Here the writer, who doesn't lay out any of the general principles of a zettelkasten practice, automatically presumes one idea per card (presumes it from where? zeitgeist) and then jumps into the question of note size and other semantics.

I think logInToMicrosoft would be slightly better, but this is surely much better than the completely incorrect loginToMicrosoft

Incorrect. Should be logInTo or logInto, same as it is in the other functions, logIntoMicrosoft, ...

https://zibaldone.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-zettelkasten-part-2-a

I showed up expecting a one pager on zettelkasten method and was surprised to find it was about reading. :)

inconsistent even on same web page, 1 paragraph away

Barbara Tuchman took her notes on four-by-six inch index cards.

She repeated the oft-advised mantra to only write on one side of a sheet.

What manual did she read this in? She specifically puts quotes on "Never write on the back of anything." so perhaps it might be something that could be tracked down?

Who was the earliest version of this quote? And was it always towards the idea of cutting up slips or pages and not wanting to lose material on the back? or did it also (later? when?) include ease-of-use and user interface features even when not cutting things up?

At what point did double sided become a thing for personal printed materials? Certainly out of a duty to minimize materials, but it also needed the ability to duplex print pages or photocopy them that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fP4zFQMXSw

The fun things usually happen at the messy edges. This description of zettelkasten is a perfect encapsulation of this, though it's not necessarily on the surface.

This is a well done encapsulation of what a zettelkasten. Watch it once, then practice for a bit. Knowing the process is dramatically different from practicing it. Too many people want perfection (perfection for them and from their perspective) and they're unlikely to arrive at it by seeing examples of others. The examples may help a bit, but after you've seen a few, you're not going to find a lot of insight without practicing it to see what works for you.

This could be compared with epigenetic factors with respect to health. The broad Rx may help, but epigenetic factors need to be taken into account.

• for: BEing journey - adapt to, DH, Deep Humanity

• comment

  • Potentiality coupled with limitations - Daseitz Suzuki and the elbow does not bend backwards.
  • The experience of the unnamable quality present in every moment - infinite potentiality
  • The mundane is the extraordinary. Even when we name it and discover it in all our scientific discoveries and articulate it, and mass produce technologies with it, is is still miraculous

• adjacency

  • Nora Bateson's book Combining and the Douglas Rushkoff podcast interview
  • potentiality
• adjacency statement
  • both are alluding to the pure potentiality latent in the moment
  • language can be contextualized as an unfolding of the space of potentiality to a specific trajectory. Each word added to the previous one to form a sentence is a choice in an infinite, abstract space of symbols that communicates intentionality and is designed to focus the attention of the listener to one very narrow aspect of the enormous field of infinite potentiality

blah. this surveillance system is one big personality test.<br /> the problem is, they do not want a balance of all personality types or "natural order",<br /> but they do a one-sided selection by personality type.<br /> aka socialdarwinism, socialism, survival of the social, social credit score, civilization, high culture, progress, "made order", human laws, human rights, humanism, ...

https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/premier-sommet-polaire-international-a-paris-quelles-avancees-et-quelles-deceptions-20231110_IQTXPV3VBJEBDB34DU2DCGOZV4/

Want a Simplified Zettelkasten? For Beginners by Dr Maddy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w15joVA4pIc

Very quick and to the point.

Bei der Jahrestagung der Kommission zum Schutz der lebenden Ressourcen der Antarktis ist der Plan, drei große zusammenhängende Gebiete als Schutzzonen auszuweisen, wieder am Widerstand Russlands und Chinas gescheitert. Es kam lediglich zu einer Übereinkunft das Fischen von Krill zu regulieren. https://taz.de/Kaum-Fortschritte-bei-Antarktisschutz/!5969196/

They're not even consistent within this same page.

They're not even consistent within this same page.

• for: quote, quote - Gregory Bateson, sustainable development goals, SDGs, SDGs in one holistic image

• quote: Gregory Bateson

  • The major problems in the world are the difference between how nature works and how people think

Morgan, Robert R. “Opinion | Hard-Pressed Teachers Don’t Have a Choice on Multiple Choice.” The New York Times, October 22, 1988, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/22/opinion/l-hard-pressed-teachers-don-t-have-a-choice-on-multiple-choice-563988.html.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150525091818/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/22/opinion/l-hard-pressed-teachers-don-t-have-a-choice-on-multiple-choice-563988.html. Internet Archive.

Example of a teacher pressed into multiple-choice tests for evaluation for time constraints on grading.

He falls prey to the teacher's guilt of feeling they need to grade every single essay written. This may be possible at the higher paid levels of university teaching with incredibly low student to teacher ratios, but not at the mass production level of public education.

While we'd like to have education match the mass production assembly lines of the industrial revolution, this is sadly nowhere near the case with current technology. Why fall prey to the logical trap?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrN0kaE6DkY<br /> Is The Zettelkasten Method Really The Best Personal Knowledge Management System? by Anthony Metivier

meh...

https://joonhyeokahn.substack.com/p/demystify-zettelkasten

If you've not already spent some time with the idea, this short one pager is unlikely to "demystify" anything. Yet another zk one-pager, and not one of the better ones.

—Anne Frank (1929-1945), diary entry dated Saturday, February 27, 1943 (age 13)

Anne Frank was given an empty card file by her father who filled it with index cards that were blank on one side. They were intended to use it as a "reading file" in which she and Margot were "supposed to note down the books we've read, the author and the date."

In the same entry she mentioned that she'd bought a separate notebook for writing down new words she encountered. Recent words she mentions encountering were "brothel" and "coquette".

https://github.com/flengyel/Zettel

An interesting looking and complete template example.

Bürgerinitiativen und NGOs klagen – u.a. wegen der Auswirkungen auf marine Ökosysteme – gegen eine geplante Gasbohr-Plattform in der Nähe der Nordseeinsel Borkum. Das Unternehmen One Dyas will dort 4,5-13 Milliarden Kubikmeter Erdgas fördern. Dadurch würden bis zu 65 Millionen Tonnen CO₂ emittiert. https://taz.de/Klage-gegen-Bohrprojekt-in-der-Nordsee/!5959459/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16wj9uz/a_luhmannesque_zettelkasten_in_7_easy_steps/

One of the more compact, yet dense overviews of Luhmann's method.

23:00 “can I take one more step” as way for improving self (achieving succes), creating momentum

The simple Zettelkasten Method:<br /> 1. Buy index cards 2. Buy a box 3. ??? 4. Profit

Q: Why did the zettelkasten cross the road?

A: It didn't because Barbara Tuchman, Nicholas Luhmann, Jacques Goutor, Johannes Erich Heyde, and Keith Thomas all recommend only writing on one side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Van_Doren

08:00 didn’t tell all his life problems

• see Zoro “nothing happened”

"Surrendering" by Ocean Vuong

1. He moved into United State when he was age of five. He first came to United State when he started kindergarten. Seven of them live in the apartment one bedroom and bathroom to share the whole. He learned ABC song and alphabet. He knows the ABC that he forgot the letter is M comes before N.

2. He went to the library since he was on the recess. He was in the library hiding from the bully. The bully just came in the library doing the slight frame and soft voice in front of the kid where he sit. He left the library, he walked to the middle of the schoolyard started calling him the pansy and fairy. He knows the American flag that he recognize on the microphone against the backdrop.

Movies as portraying limited existence, but sometimes “signs” of consciousness

• In my opinion, well made movies, show a lot of signs of consciousness. See, for example, LOTR, with the rhoririm charge where there is a collective consciousness forming, or the scene in which Shanks stops Akainu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vww7JLcrJl4

8:05 - 16:20 GTD - Capture - Clarify - What is it? - Is it actionable? What is the action? - Is it a project? - Batching - Reflect - Review over lists/calendars daily/weekly - Engage

17:30 They use the phrase "atomic" paper based index cards, so they've been infected by the idea of "atomic notes" from somewhere, though it seems as if he's pitching that he's "invented" his card system as if from scratch.

19:45 He mentions potentially using both sides of the card, against the usual (long term) advice.

20:00 Analogizes his cards as ballerinas which work together, but each have their own personalities and function within the ballet

He's using a leather cover for Moleskine pocket notebook and Manufactum A7 index cards, as well as a box

Sections of his box: - to erase - inbox - next actions - projects (3 categories of projects) - someday - to delegate - tickler (by month and by day; 12 months and 31 days) - blank cards

Mentions erasing cards as he finishes them rather than archiving them.

Inspiration by How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens

Recommends one item per card to make things easier and more actionable; also improves focus versus having a longer list. (28:00)

Portability

Sustainable (he erases)

High quality textile experience

The ability to shift between associative modes and sequential modes seems to work well with such a system.

They distinguish between atomic notes and "stellar" notes. Stellar being longer lists or more dense notes/outlines/etc.

Project cards<br /> titles and project numbers (for reference) Project numbers in the top right with a P and/or M below it for<br /> - P for paper<br /> - M for email data<br /> - D for digital files which helps him find reference materials

Weekly review with all cards out on the table

Expansion pack includes: - action - calendar - waiting

Search was quick and easy, but had to carry his box back and forth to work.

Stopping doing it because he was losing the history (by erasing it). Moving to notebook and he likes fountain pens. He likes the calendar portion in his notebook.

He tried it out for the sake of experiment.

In the paper world things are more present and "in your face" versus digital formats where things can disappear.

Most of Phyllis Diller's gag files are written one joke to a card, but some have multiple jokes and some even span multiple cards.

(Note this is a secondary source and can/should be verified against the digital files.)

https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2015-08-05-one-thought-per-note/ archive version: https://web.archive.org/web/20220124223433/https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2015-08-05-one-thought-per-note/

ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 12:00:07)

A statement of the common "one idea per card" (or per note). He doesn't state it, but links to an article whose title is "One Thought Per Note".

Who else has use this or similar phrasing in the historical record? - Beatrice Webb certainly came pretty close. - Others?

This article was likely a big boost to the general idea of zettelkasten in the modern zeitgeist.

Note the use of the phrase "Zettelkasten method of note-taking" which would have helped to distinguish it from other methods and thus helping the phrase Zettelkasten method stick where previously it had a more generic non-name.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1

A somewhat early, comprehensive one page description of the zettelkasten method from September 2019.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/T382CLwAjsy3fmecf/how-to-take-smart-notes-ahrens-2017

ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 10:12:42)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13nmcym/i_read_the_top_ten_zettelkasten_articles_on/

A list of some popular one-pagers on the Zettelkasten Method.

Read contemporaneously in May 2023

https://sunghoyahng.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-for-normies-what-normies

A VERY slim version.

https://reasonabledeviations.com/2022/04/18/molecular-notes-part-1/

Maybe come back to read this???

reply to u/Efficient_Earth_8773 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15fjb97/does_anyone_has_its_zettelkasten_in_google_docs/

Experimenting can be interesting. I've tried using spreadsheet software like Google Sheets or Excel which can be simple and useful methods that don't lose significant functionality. I did separate sheets for zettels, sources, and the index. Each zettel had it's own row with with a number, title, contents, and a link to a source as well as the index.

Google Docs might be reasonably doable, but the linking portion may be one of the more difficult affordances to accomplish easily or in a very user-centric fashion. It is doable though: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/45893?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop, and one might even mix Google Docs with Google Sheets? I could see Sheets being useful for creating an index and or sources while Docs could be used for individual notes as well. It's all about affordances and ease of use. Text is a major portion of having and maintaining a zettelkasten, so by this logic anything that will allow that could potentially be used as a zettelkasten. However, it helps to think about how one will use it in practice on a day-to-day basis. How hard will it be to create links? Search it? How hard will it be when you've got thousands of "slips"? How much time will these things take as it scales up in size?

A paper-based example: One of the reasons that many pen and paper users only write on one side of their index cards is that it saves the time of needing to take cards out and check if they do or don't have writing on the back or remembering where something is when it was written on the back of a card. It's a lot easier to tip through your collection if they're written only on the front. If you use an alternate application/software what will all these daily functions look like compounded over time? Does the software make things simpler and easier or will it make them be more difficult or take more time? And is that difficulty and time useful or not to your particular practice? Historian and author David McCullough prefers a manual typewriter over computers with keyboards specifically because it forces him to slow down and take his time. Another affordance to consider is how much or little work one may need to put into using it from a linking (or not) perspective. Using paper forces one to create a minimum of at least one link (made by the simple fact of filing it next to another) while other methods like Obsidian allow you to too easily take notes and place them into an infinitely growing pile of orphaned notes. Is it then more work to create discrete links later when you've lost the context and threads of potential arguments you might make? Will your specific method help you to regularly review through old notes? How hard will it be to mix things up for creativity's sake? How easy/difficult will it be to use your notes for writing/creating new material, if you intend to use it for that?

Think about how and why you'd want to use it and which affordances you really want/need. Then the only way to tell is to try it out for a bit and see how one likes/doesn't like a particular method and whether or not it helps to motivate you in your work. If you don't like the look of an application and it makes you not want to use it regularly, that obviously is a deal breaker. One might also think about how difficult/easy import/export might be if they intend to hop from one application to another. Finally, switching applications every few months can be self-defeating, so beware of this potential downfall as you make what will eventually need to be your ultimate choice. Beware of shiny object syndrome or software that ceases updating in just a few years without easy export.

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/

Good overview of the method and details for how to implement.

Possibly the king of the one page zettelkasten descriptions.

https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/zettelkasten/

I'd found this page through general search and then a few days later someone from Metivier's "team" (an SEO hire likely) emailed me to link to it from a random zk page on my own site (not a great one).

Metivier seems to have come to ZK from the PKM space (via a podcast I listened to perhaps?). This page isn't horrible, but seems to benefit greatly from details I've added to the Wikipedia page over the past few years.

Whenever I open the annotations on the right side of the screen, a trailing period appears in the text. It looks like this:

Collaborate with

anyone, anywhere

.

• Title
  • One Billion Happy

• Author

  • Mo Gawdat

• Description

  • Mo Gawdat was former chief business officer at Google X, Google's innovation center.
  • Mo left Google after seeing the rapid pace of AI development was going to lead to a progress trap in which
    • the risk of AI destroying human civilization is becoming real because AI will be learning from too many unhappy people whose trauma AI will learn and incorporate into its algorithms
  • Hence, human happiness becomes paramount to prevent this catastrophe from happening
• See Ronald Wright's prescient quote
  • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fwork%2Fquotes%2F321797-a-short-history-of-progress&group=Q2X5j1pR

• follow up

  • work on stress and happiness

• References

  • https://www.unstressable.com/about-us
  • https://www.amazon.com/Solve-Happy-Engineer-Your-Path/dp/1501157558
  • https://www.onebillionhappy.org/

Beim Pariser Klima-Finanzgipfel wurden nur wenige Entlastungen für den globalen Süden beschlossen worden. Die Weltbank hat 100 Milliarden Dollar Finanzierung pro Jahr zugesagt. Einige Staaten bemühen sich um internationale Steuern zur Finanzierung von Anpassung und Klimaschutz. Ein Durchbruch bei der Verschuldung wurde nicht erreicht. In Einzelfällen wird auf die Rückzahlung von Schulden verzichtet. Ein Verzicht auf fossile Energien wurde nicht diskutiert.

https://www.repubblica.it/green-and-blue/2023/06/23/news/cambiamento_climatico_e_poverta_alla_ricerca_di_un_nuovo_sistema_finanziario_macron_ci_prova-405523841/

some thoughts i have on this:

this commandment is reminiscent of what was instructed to the nephites in moroni 6:4-5. to break it down:

in verse 4, it is indicated that three things kept the nephites on the path of their covenant and enabled them to flourish:

a) they consistently remembered and nourished themselves with the word of god

b) they actively sought opportunities for prayer

c) they highly valued the virtues of christ

these three points encompass the holy habits then listed in verse 5:

a) gathering together frequently

b) fasting

c) praying, and

d) discussing the welfare of each other's souls

the commandment to instruct and edify one another when we gather, in its apparent form, refers to attending and participating in sunday school classes and other church gatherings. but as we prepare for the Lord's second coming, we are called to build zion here on earth first. to truly accomplish that, we should engage in church-like interaction beyond just the first day of the week.

we are meant to create a community of like-minded individuals who come together as one in christ (zion). this entails supporting one another even outside of church, continuing to hold each other's hands after attending the sacrament together

[[holy habits make the covenant path sustainable]]

https://howaboutthis.substack.com/p/the-knowledge-that-wont-fit-inside-6d3

Reasonable one page overview of zettelkasten, though it undersells some of they "why."

Has a good list of some of the more popular one-two page articles floating around the blogosphere at the bottom.

https://medium.com/@fairylights_io/the-zettelkasten-method-examples-to-help-you-get-started-8f8a44fa9ae6

In my opinion: It's not any different or less secure.

Luhmann mentions that he only wrote on one side so that he didn't need to physically remove notes from the box when searching it. There is a level of lost productivity if one needs to physically remove a card to read it and then replace it; this lost productivity is magnified if one uses their slip box regularly over the span of many years.

Notes Raft - How to Build a Habit of Writing Evergreen Notes<br /> by Haikal Kushahrin

Luhmann with focus on "Matuschak's evergreen notes".

c.1913 Wilson Memindex Desk Organzier Catalog Price List Booklet Rolodex Prequel

In a 1913 catalog for the Wilson Memindex, the company suggested putting to do items and one's schedule on one side of the card and potentially keeping one's accounts or a diary on the reverse side.

Understanding Zettelkasten notes <br /> by Mitch (@sacredkarailee@me.dm) 2022-02-11

Quick one pager overview which actually presumes you've got some experience with the general idea. Interestingly it completely leaves out the idea of having an index!

Otherwise, generally: meh. Takes a very Ahrens-esque viewpoint and phraseology.

More Tags

Testing Tags

Living with a Zettelkasten | Blay <br /> by Magnus Eriksson at 2015-06-21 <br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 06:40:39)

a zettelkasten method one pager based generally on Luhmann's example and broadly drawn from material only on zettelkasten.de up to the date of writing in 2015.

Interesting to see the result of a single source without any influence from Ahrens, Eco, or any others from what I can tell. Perhaps some influence from Kuehn, but only from the overlap of zettelkasten.de and Kuehn's blog.

Note that it's not as breathless as many one page examples and doesn't focus on Luhmann's massive output, but it's still also broadly devoid of any other history or examples.

I would have hoped for more on the "living with" portion that was promised.

Reagan, however, did not source many of his one-liner jokes.

Ronald Reagan broke the typical rule to "write only on one side" of his index cards. His cards would typically have five to ten items written out by hand.

Given some of the cards I've seen, it seems that they weren't categorized generally and with multiple ideas on the same card they also broke Gessner's other common advice.

Ronald Reagan's index cards of one-liners at 2014-07-20 <br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:41:42)

archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20200305070906/https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/ronald-reagans-index-cards-of-one-liners/12/

ᔥ Manfred Kuehn in Ronald Reagan's Notecards at 2015-01-25<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:34:10)

—Ronald Reagan

Little would he have expected January 6th...

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

One of Ronald Reagan's Index cards with four bullet-pointed one-liners has the annotation "(over)" written on the bottom which indicates that he wrote on both sides of his cards.

If he was keeping these in clear plastic sheets in a binder, this would have been easy to see the opposite sides.

Were all of his cards double-sided? This particular example seems to be a list of one liners which may have been used in the same speech (or timeframe) and thus served solely as a reminder of the jokes to be told.

—Ronald Reagan

Manfred Kuehn in Ronald Reagan's Notecards at 2015-01-25<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:34:10)

Kuehn felt that Ronald Regan's note taking "does not seem like a good system. In fact, it's hardly any system at all..."

google translate:

The world of Niklas Luhmann – Schmidt now sometimes finds it on the back of the slip. Because Luhmann apparently recycled every scrap of paper he could find for his box. So it can happen that on the front of the note there are condensed reflections on the concept of autopoiesis or summaries of unknown treatises from earlier centuries, while on the back you can find the first arithmetic exercises by Luhmann's children. Or check statements. Or instructions to the household help: “Sweep and wipe the basement stairs thoroughly”, for example.

Luhmann adhered to the standard advice to write only on one side of his cards, though perhaps not just for the usual reasons, but in part because he recycled the papers he had at hand to make his slips. On the backs of his notes one can find instructions he'd made to his household help, his children's homework papers, bank statements, and other papers he happened to have at hand.

I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth

—Henry David Thoreau February 18, 1852

Rather than have two commonplaces, one for facts and one for poetry, if one can more carefully and successfully translate one's words and thoughts, they they might all be kept in the commonplace book of poetry.

!- surveillance capitalism : metaphor - one way mirror

https://mattgiaro.com/obsidian-zettelkasten/

Yet another short, one-pager blogpost about zettelkasten

!- grateful list : one meal a day

Goitein broke the frequent admonishment of many note takers to "write only on one side" of his cards.

Oded Zinger doesn't mention how many of his 27,000 index cards are double-sided, but one might presume that it is a large proportion.

How many were written on both sides?

Characterizing and predicting person-specific, day-to-day, fluctuations in walking behavior

Storytelling tropes play into our system one heuristics and cognitive biases by riding on the tailcoats of familiar story plotlines we've come to know and trust.

What are the ways out of this trap? Creating lists of tropes which should trigger our system one reactions to switch into system two thinking patterns? Can we train ourselves away from these types of misinformation?

Victor Margolin's note taking and writing process

• Collecting materials and bibliographies in files based on categories (for chapters)
• Reads material, excerpts/note making on 5 x 7" note cards
  • Generally with a title (based on visual in video)
  • excerpts have page number references (much like literature notes, the refinement linking and outlining happens separately later in his mapping and writing processes)
  • filed in a box with tabbed index cards by chapter number with name
  • video indicates that he does write on both sides of cards breaking the usual rule to write only on one side
• Uses large pad of newsprint (roughly 18" x 24" based on visualization) to map out each chapter in visual form using his cards in a non-linear way. Out of the diagrams and clusters he creates a linear narrative form.
• Tapes diagrams to wall
• Writes in text editor on computer as he references the index cards and the visual map.

"I've developed a way of working to make this huge project of a world history of design manageable."<br /> —Victor Margolin

Notice here that Victor Margolin doesn't indicate that it was a process that he was taught, but rather "I've developed". Of course he was likely taught or influenced on the method, particularly as a historian, and that what he really means to communicate is that this is how he's evolved that process.

"I begin with a large amount of information." <br /> —Victor Margolin

"As I begin to write a story begins to emerge because, in fact, I've already rehearsed this story in several different ways by getting the information for the cards, mapping it out and of course the writing is then the third way of telling the story the one that will ultimately result in the finished chapters."<br /> —Victor Margolin

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1590111416014409728.html

I'm slowly getting the feeling that Musk is a system one thinker who relies on others to do his system two thinking.

Billy Oppenheimer has said that he puts the references for his reading notes on the reverse side of his cards, breaking the long standing rule to write only on one side of one's note cards.

container images: whether to use full init process: implied here: don't need to if only using for single process (which doesn't fork, etc.)