reply to u/dotphrasealpha at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11z08fq/what_type_of_note_did_niklas_luhmann_average_6/

The true insight you're looking for here is: Forget the numbers and just aim for quality followed very closely by consistency!

Of course most will ignore my insight and experience and be more interested in the numbers, so let's query a the 30+ notes I've got on this topic in my own zettelkasten to answer the distal question.

Over the 45 years from 1952 to 1997 Luhmann produced approximately 90,000 slips which averages out to:

• 45 years * 365 days/year = 16,425 days
• 90,000 slips / 16,425 days = 5.47 slips per day

In a video, Ahrens indicates that Luhmann didn't make notes on weekends, and if true, this would revise the count to 7.69 slips per day.

260 working days a year (on average, not accounting for leap years or potential governmental holidays)

• 45 years x 260 work days/year = 11,700 days
• 90,000 slips / 11,700 days = 7.69 slips per day

Compare these closer numbers to Ahrens' stated and often quoted 6 notes per day in How to Take Smart Notes.

I've counted from the start of '52 through all of '97 to get 45 years, but the true amount of time was a bit shorter than this in reality, so the number of days should be slightly smaller.

Keep in mind that Luhmann worked at this roughly full time for decades, so don't try to measure yourself against him. (He also published in a different era and broadly without the hurdle of peer review.) Again: Aim for quality over quantity! If it helps, S.D. Goitein created a zettelkasten of 27,000 notes which he used to publish almost a third more papers and books than Luhmann. Wittgenstein left far fewer notes and only published one book during his lifetime, but published a lot posthumously and was massively influential. Similarly Roland Barthes had only about 12,500 slips and loads of influential work.

I keep notes on various historical practitioners' notes/day output over several decades using these sorts of practices. Most are in the 1-2 notes per day range. A sampling of them can be found here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day.

Anecdotally, I've found that most of the more serious people here and on the zettelkasten.de forum are in the 4-10 slips per week range.

<whisper>quality...</whisper>

reply to https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/ye3bvk/workflow_for_capturing_and_processing_online/

While it's possible that some set of tools will work best for you and potentially be more "fun" than other combinations, the upper limit you'll find on efficiency and productivity in this area is limited.

As a result, I'd recommend looking at the quality of the material you're putting into your stream as potentially the best means of improvement at your disposal. The quality of your ideas and thought will increase if you're reading and conversing with the highest quality sources you can get your hands on. Well-researched, long form material (books, journal articles) will have likely done a lot of the filtering and heavy work for you, so use those as input when you can.

Unless you're a sociologist or cultural anthropologist looking for examples of behaviors and material in social media, it may not be the best place to turn. Before I open social media apps I remind myself of note #1267 from Goethe's slipbox (Maxims and Reflections): "Ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago."

Similarly, upon hearing the words "firehose", "drowning", or "information overload", I'm reminded that, presuming you'd even want to make the effort, there's only one way to eat a whale: one bite at a time.

of course this also depends on the overall quality of the work and not just the length...

things that might have done some good lose all their goodness.”198 The overabundance of bad books drowned out even any good bits that might be present among them.

And we now say these same sorts of things about the internet and social media.

The Lancet. (2021, April 16). Quantity > quality? The magnitude of #COVID19 research of questionable methodological quality reveals an urgent need to optimise clinical trial research—But how? A new @LancetGH Series discusses challenges and solutions. Read https://t.co/z4SluR3yuh 1/5 https://t.co/94RRVT0qhF [Tweet]. @TheLancet. https://twitter.com/TheLancet/status/1383027527233515520

Wie lange soll die Paella ziehen?

Wann ist der Reis gar?

Wie lange muss das Ei kochen?

Baghal, T. A., Wenz, A., Sloan, L., & Jessop, C. (2021). Linking Twitter and survey data: Asymmetry in quantity and its impact. EPJ Data Science, 10(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-021-00286-7

Decomposing rectilinear shapes to find an area.

Quality over quantity!