing. Note reuse seems to be the thing missing from the equation. It also coincidentally was the reason I quit taking notes in college.
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Things were changing quickly.Eco’s methods of organizing and filing information werestill effective, but word processors and the Internet werebeginning to offer exciting alternatives to long-establishedresearch and writing techniques.
Esparmer is correct that research and writing did change with the advent of word processors and the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s (p xi), but these were primarily changes to the front and the back of the process. Esparmer and far too many others seem to miss the difference in which affordances were shifting here. The note taking and organization portions still remained the same, so Eco's advice is still tremendously important. Even if one were to do long form notes in notebook format or in digital documents, they would profitably advised to still properly cross-index their notes or have them in a form that allows them to rearrange them most simply with respect to the structuring and creative processes.
Losing the ability to move ideas around easily, restructure them, link them together and outline them was a tremendous blow in going from the old methods to the new digital ones.
Did we accidentally become enamored of the new technologies and forget that their affordances didn't completely replace those of the old methods?
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Und doch fand er darin nie das, was er eigentlich suchte, sondern etwas Neues, Überraschendes.
google translate:
And yet he never found what he was actually looking for, but something new and surprising.
While you'll only find in your zettelkasten exactly what you placed there, you may be surprised to find more than you expected.
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wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com
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The authors agreed that the ability to conjure ideas "out of thin air" was one of the most compelling parts of co-writing with an AI model.
Again note the reference to magic with respect to the artificial intelligence: "the ability to conjure ideas 'out of thin air'".
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We like to describe Wordcraft as a "magic text editor". It's a familiar web-based word processor, but under the hood it has a number of LaMDA-powered writing features that reveal themselves depending on the user's activity.
The engineers behind Wordcraft refer to it "as a 'magic text editor'". This is a cop-out for many versus a more concrete description of what is actually happening under the hood of the machine.
It's also similar, thought subtly different to the idea of the "magic of note taking" by which writers are taking about ideas of emergent creativity and combinatorial creativity which occur in that space.
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zettels.info zettels.info
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https://zettels.info/en/int/default.asp
A digital note taking product
ᔥ[[Frank Berzbach]] in Künstliche Intelligenz aus Holz - sciencegarden - Magazin für junge Forschung at 2002-06-30<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-10 06:59:08)<br /> where he referred to it as "A free online Zettelkasten by Joachim Richter"
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www.verzetteln.de www.verzetteln.desynapsen1
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http://www.verzetteln.de/synapsen/<br /> Markus Krajewski's digital zettelkasten product.
ᔥ[[Frank Berzbach]] in Künstliche Intelligenz aus Holz - sciencegarden - Magazin für junge Forschung at 2001-06-30 (accessed:: 2023-02-10 06:53:55)
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yellowchicken.wordpress.com yellowchicken.wordpress.com
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https://yellowchicken.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/personal-knowledge-base-features/
Interesting blogpost from 2018-07-21 as the rise in PKM and Zettelkasten was just about to take off. Provides a list of some of what was available in and around the space at the time.
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www.pearltrees.com www.pearltrees.com
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bookmark tool in the vein of pinboard, pinterest, etc.
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Umberto Eco und das Verzetteln gegen das Verzetteln - Edyssee<br /> by Esther Debus
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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“The Zettelkastenis much more effortand time consumingthan writing books.”Niklas Luhmann, Shortcuts, p.26
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“multiple storage”
Within the history of personal knowledge management, one was often faced with where to store their notes so that it would be easy to find and use them again. Often this was done using slip methods by means of "multiple storage" by making multiple copies and filing them under various headings. This copying process was onerous and breaks the modern database principle "don't repeat yourself" (DRY).
Alternate means of doing this include storing it in one place and then linking that location to multiple subject headings in an index, though this may cause issues of remembering which subject heading when there are many appropriate potential synonyms.
Modern digital methods allow one to store a note in one location and refer to it in multiple ways electronically as well as with aliases.
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www.edwinwenink.xyz www.edwinwenink.xyz
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https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/posts/59-writing_not_collecting/
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recording something does not prevent you from losing it. You lose it when you don’t actively use it.
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a very simple principle for note-taking: notes are things where I explain something to myself.
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This points to perhaps the most dangerous pitfall of note-taking. It’s very tempting to convince yourself you are learning just because you are writing down - in the sense of passively recording - what someone else says or writes.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Only then do I start writing. Compared with the labour of making, sorting and arranging notes, this is a relatively speedy business. But it is followed by a much more time-consuming task, that of travelling round the libraries to check the references in my footnotes, only too many of which, thanks to poor handwriting, carelessness and an innate tendency to ‘improve’ what I have read, turn out to be either slightly wrong or taken out of context.That one hit a little close to home. lol.
We should also acknowledge that when revisiting some of our references again later, we're doing so with a dramatically increased knowledge and context of a particular problem which we may not have had when we first read a piece or took the notes.
Not many here are writing or talking about these small sorts of insights into learning and writing or generating new work. Perhaps we should do more to acknowledge this hermeneutic cycle in our work?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/comment/j7uexbk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Rookie question: Part of my knowledge database is based on the Zettelkasten method, i.e. I have concept-oriented, atomic notes that are linked to each other. I don't, however, however use IDs and neither the Folgezettel method.
Example of someone (u/HerrRey) who defines zettelkasten as "concept oriented, atomic notes that are linked to each other", but who doesn't use or exclude "IDs or the folgezettel method". Interestingly they feel like they're not getting the "big picture" of their work.
Is there an affordance in these missing pieces that prevents them from seeing the big picture because of what they're missing? Is it just neurodiversity? Are they not creating outputs which connect the small to the big, and thus missing it that way?
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strengejacke.wordpress.com strengejacke.wordpress.com
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Should you copy a method just because Luhmann used it? No, indeed it doesn’t make sense to copy a method just because it appears sexy. One should find the best fitting method for himself.
Some in the current zettelkasten space come close to this (Bob Doto comes to mind) while others seem to be more dogmatic. I think people generally ultimately do this in practice, but there is still a lingering sense of orthodoxy.
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www.thesing-online.de www.thesing-online.de
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Linearity of ideas and arguments is a means of building toward something.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Is it worth it to create a Zettelkasten? .t3_10w5rvr._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10w5rvr/is_it_worth_it_to_create_a_zettelkasten/
What can zettelkasten/card indexes do or not do?<br /> Can they be used for learning?<br /> What are they for?
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cathieleblanc.com cathieleblanc.com
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https://cathieleblanc.com/2023/02/05/choosing-learning-materials/
Cathie notices that students skip materials about the theoretical "why" of assignments to get to the simpler assignments.
This seems to be an issue with some in the personal knowledge management space who want to jump into the technology, the terminology, and moving things about without always understanding what they're doing or why. Many end up giving up as a result. Few books provide reasoning behind the terminologies or building blocks they describe to provide the theoretical why. As a result some may figure it out from long, fraught practice, but it's likely that more are not seeing the results they expect and thus giving up.
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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Using an alphanumeric identification system for your notes is a workout. By having to situate new notes among previously imported ones, folgezettel forces at least one connection between ideas. It's mental calisthenics,8 acting as a check against capture bloat—that is, importing "all the things."
Those who practice analog note taking have a high level of friction which prevents them from over-collecting (or "capture bloat", importing "all the things", or "collector's fallacy") ideas, which may not rise to a certain level of value. Beyond this, the requirement to find at least one other note to link each idea to provides a smaller hurdle against these hoarding practices.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_reading
Incremental reading is spaced parallel reading of multiple sources with note taking and spaced repetition.
It's not far from how I read and take notes myself, though I place less emphasis on the spaced repetition piece as I tend to run across things naturally within my note collection anyway.
One of the major potential benefits of incremental reading (not mentioned in the Wikipedia article; is it in Wozniak's work?) is the increase of combinatorial creativity created by mixing a variety of topics simultaneously.
There is also likely a useful diffuse thinking effect happening between reading sessions.
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forum.obsidian.md forum.obsidian.md
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In paper books I use Cal Newport’s “Morse Code method” placing a dot in the margin by a main point and a dash in the margin by a supporting point.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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According to Shulman, "Cargo-cult is a belief that mock airplanes made of manure and straw-bale may summon the real airplanes who bring canned beef. Reverse cargo-cult is used by the political elites in countries lagging behind who proclaim that, in the developed world, airplanes are also made of manure and straw-bale, and there is also a shortage of canned beef."[29]
"Екатерина Шульман: Практический Нострадамус, или 12 умственных привычек, которые мешают нам предвидеть будущее". vedomosti/ (in Russian). Retrieved 24 June 2021.
A Note on the Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten
Modern cargo cults can be seen in many technology and productivity spaces where people are pulled in by exaggerated (or sometimes even real claims) of productivity or the general "magic" of a technology or method.
An example is Niklas Luhmann's use of his zettelkasten which has created a cargo cult of zettelkasten aspirants and users who read one or more of the short one page blog posts about his unreasonable productivity and try to mimic it without understanding the system, how it works, or how to make it work for them. They often spend several months collecting notes, and following the motions, but don't realize the promised gains and may eventually give up, sometimes in shame (or as so-called "rubbish men") while watching others still touting its use.
To prevent one's indoctrination into the zettelkasten cult, I'll make a few recommendations:
Distance yourself from the one or two page blog posts or the breathless YouTube delineations. Ask yourself very pointedly: what you hope to get out of such a process? What's your goal? Does that goal align with others' prior uses and their outcomes?
Be careful of the productivity gurus who are selling expensive courses and whose focus may not necessarily be on your particular goals. Some are selling very pointed courses, which is good, while others are selling products which may be so broad that they'll be sure to have some success stories, but their hodge-podge mixture of methods won't suit your particular purpose, or worse, you'll have to experiment with pieces of their courses to discover what may suit your modes of working and hope they'll suffice in the long run. Some are selling other productivity solutions for task management like getting things done (GTD) or bullet journals, which can be a whole other cargo cults in and of themselves. Don't conflate these![^1] The only thing worse than being in a cargo cult is being in multiple at the same time.
If you go the digital route, be extremely wary of shiny object syndrome. Everyone has a favorite tool and will advocate that it's the one you should be using. (Often their method of use will dictate how much they love it potentially over and above the affordances of the tool itself.) All of these tools can be endlessly configured, tweaked, or extended with plugins or third party services. Everyone wants to show you their workflow and set up, lots of which is based on large amounts of work and experimentation. Ignore 99.999% of this. Most tools are converging to a similar feature set, so pick a reasonable one that seems like it'll be around in 5 years (and which has export, just in case). Try out the very basic features for several months before you change anything. Don't add endless plugins and widgets. You're ultimately using a digital tool to recreate the functionality of index cards, a pencil, and a box. How complicated should this really be? Do you need to spend hundreds of hours tweaking your system to save yourself a few minutes a year? Be aware that far too many people touting the system and marketers talking about the tools are missing several thousands of years of uses of some of these basic literacy-based technologies. Don't join their island cult, but instead figure out how the visiting culture has been doing this for ages.[^2] Recall Will Hunting's admonition against cargo cults in education: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”[^3]
Most people ultimately realize that the output of their own thinking is only as good as the inputs they're consuming. Leverage this from the moment you begin and ignore the short bite-sized advice for longer form or older advice from those with experience. You're much more likely to get more long term value out of reading Umberto Eco or Mortimer J. Adler & Charles van Doren[^4] than you are an equivalent amount of time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, or trolling social media like Reddit and Twitter.
Realize that reaching your goal is going to take honest-to-goodness actual work, though there is potential for fun. No matter how shiny or optimized your system, you've still got to do the daily work of reading, watching, listening and using it to create anything. Focus on this daily work and don't get sidetracked by the minutiae of trying to shave off just a few more seconds.[^5] In short, don't get caught up in the "productivity porn" of it all. Even the high priest at whose altar they worship once wrote on a slip he filed:
"A ghost in the note card index? Spectators visit [my office to see my notes] and they get to see everything and nothing all at once. Ultimately, like having watched a porn movie, their disappointment is correspondingly high." —Niklas Luhmann. <small>“Geist im Kasten?” ZKII 9/8,3. Niklas Luhmann-Archiv. Accessed December 10, 2021. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V. (Personal translation from German with context added.)</small>
[^1] Aldrich, Chris. “Zettelkasten Overreach.” BoffoSocko (blog), February 5, 2022. https://boffosocko.com/2022/02/05/zettelkasten-overreach/.
[^2]: Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.
[^3]: Good Will Hunting. Miramax, Lawrence Bender Productions, 1998.
[^4]: Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.
[^5]: Munroe, Randall. “Is It Worth the Time?” Web comic. xkcd, April 29, 2013. https://xkcd.com/1205/.
Recommended resources
Choose only one of the following and remember you may not need to read the entire work:
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.
Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
Bernstein, Mark. Tinderbox: The Tinderbox Way. 3rd ed. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, Inc., 2017. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/TinderboxWay/index.html.
Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
Gessner, Konrad. Pandectarum Sive Partitionum Universalium. 1st Edition. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1548.
Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife.
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
Weinberg, Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Are there symbols for 'supported by' or 'contradicted by' etc. to show not quite formal logical relations in a short hand?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/are_there_symbols_for_supported_by_or/
In addition to the other excellent suggestions, I don't think you'll find anything specific that that was used historically for these, but there are certainly lots of old annotation symbols you might be able to co-opt for your personal use.
Evina Steinova has a great free cheat sheet list of annotation symbols: The Most Common Annotation Symbols in Early Medieval Western Manuscripts (a cheat sheet).
More of this rabbit hole:
- Steinová, Evina. Notam Superponere Studui: The Use of Annotation Symbols in the Early Middle Ages. Brepols, 2019.
- Cappelli, Adriano. The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography. University of Kansas Libr., 1984.
- Coulson, Frank, and Robert Babcock. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography. Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Lindsay, W. M. Notae Latinae. Cambridge University Press, 2013. https://archive.org/download/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich.pdf.
- Bains, Doris. A Supplement to Notae Latinae (Abbreviations in Latin Mss. of 850 to 1050 A.D.). Cambridge [England] University Press, 1936. http://archive.org/details/supplementtonota0000bain.
(Nota bene: most of my brief research here only extends to Western traditions, primarily in Latin and Greek. Obviously other languages and eras will have potential ideas as well.)
Tironian shorthand may have something you could repurpose as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes
Some may find the auxiliary signs of the Universal Decimal Classification useful for some of these sorts of notations for conjoining ideas.
Given the past history of these sorts of symbols and their uses, perhaps it might be useful for us all to aggregate a list of common ones we all use as a means of re-standardizing some of them in modern contexts? Which ones does everyone use?
Here are some I commonly use:
Often for quotations, citations, and provenance of ideas, I'll use Maria Popova and Tina Roth Eisenberg's Curator's Code:
- ᔥ for "via" to denote a direct quotation/source— something found elsewhere and written with little or no modification or elaboration (reformulation notes)
- ↬ for "hat tip" to stand for indirect discovery — something for which you got the idea at a source, but modified or elaborated on significantly (inspiration by a source, but which needn't be cited)
Occasionally I'll use a few nanoformats, from the microblogging space, particularly
- L: to indicate location
For mathematical proofs, in addition to their usual meanings, I'll use two symbols to separate biconditionals (necessary/sufficient conditions)
- (⇒) as a heading for the "if" portion of the proof
- (⇐) for the "only if" portion
Some historians may write 19c to indicate 19th Century, often I'll abbreviate using Roman numerals instead, so "XIX".
Occasionally, I'll also throw drolleries or other symbols into my margins to indicate idiosyncratic things that may only mean something specifically to me. This follows in the medieval traditions of the ars memoria, some of which are suggested in Cornwell, Hilarie, and James Cornwell. Saints, Signs, and Symbols: The Symbolic Language of Christian Art 3rd Edition. Church Publishing, Inc., 2009. The modern day equivalent of this might be the use of emoji with slang meanings or 1337 (leet) speak.
Tags
- leet speak
- via
- paleography
- Curator's Code
- shorthand
- manuscript studies
- Evina Steinova
- symbology
- ars memoria
- reply
- emoji
- hat tip
- annotation symbols
- Medieval texts
- Maria Popova
- Tina Roth Eisenberg
- note taking affordances
- Tironian shorthand
- Universal Decimal Classification
- nanoformats
Annotators
URL
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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re: https://hypothes.is/a/HqT-lG1fEeqHX7fnzQAfGg
A zettelkasten provides a catalytic surface to which ideas in the "solution of life" can more easily adhere to speed their reaction with ideas you've already seen and collected.
Once combined via linking, further thinking and writing, they can be released as novel ideas for everyone to use.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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If something is not worth a note card, then I don't read it
—u/IamOkei https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10qpphw/given_that_you_do_analog_notemaking_do_you/
link to John Water's quote: https://hypothes.is/a/E6wDpPfVEey88SclTBoJPQ
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- Jan 2023
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Avoid both very long andvery short paragraphs: the length should usually vary from150 to 860 words. Attend carefully to the unity and correctstructure of the paragraph.
His description of paragraphs from 150 to 350 words is interesting with respect to the amount of material that will fit on a 3x5" inch card during the note taking process.
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I've decided I don't care (too much) where new notes go .t3_10mjwq9._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/jackbaty at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10mjwq9/ive_decided_i_dont_care_too_much_where_new_notes/
u/jackbaty, If it doesn't make sense for you (yet, or for your specific needs), you can always follow in the footsteps of the hundreds of thousands who used a topical subject heading method of the commonplace book before Luhmann's example shifted the space over the last decade. If it worked for Francis Bacon, you'll probably be alright too... (See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/)
I find that sometimes, it is useful to bank up a few dozen cards before filing/linking them together. Other times I'll file them by category in a commonplace book like system to ruminate a bit only later to move them to a separate Luhmann-esque zettelkasten area where they're more tightly linked with the ideas around them. After you've been doing it a while, it will be easier to more tightly integrate the three-way conversation or argument you're having between yourself, your card index, and the sources you're thinking about (or reading, watching, listening to). You mention that "my brain needs at least some level of structure", and I totally get it, as most of us (myself included) are programmed to work that way. I've written some thoughts on this recently which may help provide some motivation to get you around it: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/
It helps to have a pointed reason for why you're doing all this in the first place and that reason will dramatically help to shape your practice and its ultimate structure.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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yeaaaaaaah I'm gonna need a link to purchase these if you got one
reply to u/pipepistolnoscope at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10lqfsn/comment/j62dp7o/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
These are slightly easier to find in a variety of styles, colors, and materials if you're using European A5 or A6 slip sizes. Search for 6 ring binders which usually come in A5 or A6 sizes for a variety of planners, calendars, and general notes with accessories. Franklin Covey has a variety of binders for their 4.25" x 6.75" note pages and planners which will likely work with index cards, but I haven't tried that.
If you use US standard index cards 4 x 6" or 3 x 5", you'll want an appropriate 6 ring hole punch to pre-punch your cards as appropriate, but keep in mind the two standard sizes can be slightly off with respect to the binder you find but they're probably close enough it shouldn't be a big issue as most of the binders are slightly larger in both directions to protect the paper inside.
I recently posted about note taking on the go, so you might find some interesting ideas, methods, modifications or even DIY options there or in the comments: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/01/index-card-accessories-for-note-taking-on-the-go/
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11534762/
The Good Fight S4 E5 "The Gang Goes to War"
This episode features Diane chatting with a co-star about her note taking experience. The woman indicates that she took notes incessantly and voraciously, but that she never referred back to them. The experience just caused her extreme stress so she gave it up completely as she felt it never gave her any benefit. She resorted instead to a more zen practice of drawing circles in her notebooks. She showed Diane a pile of notebooks filled with circles in various designs and colors. Later in the episode while in court the woman asked Diane about it and Diane showed her some of her new circle "note" pages.
[Watched the episode passively sometime in the past two weeks.]
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feeei.substack.com feeei.substack.com
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The Compass of Zettelkasten Thinking.
Notice the naming/productization of this idea: The Compass of Zettelkasten Thinking which Fei-Ling Tseng labels a "method" in the following line.
The comments on the piece seem to underline this.
The general idea is also far from new, so people are obviously ignoring the history of the space as they productize it.
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Once you somehow got your idea, there’s the task of placing and connecting your idea to your collection of existing ideas. What kind of connection am I looking for? What relationships are worthy of calling a connection? Do any connections work, or do some work better than others? Should I categorize the connections?
Most only get so far as, what could/should I connect this to and don't get any farther.
Some good questions for mulling over here though.
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The Compass of Zettelkasten Thinking.
The Brain in some of its views (see for eg: Jerry Michalski's default brain view) instantiates this sort of directional semantics for ideas.
Note too, that The Brain makes it much easier to help create connections between multiple ideas as a basic functionality.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds90JeVyKiE
Review of variety of Boox e-readers.
- Boox Note 3 - NO (older model)
- Best 7.8" is probably Note Air for $350
- 10" Note Air 2 >> Note Air
- 10" Note Air 2+ is $500 and has a bigger battery and batteries over it's smaller v2
- 13.3" Max Lumi >> Max Lumi2 especially because of price and heavy reflectivity issues with the Lumi 2
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https://wildrye.com/roundup-of-67-tools-for-thought-to-build-your-second-brain/
List of tools for thought apps
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www.catholic.org www.catholic.org
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https://www.catholic.org/saints/patron.php
Potential patron saints of note takers, writers, knowledge workers, tools for thought, etc.
- Apothecaries - Cosmas and Damian
- archives - Laurent (Lawrence)
- archivists, librarians, libraries - Catherine of Alexandria, Jerome, Laurent (Lawrence)
- cabinetmakers - Anne, Joseph, Vincent de Paul
- contemplatives, contemplative life - John of the Cross, Mary Magdalene
- Craftworkers - Luke
- Editors John Bosco, Francis de Sales
- enlightenment - Holy Spirit, Our Lady of Good Counsel
- file makers - Theodosius the Cenobriarch
- Information Workers - Archangel Gabriel
- inquisitors - Peter of Verona
- Joiners - Joseph, Thomas, Apostle
- knowledge - Holy Spirit
- Learning - Ambrose, Catherine of Alexandria
- liberal arts - Catherine of Bologna
- linguists - Gotteschalk
- net makers - Peter the Apostle
- Notaries - Luke, Mark, Ivo of Kermartin
- pencil makers - Thomas Aquinas
- Scholars - Bridgid of Ireland, Thomas Aquinas
- scribes - Catherine of Alexandria
- Shorthand writers - Cassian of Imola
- Students - Catherine of Alexandria, Thomas Aquinas, Gabriel Possenti
- Students (examinees) - Joseph of Cupertino
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richardcarter.com richardcarter.com
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http://richardcarter.com/sidelines/converting-my-notes-into-a-chapter/
A great example of a breakthrough moment in this example.
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It’s far more complicated than that, obviously. Different parts of this process are going on all the time. While working on one chapter, I’m also capturing and working on unrelated—for the time being at least—notes on other topics that interest me, including stuff that might well end up in future books.
Because reading, annotating/note taking, and occasional outlining and writing can be broken down into small, concrete building blocks, each part of the process can be done separately and discretely with relatively easy ability to shift from one part of the process to another.
Importantly, one can be working on multiple different high level projects (content production: writing, audio, video, etc.) simultaneously in a way which doesn't break the flow of one's immediate reading. While a particular note within a piece may not come to fruition within a current imagined project, it may spark an idea for a future as yet unimagined project.
Aside: It would seem that Ryan Holiday's descriptions of his process are discrete with respect to each individual project. He's never mentioned using or reusing notes from past projects for current or future projects. He's even gone to the level that he creates custom note cards for his current project which have a title pre-printed on them.
Does this pre-titling help to provide him with more singular focus for his specific workflow? Some who may be prone to being side-tracked or with specific ADHD issues may need or be helped by these visual and workflow cues to stay on task, and as a result be helped by them. For others it may hinder their workflows and creativity.
This process may be different for beginning students or single project writers versus career writers (academics, journalists, fiction and non-fiction writers).
As a concrete example of the above, I personally made a note here about Darwin and Lamarck for a separate interest in evolution which falls outside of my immediate area of interest with respect to note taking and writing output.
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The above is an attempt to describe how I went about writing one chapter of my book. I use the same basic approach for all my chapters, namely: make lots of linked notes about stuff I happen to find interesting;continue to develop those notes, splitting them into smaller notes when they become too wide-ranging;write Journal entries and draw mind-maps to explore what I’ve discovered;keep playing with my notes;await a lightbulb moment, when two or more notes suddenly make an unexpected new connection in my brain, and I think, “Oh, that’s interesting!”create a detailed bullet-point outline of my chapter, complete with links to supporting notes and references;write the chapter;compile the chapter references with the help of the chapter outline links;repeat until the first draft of the book is finished;then comes the fun part.
Summary of Richard Carter's writing process from notes to product.
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All that remained was the small matter of actually writing the chapter. I don’t do this in Obsidian: I think it would be asking for trouble to mix notes and their end-products in the same place.
I've not seen this explicitly laid out as advice before though in most contexts people's note taking spaces have historically been divorced from their writing spaces for publication because slips and notes are usually kept physically separate from the working spaces or finished parts, but Richard Carter specifically separates the digital spaces in which he takes his notes and then uses them for creating end products. While he could both take notes in Obsidian, his tool of choice for notes, as well as write his finished pieces there, he actively changes contexts to use a different digital app to compose his notes into final pieces.
What affordances does this context shift provide? <br /> - blank slate may encourage reworking and expansion of original notes - is there a blank slate effect and what would it entail? - potentially moves the piece into a longer format space or tool which provides additional writing, formatting or other affordances (which? there don't seem to be any in this case aside from a potential "distraction free mode" which may tend to force one to focus only on the piece at hand rather than the thousands of other pieces (notes) hiding within the app)
What affordances does this remove?<br /> - He's forced to repeat himself (cut & paste / DRY violation)
Is it easier or harder (from a time/effort perspective) to provide citations with such a workflow? Carter does indicate that for him:
Having links to original sources in my outline makes the compilation of references for the chapter far easier than it used to be.
Tags
- active reading
- zettelkasten output
- revision
- writing process
- project management
- context shifting
- aha moments
- simultaneous projects
- citations
- don't repeat yourself
- cut and paste
- writing output affordances
- single focus
- note taking
- Ryan Holiday
- annotations
- note taking practice
- note taking affordances
- open questions
- text editing
- writing output
- building blocks
Annotators
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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It is my cup of tea. Now I'm looking for his practical advice
He's got a collection of ideas around the area with some useful history: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/
His practical advice is usually to quit reading about the theory and do the thing. Choose the simplest path and stick with it a while. See what happens. What's useful? What's not? Practice, practice, practice.
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I do not care to include the epistemological status (claim, idea, quote etc) anymore as I was not actively searching for it and it was nebulous in practice, as you've found out.
Sometimes collecting some sorts of data in one's notes (even, and particularly in digital notes) is not a useful practice as one eventually realizes that they remain unsearched and unused.
One thing which may not come under this heading is the difference in what others say versus what you write yourself, especially as it relates to plagiarism.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Anybody using this approach to manage contacts? How?
reply to IvanFerrero at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1740/anybody-using-this-approach-to-manage-contacts-how#latest
Many of the digital note taking tools that run off of text allow you to add metadata to your basic text files (as YAML headers, inline with a
key:: value
pair, or via #tags). Many of them have search functionality or use other programmatic means like query blocks, DataView, DataViewJS, etc. for doing queries on your files to get back lists, tables, charts, etc. of the data you're looking for.The DataView repository has some good examples of how this works with something like Obsidian. Fortunately if you're using simple text files you can usually put them into one or more platforms to get the data and affordances you want out of them individually.
As an example, I have a script block in my daily note in Obsidian for birthdays in my notes that fall on today's date:
```dataview LIST birthday FROM "Lists/People" WHERE birthday.day = date(2023-01-18).day ```
If I put the text
birthday:: 1927-12-08
into a note about Niklas Luhmann, his name and birthday would appear in my daily note on his birthday. One can use similar functionality to create tables of books they read with titles, authors, ratings, dates read, etc. or a variety of other data input which parses through your plaintext files. Services like Obsidian, Logseq, et al. are getting better about allowing these types of programmatic searches for users without backgrounds in programming and various communities usually provide help for pre-made little snippets like the one above that one can cut and paste into their notes to get the outputs that they need. Another Obsidian based example that uses text files for tracking academic journal articles can be found at https://nataliekraneiss.com/your-academic-reading-list-in-obsidian/; I'm sure there are similar versions for other text-based platforms.In pre-digital times, for a manual version of a rolodex like this in paper, one could use different color cards as pseudo-tags (doctors are on yellow cards, family members on blue cards, friends on green cards, etc.) or adding edge notches or even tabs to represent different types of metadata. See for example the edge colored cards in Hawkexpress' Pile of Index Cards: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122
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rhodesmill.org rhodesmill.org
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Hints for Preparing Documents Most documents go through several versions (always more than you expected) before they are finally finished. Accordingly, you should do whatever possible to make the job of changing them easy. First, when you do the purely mechanical operations of typing, type so subsequent editing will be easy. Start each sentence on a new line. Make lines short, and break lines at natural places, such as after commas and semicolons, rather than randomly. Since most people change documents by rewriting phrases and adding, deleting and rearranging sentences, these precautions simplify any editing you have to do later. — Brian W. Kernighan, 1974
—Brian W. Kernighan, 1974 “UNIX for Beginners” [PDF] as Bell Labs Technical Memorandum 74-1273-18 on 29 October 1974.
For easier editing and reuse of sentences, or even portions of lines of text, one can (and should) write sentences or sentence fragments on their own lines in digital contexts.
This way future edits or the ability to more easily cut and paste will far easier in addition to keeping your version control files simpler and easier to read and visually track your changes. (That is in many version control systems, instead of a change appearing to affect an entire paragraph, it will only show on the single line that was changed thereby making the change easier to see.)
This particular affordance may be a particularly useful one for note takers who expect to regularly reuse their notes in other contexts. Many forms of software (including Tex, LaTeX, and even markdown) will autowrap newlines so that a sentence broken up into clauses on multiple lines will properly wrap back into a proper looking single line when printed. Take care that in many Markdown versions adding two spaces at the end of a line will automatically create a newline in your text.
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Local file Local file
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It is not a bad plan for two or more students to meet at stated intervals and compare their notes . The lecture can be discussed so that thepoints omitted or not fully understood can be placed correctly in the notebook against the final test . The chance for error is greatly decreased inthis way and, besides , the discussion greatly aids the memory so that thework of studying from the notes is lessened . In at least one instance wherethe speaker delivered his lecture very rapidly several students arrangedto take his points in relays ; that is, since there was scarcely time for oneman to get all, one man could take the first point, another the second, andso on. These men occupied seats close together so that an exchange ofsignals was possible. Afterwards they discussed each lecture and puttheir notes together.
Apparently sharing/comparing notes was reasonable advice in 1910 including the idea of in-class signals for splitting up note taking amongst multiple people.
Compare this to shared notes (Google Docs, Etherpad, etc.) in modern context with multiple people doing simultaneous notes.
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It may be an advantage to learn shorthand, as many do , and takethe notes verbatim, but there really is no necessity for taking entire lectures ; in fact lectures may be a disadvantage because they make morework to be gone over.
Notice the advice for shorthand here in 1910. When was it a dead technology for students? Certainly by the 1980s when it was less frequently taught in schools.
Even with the ability to do shorthand and get things verbatim, he suggests against it for the sheer volume of material to go over.
Link to/compare with: - https://hypothes.is/a/gqSGbpVaEe2pmiuwPwm8Vw from 1892
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The student should become as little conscious of his notebookas possible , that his mind may act reflexively ; that is, from habit, automatically.
One should strive to become fluent with their note taking materials and tools to the point that both having them at hand and using them them are as second nature as breathing, walking, or speaking.
When it comes to productivity gains, this one thing can be the most helpful. Have a process; know it intimately enough that it is second nature.
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The first injunction is then : Do not try to take the lecture verbatim.
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ned the art of notetaking for themselves that this pamphletis prepared. It does not seem wise to attempt to lay down any verystringent rules on the subject. We can only suggest the more generalmethods from which every man can work out his own particular system.
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Maxfield, Ezra Kempton. “Suggestions for Note Taking.” Delaware College Bulletin 6, no. 4 (December 1910).
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Suggestions_for_Note_Taking/pacaAAAAYAAJ?hl=en
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Local file Local file
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Jan. 22. To set down such choice experiences that my own writingsmay inspire me and at last I may make wholes of parts. Certainly it isa distinct profession to rescue from oblivion and to fix the sentimentsand thoughts which visit all men more or less generally, that thecontemplation of the unfinished picture may suggest its harmoniouscompletion. Associate reverently and as much as you can with yourloftiest thoughts. Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is anest egg, by the side of which more will be laid. Thoughts accidentallythrown together become a frame in which more may be developedand exhibited. Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing, ofkeeping a journal,—that so we remember our best hours and stimulateourselves. My thoughts are my company. They have a certainindividuality and separate existence, aye, personality. Having bychance recorded a few disconnected thoughts and then brought theminto juxtaposition, they suggest a whole new field in which it waspossible to labor and to think. Thought begat thought.
!!!!
Henry David Thoreau from 1852
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omnivore.app omnivore.appOmnivore1
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https://omnivore.app/<br /> Open source version of readwise
Originally bookmarked from phone on Sun 2023-01-15 11:25 PM
updated: 2023-01-17 with tag: "accounts"
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userpage.fu-berlin.de userpage.fu-berlin.de
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After browsing through a variety of the cards in Gertrud Bauer's Zettelkasten Online it becomes obvious that the collection was created specifically as a paper-based database for search, retrieval, and research. The examples and data within it are much more narrowly circumscribed for a specific use than those of other researchers like Niklas Luhmann whose collection spanned a much broader variety of topics and areas of knowledge.
This particular use case makes the database nature of zettelkasten more apparent than some others, particularly in modern (post-2013 zettelkasten of a more personal nature).
I'm reminded here of the use case(s) described by Beatrice Webb in My Apprenticeship for scientific note taking, by which she more broadly meant database creation and use.
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Withtheotherpiece ofpracticaladviceinthearticleinthe Lancet,namely,that studentsshould securewellboundsubstantialnote-books,wethoroughly concur.Theyshouldbewellbound andsubstantialinorder tobeavailableforreferencein futureyears
Interesting advice...
Were notebooks of the time generally poorly bound and prone to falling apart? The focus on longevity of notes is interesting here...
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Tobeuseful,thenotestakenatmedicallecturesshouldbeasummaryonly;noattempt shouldbemadetotakeaverbatimreport
Verbatim notes are not the goal.
The idea of note taking as a means of sensemaking and understanding is underlined in an 1892 article in a shorthand magazine whose general purpose was to encourage shorthand and increasing one's writing speed, often to create verbatim records:
To be useful, the notes taken at medical lectures should be a summary only; no attempt should be made to take a verbatim report.
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This independent confirmation ofthe testimonythat Dr Gowers has personally borne to the helpfulness ofPhonography in his professional career, is peculiarlyvaluable, because there are still some able men in themedical world who discourage the practice of note- takingby students . Professor Struthers, for instance, is reportedto have said before the General Medical Council that" the student takes his notes, puts his book in his pocket,and walks out, knowing no more about the subject than amere reporter would do."
There's an interesting parallel between this example and that of the character of Socrates in Plato with respect to writing and memory.
Some take notes to increase understanding, while others might suggest that note taking decreases understanding. The answer to remedying the discrepancy is in using the proper process.
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He points out that the power of takingnotes efficiently does not come by nature, but that,it is an art that improves with cultivation,
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NOTE-TAKING IN MEDICAL STUDYAND PRACTICE
“Note-Taking in Medical Study and Practice.” The Phonetic Journal, September 24, 1892, in The Phonetic Journal for the Year of 1892, Volume 51, 609–10.
Tags
- shorthand
- writing for understanding
- medical study
- references
- Socrates
- tools for thought
- note taking why
- notebooks
- verbatim note taking
- memory vs. writing
- sensemaking
- durability
- understanding
- note taking
- longevity
- note taking process
- note taking practice
- Plato
- against note taking
- note taking education
- cultivation
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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As someone new to the PKM scene the jargon I see in many posts here is driving me nuts lol.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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reply to u/IamOkei https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10bjqjq/how_do_you_generate_unique_notes_i_feel_weird_to/
You may find value in re-framing your active reading and note taking/annotating as "having a conversation with the text". Adler's essay How to Mark a Book is a good short introduction. If you try this for a while and still have trouble, watch the movie Finding Forrester and try again. If you're still having trouble after this, read through Adler and Van Doren's How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading with a pen(cil) in hand and then try a third time.
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How do you generate unique notes? I feel weird to just copying ideas from books
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I began by committing the basic error of writing my notes on both sides of the page. I soon learned not to do that, but I continued to copy excerpts into notebooks in the order in which I encountered them.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYj1jneBUQo
Forrest Perry shows part of his note taking and idea development process in his hybrid digital-analog zettelkasten practice. He's read a book and written down some brief fleeting notes on an index card. He then chooses a few key ideas he wants to expand upon, finds the physical index card he's going to link his new idea to, then reviews the relevant portion of the book and writes a draft of a card in his notebook. Once satisfied with it, he transfers his draft from his notebook into Obsidian (ostensibly for search and as a digital back up) where he may also be refining the note further. Finally he writes a final draft of his "permanent" (my framing, not his) note on a physical index card, numbers it with respect to his earlier card, and then (presumably) installs it into his card collection.
In comparison to my own practice, it seems like he's spending a lot of time after-the-fact in reviewing over the original material to write and rewrite an awful lot of material for what seems (at least to me—and perhaps some of it is as a result of lack of interest in the proximal topic), not much substance. For things like this that I've got more direct interest in, I'll usually have a more direct (written) conversation with the text and work out more of the details while reading directly. This saves me from re-contextualizing the author's original words and arguments while I'm making my arguments and writing against the substrate of the author's thoughts. Putting this work in up front is often more productive at least for areas of direct interest. I would suspect that in Perry's case, he was generally interested in the book, but it doesn't impinge on his immediate areas of research and he only got three or four solid ideas out of it as opposed to a dozen or so.
The level of one's conversation with the text will obviously depend on their interest and goals, a topic which is relatively well laid out by Adler & Van Doren (1940).
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Definitely the mate is the most fundamental intellectual aim, I was wandering from the beginning if that was a mate hahah. How is it that you are drinking mate? I’m guessing you are not from Argentina since you speak and write in english and for english-speaking students… Also, I really like this series about the zettelkasten, you explain things clearly and with great humor. I like videos like this one where you show the actual process.
Process is important and I suspect we need more concrete examples for people to see. I'm reminded of Andy Matuschak's note taking live stream a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 though some editing, time compression, and inserted images can make it a bit more interesting than watching paint dry.
Anecdotally, I feel like mate has become at least marginally more popular in the United States in the last few years, or at least enough to enter the consciousness of the cultural zeitgeist at a liminal level.
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Forrest Perry shows an example of one of his zettels which has evidence of his having renumbered at least one card.
The image of the card has a strip of white out tape in the upper right hand corner with about 6 characters' worth of text covered over and the identifier "4b" written in black ink over it.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Ton Zijlstra</span> in Man at Knowledge Work – Interdependent Thoughts (<time class='dt-published'>05/26/2021 13:35:30</time>)</cite></small>
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diggingthedigital.com diggingthedigital.com
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https://diggingthedigital.com/hoe-werkt-het-maken-van-een-idee-notitie/
Frank calls out what he considers a good example of actual note taking practice rather than the more often seen talk about note taking theory. The example in question is Forrest Perry's YouTube video #9 Zettelkasten: from source card to idea card.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Right now I am building my zettelkasten on my PC but I want to integrate my paper written notes And still add more paper notes in the future. Any ideas how to do this efficiently? I mean a way to make my written notes discoverable from my PC system and keep them organized.
Usual advice is to move PRN, but what does the spectrum here look like? Collect examples.
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archive.org archive.org
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https://archive.org/details/practicalbookkee00ellirich/page/6/mode/2up
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/stockwestfale</span> in Requesting antinet hivemind assistance: ANALOG ACCOUNTING/BUDGETING/BOOKKEEPING : antinet (<time class='dt-published'>01/08/2023 12:04:20</time>)</cite></small>
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escapingflatland.substack.com escapingflatland.substack.com
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But keeping a notebook with someone else is hard. The few times I’ve tried with people not married to me, the notebooks have degenerated into slums. People will usually build their own corners, afraid to mess with the words others have put in. And so the thoughts are not properly integrated, they just sprawl, and are not tended to with love. And if someone does try to integrate the collective thoughts, if someone edits other people’s notes when they are away—well, there are few things as frustrating as having someone mess up your structure of thought so it becomes less useful to you.
Shared group note taking can be difficult as the notes one makes are often very personal and geared toward one's own particular path and needs.
Group note taking may be easier within a marriage or a company or custom group (particularly as actors are closer to each other in a shared unit) as actors are striving to increase both their shared context as well as their shared priorities and goals.
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Over time, they have been expanded and organized: it is the scaffolding of our conversation, left behind as a structure to think in.
"they" = "notes"
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This priority list, which was added to deal with the mess the notes became after a few weeks, turned out to be important. It was a ratchet—whenever we happened on a good train of thought, the priority list ensured that we would not drift back down to a lower-quality conversation path.
Well made notes, revisited can act as a ratchet to elevate and expand a conversation rather than devolving back to the mundane.
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First, I mixed the conversational notes in with my other thoughts. But I’ve since found that keeping the conversational notes separate from other notes is better—it creates a stronger sense of place. Now, I enter the Torbjörn notes, and all past conversations flow up. Mixed in with the other notes, they were diluted.
Like the affordances with respect to memory, giving notes a "place" can give them additional power.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Kakeibo (Japanese: 家計 簿, Hepburn: kakei-bo), is a Japanese saving method. The word "kakeibo" can be translated as Household ledger and is literally meant for household financial management. Kakeibos vary in structure, but the basic idea is the same. At the beginning of the month, the kakeibo writes down the income and necessary expenses for the beginning month and decides some kind of savings target. The user then records their own expenses on a daily basis, which are added together first at the end of the week and later at the end of the month. At the end of the month, a summary of the month's spending is written in kakeibo. In addition to expenses and income, thoughts and observations are written in kakeibo with the aim of raising awareness of one's own consumption.[1] Kakeibo can be a finished book or self-made.
There are some interesting parallels with kakeibo and note taking methods. Some have used envelopes to save away their notes in a similar sort of structure.
Link to https://hyp.is/RVP-plQaEe2t_7Pt7pyTgA/www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary<br /> Historian Keith Thomas used envelopes for storing/maintaining his notes
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vimeo.com vimeo.com
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https://vimeo.com/showcase/9704917
Vimeo collection of Dan Alloso's work with respect to his book How to Make Notes and Write.
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notes.aquiles.me notes.aquiles.me
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breaking the chronological order .
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www.gwern.net www.gwern.net
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“Of all the books I have delivered to the presses, none, I think, is as personal as the straggling collection mustered for this hodgepodge, precisely because it abounds in reflections and interpolations. Few things have happened to me, and I have read a great many. Or rather, few things have happened to me more worth remembering than Schopenhauer’s thought or the music of England’s words. A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.”
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tomcritchlow.com tomcritchlow.com
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) That a small group is a powerful way of thinking, and of creating action. That repetition matters, and informality. 2) It might be possible to help with strategy without providing original thought or even active facilitation: To consult without consulting. The answers and even ways of working are inherent in the group itself.
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notes.aquiles.me notes.aquiles.me
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If we put our own voice on each note (as opposed to quoting by copy/pasting), then the most part of the work is done.
rielaborare le informazioni lette, non solo citare
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notes.aquiles.me notes.aquiles.me
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In the end, I've reached a compromise: I take most notes using Obsidian because it feels quick and unintrusive. But if I need to take literature notes on papers that require more equations and proper handling of citations, I use Zettlr directly. After a while, I got used to referencing sources just by looking at the citation key in Zotero, and I use Zettlr even more sporadically, just for equation-heavy work.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Requesting antinet hivemind assistance: ANALOG ACCOUNTING/BUDGETING/BOOKKEEPING .t3_103r4j0._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Does anyone have any cards or know of any books/chapters/quotes that pertain to analog accounting, budgeting, and/or bookkeeping? For example, In "Paper Machines" Krajewski mentions how Melvil Dewey invented a personal analog bookkeeping system that was... disastrous...and he went bankrupt. That was really good information! Anyone have any leads?
reply to u/Echo_Delta17 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/103r4j0/requesting_antinet_hivemind_assistance_analog/
You should read Paper Machines closer as the accounting uses of Library Bureau products are what made it fantastically profitable in the early 1900s. Ann Blair has some useful references in Too Much to Know. Broadly there is lots of heavy influence of accounting principles in history as applied to note taking evolution, and particularly that of double entry bookkeeping. The idea of waste books plays particularly heavy here.
I've previously posted some early 1900s photos from Yawman & Erbe of uses of index card filing systems for CRM and other business related purposes: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/
Melvil Dewey/Library Bureau ultimately partnered up with Herman Hollerith in a predecessor of what became IBM to supply early versions of punch cards for government contracts. (See Krajewski for this.)
Feel free to troll some of my other notes for some related references across time: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=accounting
Curious what you're looking to discover here? A hard target library search for references should get you swimming in details pretty quickly here. I'd love to see what you come up with.
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dice.camp dice.camp
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The first book I’m processing is Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, which seemed appropriate.
https://dice.camp/@brennenreece/109622279965144935
example of someone "processing" a book and doing so in the context of having read Ahrens
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github.com github.com
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A list of websites, online note collections, zettelkasten, digital gardens, wikis that rely on Logseq publish: https://github.com/pengx17/logseq-publish/network/dependents
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pressbooks.rampages.us pressbooks.rampages.us
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https://pressbooks.rampages.us/msw-research/
Note taking section, particularly here: https://pressbooks.rampages.us/msw-research/chapter/5-writing-your-literature-review/#chapter-285-section-2
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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9/8,3 Geist im Kasten? Zuschauer kommen. Sie bekommen alles zusehen, und nichts als das – wie beimPornofilm. Und entsprechend ist dieEnttäuschung.
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V
I've read and referenced this several times, but never bothered to log it into my notes.
Ghost in the box? Spectators visit. They get to see everything, and nothing but that - like in a porn movie. And the disappointment is correspondingly high.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Klaus Kusanowsky uses the ideas of witchcraft or fascination to describe the sort of magic created by zettelkasten use. [0:09:15]
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Is the ZK method worth it? and how it helped you in your projects? .t3_zwgeas._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionI am new to ZK method and I'd like to use it for my literature review paper. Altho the method is described as simple, watching all those YT videos about the ZK and softwares make it very complex to me. I want to know how it changed your writing??
reply to u/Subject_Industry1633 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwgeas/is_the_zk_method_worth_it_and_how_it_helped_you/ (and further down)
ZK is an excellent tool for literature reviews! It is a relative neologism (with a slightly shifted meaning in English over the past decade with respect to its prior historical use in German) for a specific form of note taking or commonplacing that has generally existed in academia for centuries. Excellent descriptions of it can be found littered around, though not under a specific easily searchable key word or phrase, though perhaps phrases like "historical method" or "wissenschaftlichen arbeitens" may come closest.
Some of the more interesting examples of it being spelled out in academe include:
- Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
- Webb, Sidney. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
- Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. (Particularly ch 7 if I recall correctly)
For academic use, anecdotally I've seen very strong recent use of the general methods most compellingly demonstrated in Obsidian (they've also got a Discord server with an academic-focused channel) though many have profitably used DevonThink and Tinderbox (which has a strong, well-established community of academics around it) as much more established products with dovetails into a variety of other academic tools. Obviously there are several dozens of newer tools for doing this since about 2018, though for a lifetime's work, one might worry about their longevity as products.
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adjacentpossible.substack.com adjacentpossible.substack.com
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In my line of work as a writer, there’s a near endless stream of new applications coming out that touch different stages in my workflow: e-book readers, notetaking apps, tools for managing PDFs, word processors, bibliographic databases. The problem is that it’s very tricky to switch horses midstream with these kinds of tools, which means you have a natural tendency to get locked into a particular configuration, potentially missing out on better approaches.
Steven Johnson indicates that it can be difficult to change workflows, tools, apps, etc.
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johnmount.github.io johnmount.github.io
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My day to day notebook is a soft 5 inch by 3.5 inch pocket notebook as shown below. I use a mechanical pencil when out and about (no breakage or sharpening) and take a small eraser (in this case an eraser shaped like Lego). This book is good for notes and ideas. Notice I cross them out when I have acted on them in some way (done the work, or given up on the idea). The goal of the daily notebook is to eventually throw it away (not save it). So all work needs to move out and I need to be able to know it has been moved.
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Local file Local file
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even Socrates himself, we learnby way of his followers, derided the emerging popularity of taking physicalnotes.
I recall portions about Socrates deriding "writing" as a mode of expression, but I don't recall specific sections on note taking. What is Ann Blair's referent for this?
The "emerging popularity of taking physical notes" seems not to be in evidence with only one exemplar of a student who lost their notes within the Blair text.
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There’s magic within the analog medium incapable of beingreproduced in digital tools.
A side reference here to magic, but he defers what this is... why mention it if you're not going to back it up here?
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I’m not against progress; however, it becomes confusing when a new concept(i.e. digital notetaking apps with linking capabilities) ensconces itself in aterm used by an entirely different concept (i.e. Niklas Luhmann’sZettelkasten).
I'm hoping he'll discuss and compare/contrast the affordances of each of these systems, but I suspect that he won't.
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Even thoughsuch apps are thought of as a Zettelkasten, the magic that Luhmann builtinto his system is lost.
I'm not a fan of the magic framing here and I'm not really sure that Luhmann consciously designed or built his system to do this. Prior systems had these "magical" features before Luhmann's.
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the Antinet can serve both states. It can assist someone who’s in thegrowth state (without a clear end goal), and it can also assist someone who’sin the contribution state (with a clearly defined book or project).
This could be clearer and "growth state" and "contribution state" feel like jargon which muddles:
two of the broad benefits/affordances of having a zettelkasten: - learning and scaffolding knowledge (writing for understanding) - collecting and arranging material for general output
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“I started my Zettelkasten,because I realized that I had to plan for a life and not for a book.”5
from Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 22.
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- magic of note taking
- memory vs. writing
- zettelkasten affordances
- zettelkasten output
- publishing
- Bloom's taxonomy
- writing for understanding
- note collection loss and damage
- memory vs. note taking
- note taking why
- planning
- Socarates
- note taking affordances
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- quotes
- ruminant machines
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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However, most of the stuff I read about personal knowledge management is about systems, apps, setups or plugins, and never really about its purpose. Why bother doing all this?
The crucial question to the whole enterprise. They should have asked this question from the start of the essay or the start of their journey, not at the end.
Again shiny object syndrome seems to have gotten them...
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Fact-based disciplines such as natural sciences have less potential for deeply linked, atomic zettel notes than arts and humanities. There is not much to discuss about or 'generate insight' on photosynthesis, algebra or network protocols if you are not a scientist.
Again note taking is the wrong tool for fact-based acquisition. Apparently this is not advice given in most sources. Spaced repetition and mnemonic methods are far better suited for memorizing and remembering basic facts.
Take notes on the surprising and unique. Take notes as writing you'll reuse later. Take notes to understand.
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There are different kinds of information, some of which don't make sense being recorded at all. I was struggling with what to record and what not to record for a long time. For example, I took notes on programming syntax that are just useless (most of these things can be googled in seconds and they are usually decently documented already).
How was this not obvious from the jump? Was the author of the essay so distracted by shiny object syndrome they failed to see the obvious?
It's like taking notes in a language class... the goal is to read and write with fluency, so you practice these things regularly and gain fluency over time. Taking notes about the grammar and syntax of a language is highly unlikely to get you to fluency. Note taking is the wrong tool for a number of processes and the user should very quickly get a gut feeling for what's useful and what is not.
This author obviously missed the boat here.
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Writing permanent notes was time consuming as f***. On one side writing them helped me grasp the concepts they described on a deep level. One the other side I think this would have been possible without putting an emphasis on referencing, atomicity, deep linking, etc.
The time it takes to make notes is an important investment. If it's not worth the time, what were you actually doing? Evergreen/permanent notes are only useful if you're going to use them later in some sort of output. Beyond this they may be useful for later search.
But if you're not going to search them or review them, which the writer says they didn't, then what was the point?
Have a reason for taking a note is of supreme importance. Otherwise, you're just collecting scraps...
People who have this problem shouldn't be using digital tools they should be spending even more time writing by hand. This will force them into being more parsimonious.
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Funnily enough the ROI on these notes was a lot higher than all the permanent/evergreen/zettel notes I had written.
The missing context here: Why were they writing permanent/evergreen notes in the first place?
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But then life went on and nothing really happened.
This essay seems to be more about shiny object syndrome. The writer doesn't seem to realize any problems they've created. Way too much digging into tools and processes. Note the switching and trying out dozens of applications. (Dear god, why??!!) Also looks like a lot of collecting digitally for no clear goal. As a result of this sort of process it appears that many of the usual affordances were completely blocked, unrealized, and thus useless.
No clear goal in mind for anything other than a nebulous being "better".
One goal was to "retain what I read", but nothing was actively used toward this stated goal. Notes can help a little, but one would need mnemonic methods and possibly spaced repetition neither of which was mentioned.
A list of specific building blocks within the methods and expected outcomes would have helped this person (and likely others), but to my knowledge this doesn't exist as a thing yet though bits and pieces are obviously floating around.<br /> TK: building blocks of note taking
Evidence here for what we'll call the "perfect system fallacy", an illness which often goes hand in hand with "shiny object syndrome".
Too many systems bound together will create so much immediate complexity that there isn't any chance for future complexity or emergence as the proximal system is doomed to failure. One should instead strive for immediate and excessive simplicity which might then build with time, use, and practice into something more rich and complex. This idea seems to be either completely missed or lost in the online literature and especially the blogosphere and social media.
people had come up with solutions Sadly, despite thousands of variations on some patterns, people don't seem to be able to settle on either "one solution" or their "own solution" and in trying to do everything all at once they become lost, set adrift, and lose focus on any particular thing they've got as their own goal.
In this particular instance, "retaining what they read" was totally ignored. Worse, they didn't seem to ever review over their notes of what they read.
I was pondering about different note types, fleeting, permanent, different organisational systems, hierarchical, non-hierarchical, you know the deal.
Why worry about all the types of notes?! This is the problem with these multi-various definitions and types. They end up confusing people without giving them clear cut use cases and methods by which to use them. They get lost in definitional overload and aren't connecting the names with actual use cases and affordances.
I often felt lost about what to takes notes on and what not to take notes on.
Why? Most sources seem to have reasonable guidance on this. Make notes on things that interest you, things which surprise you.
They seem to have gotten lost in all the other moving pieces. Perhaps advice on this should come first, again in the middle, and a third time at the end of these processes.
I'm curious how deeply they read sources and which sources they read to come to these conclusions? Did they read a lot of one page blog posts with summarizations or did they read book length works by Ahrens, Forte, Allosso, Scheper, et al? Or did they read all of these and watch lots of crazy videos as well. Doing it "all" will likely lead into the shiny object syndrome as well.
This seems to outline a list of specifically what not to do and how not to approach these systems and "popular" blog posts that are an inch deep and a mile wide rather than some which have more depth.
Worst of all, I spent so much time taking notes and figuring out a personal knowledge management system that I neglected the things I actually wanted to learn about. And even though I kind of always knew this, I kept falling into the same trap.
Definitely a symptom of shiny object syndrome!
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Although some of them took a lot of time to create (I literally wrote whole book summaries for a while), their value was negligible in hindsight.
What was the purpose of these summaries? Were they of areas which weren't readily apparent in hindsight? Often most people's long summaries are really just encapsulalizations of what is apparent from the book jacket. Why bother with this? If they're just summaries of the obvious, then they're usually useless for review specifically because they're obvious. This is must make-work.
You want to pull out the specific hard-core insights that weren't obvious to you from the jump.
Most self-help books can be motivating while reading them and the motivation can be helpful, but generally they will only contain one or two useful ideas
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I barely, if ever, looked at or refered back to the bulk of notes I had created.
If you don't refer back to your notes for any reason, why bother taking them? Were they so boring? Was there nothing of surprise in them for having taken them in the first place?
Often note taking (writing) for understanding can be initially useful, but reviewing over these can be less useful in a larger corpus of notes. File the boring and un-useful things away. Center the important and the surprising.
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IMO ZK has always been a tool for writers - who are writing complex things for other people to read - to gather and organize information for that expressed purpose. They could be book writers, essay writers, academic paper/thesis writers, speech writers, bloggers, etc, but they've gotta be output-focused.
via an anecdotal reply from /deltadeep
Many have frequently provided this advice, but they're missing a number of other affordances, one of the key one's being combinatorial creativity, and this often, because they're not consciously aware of it as a concept or a useful affordance or it's potential outcomes.
Tags
- revision
- analog vs. digital
- anecdotal evidence
- perfect system fallacy
- writing for understanding
- spaced repetition
- search
- note taking why
- note taking advice
- building blocks
- language acquisition
- shiny object syndrome
- serendipity
- surprise
- collector's fallacy
- scrap heaps
- note taking problems
- progressive summarization
- explicit practice
- practice
- insight
- note taking building blocks
- handwriting vs. typing
- combinatorial creativity
- note taking review
- perfection is the enemy of progress
- note taking affordances
- types of notes
- self-help books
- read
- isolated facts
- complexity
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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ephemeral sources .t3_znbvw3._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/znbvw3/ephemeral_sources/
If it makes you feel better, this is a long standing problem of document and source loss. As just a small historical example from a fellow, but very early, note taker and practitioner of the ars excerpendi (art of excerpting):
Presumed to have been written in the fifth century Stobaeus compiled an extensive two volume manuscript commonly known as The Anthologies of excerpts containing 1,430 poetry and prose quotations of classical ancient works from Greece and Rome of which only 315 original sources are still extant in the 21st century.[1] Large portions of our knowledge of many famous classical texts and plays are the result of his notes. Perhaps your notes will one day serve as the only references to famous documents of our time?
Often for digital copies of things, I'll use a browser bookmarklet to quickly save archive copies of pages to the Internet Archive as I'm excerpting or annotating them. See https://help.archive.org/help/save-pages-in-the-wayback-machine/ for some ways of doing this.
[1] Moller, Violet. The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2019. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546484/the-map-of-knowledge-by-violet-moller/.
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jasontucker.blog jasontucker.blog
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On my own website(s) I'm looking to write more content and share more of my experiences. I'm at a time in my life that documenting what is going on so I can recall things easier would be helpful, a place to publicly share my notes in hopes that it will help someone else.
Hints of personal website as commonplace book.
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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Both albums are perverse, slightly agitated, and playful, with many of the lyrics generated randomly and cut together from various sources (mostly Eno’s own notebooks).
Brian Eno had a notebook-based practice of some sort.
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Reply to:
Who is Zettelkasten note-taking system for? <br /> u/Beens__<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zhyu5i/who_is_zettelkasten_notetaking_system_for/
Perhaps your use case may benefit from knowing the longer term outcomes of such processes, particularly as they relate to idea generation and innovation within your areas of interest? Keeping notes which you review over periodically and between which you create potential links will help to foster more productive long term combinatorial creativity, which will help you create new and potentially useful ideas much more quickly than blank page-based brainstorming.
Her method was much more ad hoc than the more highly refined methods of Luhmann which allowed him to write, but perhaps there's something you might appreciate from the example of the character Tess McGill in the movie Working Girl. Even more base in practice is that of Eminem, which shows far less structure, but could still have interesting long term creativity effects, though again, it bears repeating that one should occasionally revisit their notes (even if they're only in "headline form") in attempts to refresh their memory and link old ideas to new to generate completely new ideas.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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His note taking technique has a high distraction potential and is time consuming.
highlight from https://www.reddit.com/user/ManuelRodriguez331/ <br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zigwo3
Anecdotal evidence of how some might view zettelkasten note-taking practices, particularly when they have no end goal or needs in mind.
Form follows function
/comment/izs0u3b/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Should I use a Zettelkasten if I’m just intending to use it to learn about a few topics (no intention of publication/paper-writing, ever)?
If you're considering less work upfront, you might consider a closely related form by maintaining a commonplace book, or a pared down version of what folks here are calling a zettelkasten.
https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/
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www.theparisreview.org www.theparisreview.org
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Then there were the three lots of blank notebooks, tied with twine. They went for $9,000, $11,000, and $11,000 each. They were empty, some still wrapped in plastic, yet they were totally talismanic. I wondered: Would you write in these notebooks, having paid that price? Perhaps that’s the whole appeal—to write in a blank space that Didion might once have intended to use herself. Maybe the buyer had a hidden wish that somehow her intent might infiltrate their own work—that in owning these notebooks they might crack some secret code to making sentences like hers. There are sillier superstitions. But more likely, I think, you would have paid too much for these notebooks to ever touch them, and they would sit in a drawer or on a desk, unused and empty, just as they sat on hers.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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I also know that I have um effectively eclectomania in terms of I can click and capture stuff or clip it clip out stuff 01:26:48 faster than I can really as a minimum process it's such that oh that's an interesting link right I've read the abstract or I've read this 01:27:00 intro paragraph Yes I want that so I capture it with its URL as a minimum and I know I captured it today kleptomania that is great yeah
Quote timestamp 01:26:36 from Obsidian Book Club checkin on 2022-12-04
Context: talking about note taking methods; note that the autogenerated transcription actually misses the word as eclectoamania which is interesting in itself as a potential word.
cliptomania<br /> definition: an excessive enthusiasm or desire to clip interesting material into one's notes. It often manifests itself in online settings where digital tools allow one to easily highlight and keep information including a URL or permalink to revisit that information in the future; a portmanteau of "clip" and "mania"
Examples of tools that allow or encourage this collection of material include Evernote and Hypothes.is.
a phenomenon which is related to the so-called "collector's fallacy"
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facundomaciasescritor.wordpress.com facundomaciasescritor.wordpress.com
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No es magia.
I love that he points this out explicitly.
Some don't see the underlying processes of complexity within note taking methods and as a result ascribe magical properties to what are emergent properties or combinatorial creativity.
See also: The Ghost in the Machine zettel from Luhmann
Somehow there's an odd dichotomy between the boredom of such a simple method and people seeing magic within it at the same time. This is very similar to those who feel that life must be divinely created despite the evidence brought by evolutionary and complexity theory. In this arena, there is a lot more evolved complexity which makes the system harder to see compared to the simpler zettelkasten process.
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Después de esta historia superficialmente narrada por mí, usted se preguntará, "Y entonces, a cual debo seguir?" A ninguno. Hay un problema en nuestra sociedad, que también se extiende hasta el Zettelkasten: nos hemos fanatizado. Hemos hecho nuestras decisiones políticas, sociales, sexuales, etc., como la esencia de nuestra persona. Me gustaría expandir en ese tema en un futuro artículo, pero por ahora nos importa como eso se relaciona con la elección del zettelkasten: hay peleas y discusiones violentas entre los seguidores de Scheper, los de Ahrens, los digitales, etc. Hay una gran radicalización y tribalismo, evitando la discusión crítica y el discordar intelectual. Y no podemos ser así. Personalmente, el zettelkasten que uso actualmente es más basado en el de Scheper, pero aún así veo a los otros, leo a Ahrens, etc., todo para tener una visión completa y variada de lo que es el Zettelkasten.
Facundo Macías notices, as have I, a semblance of internecine almost religious/fanatical war between various note taking camps.
To get away from these we should instead on specific processes, their affordances, and their potential emergent outcomes in individual use. Most people begin these entrenched thoughts based on complete lack of knowledge. Few have practiced some of the broader methods for long enough to get to potential emergent properties.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Duolingo or whatever French and I had this idea well basically what it reminds me of is Stefan's Vig the Austrian
https://youtu.be/r9idbh-U2kM?t=3544
Stefan Zweig (reference? his memoir?) apparently suggested that students translate authors as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with their work. This is similar to restating an author in one's own words as a means of improving one's understanding. It's a lower level of processing that osculates on the idea of having a conversation with a text.
tk: track this reference down. appropriate context?
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edward-slingerland.medium.com edward-slingerland.medium.com
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I no longer remember the name of the 7th grade English teacher (Toms River Intermediate School West, c. 1980–1981) who taught me this method, but if she is out there: thanks!
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https://edward-slingerland.medium.com/there-is-only-one-way-to-write-a-book-637535ef5bde
Example of someone's research, note taking, and writing process using index cards.
Broadly, this is very similar to the process used by Ryan Holiday, Robert Green, and Victor Margolin.
While he can't recall the name of the teacher, he credits his 7th grade English teacher (1980-1981) for teaching him the method.
Edward Slingerland is represented by Brockman Inc.
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I’ve also got a vague sense in my head of how they should be organized — that is, what the structure of the book is going to be. This is generally when I write the formal book proposal. I know enough about the topic, now, that I have a good idea of what my central arguments are going to be and how I am going to organize the chapters.
At what point in the process does one have a conceptualization for the overall outline of what they're writing?
In cases where it's earlier than others, then heavy linking and organization may not be as necessary.
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As my research methods became more and more digital, the ease of pasting quotations and references in this way (instead of copying them by hand) has really speeded things up.
Example of someone who felt that speeding up their note taking by using digital tools rather than analog ones.
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I have a very specific method for organizing my research and thoughts whenever I’m writing anything longer than a short article. I learned this method from a teacher in middle school, and I cannot imagine how a human being could write a book any other way.
Example of someone who learned an index card based commonplace book method for note taking and writing.
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