- Nov 2024
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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reply to u/SupItsBuck88 at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1h0vuek/zettelkasten_vs_commonplace_book/ on Zettelkasten vs Commonplace Book
Don't tell anyone as it's a well-kept secret, but the way most digital practitioners (especially in Obsidian) arrange their "zettelkasten" is generally closer to commonplace book practice than it is to that of Niklas Luhmann's particular practice of zettelkasten. Honestly outside of Luhmann's practice (and those who follow his example more closely) really all zettelkasten into the late 1900s were commonplace books written on index cards rather than into books or notebooks. It's certainly the case that as the practices got older, commonplaces morphed from storehouses of only sententiae to more focused databases and tools for thought, particularly after the works on historical method done by Ernst Bernheim and later by Charles Seignobos & Charles Victor Langlois in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
More modern variations and versions in English can be seen in:
- Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse.
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
See also:
- Differentiating online variations of the Commonplace Book: Digital Gardens, Wikis, Zettlekasten, Waste Books, Florilegia, and Second Brains
- Reframing and simplifying the idea of how to keep a Zettelkasten
- &c: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/
Generally, the more focused your needs for particular types of information and the higher need of specific outputs may drive one to adopt one form over another. At the end of the day, I would contend that the specific affordances for how each of these forms work for the vast majority of people are exactly the same. This is especially true if one is using digital methods. In practice, I find that a lot of the difference between the practices comes down to where the user wishes to put in their work: either upfront (Luhmann-artig zettelkasten) or down the road in a more laissez faire manner (commonplace book or "traditional" zettelkasten). As a result, I always recommend people experiment a bit and settle on the method(s) which is (are) more motivating and useful for their modes and styles of work. Everyone's needs, inputs, and outputs will differ, and, as a result, so will their methods.
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blog.ayjay.org blog.ayjay.org
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Essay Idea: Moving beyond collecting: how to begin turning your bookmarks into something useful
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the Mathom-house – The Homebound Symphony by [[Alan Jacobs]]
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So look for this blog to become something like Cory Doctorow’s Memex Method, a commonplace book as a public database — though I prefer to call it the Mathom-house Method. There will be more posts here, I think. But for heaven’s sake if you don’t like, or don’t agree with, or otherwise disapprove of something I quote, don’t send me an email about it.
I always thought that Alan Jacobs blogging practice was a method of commonplacing and digital publishing all rolled up into one. Nice to see him lay out some of his thinking and method here.
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austinkleon.com austinkleon.com
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He even kept “indexes to indexes,” as Robert D. Richardson describes in his wonderful biography, Emerson: The Mind on Fire: Indexing was a crucial method for Emerson because it allowed him to write first and organize later and because it gave him easy access to the enormous mass of specific materials in his ever-increasing pile of notebooks… Emerson spent a good deal of time methodically copying and recopying journal material, indexing, alphabetizing indexes, and eventually making indexes of indexes. When he came to write a lecture, he would work through his indexes, making a list of possible passages. He then assembled, ordered, and reordered these into the talk or lecture.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man who encouraged his friend Thoreau to start a journal and the man who had the most success with the journal > lecture > essay > book method, kept elaborate notebooks just for indexing his other notebooks.
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micro.blog micro.blog
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I’m always negotiating the relationship between micro.blog and my big blog, but I’m getting closer to a system in which micro.blog is a box of delights and the big blog is a Memex. Gonna try to stick with that model.
reply to @ayjay @annie at https://micro.blog/ayjay/48571448
@ayjay I've long presumed you were digitally commonplacing by means of your websites, so thanks for laying out some of your specific current thoughts on the process.
@Annie I've been collecting examples of bloggers who are using their personal websites as commonplaces, zettelkasten, and "thought spaces" at https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book. If you're interested, you'll also find examples and details to explore in my own digital commonplace. "Thought spaces" is an interesting entry point.
Doctorow goes through more of his process in which he's saving both his "box of delights" and the refashioning of them into longer pieces in "20 years a blogger". In his case it's (now) all done on Pluralistic and syndicated out from there, in much the same way @dave has done for years.
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pluralistic.net pluralistic.net
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20 years a blogger on 2021-01-13 by [[Cory Doctorow]]
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The auctorial equivalent to the artist’s sketchbook is the “commonplace book,”
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- Oct 2024
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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"The Stoic Practice is a Dialogue With The Self" -- Ryan Holiday (~7:58)
I think this is also true for Zettelkasten. You write for yourself. Only you need to understand your notes, nobody else.
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"You can see I have quite a lot notes I have to make."
This is a difference in mentality between Ryan Holiday and me (as well as Muhammed Ali Kilic)
@M.AKilic50
Our mentality (inspired by GTD and other standard productivity stuff, mostly Flow) is to avoid creating homework.
You don't HAVE to make notes on something. You select what you deem valuable and are interested in working with at the moment.
Because of the marginal gains effect I wrote about earlier, it doesn't matter if you don't make a lot of notes. Besides, you can always return later--especially with a proper bib card and potentially a custom index/ToC for a book.
A Zettelkasten is the lazy man's path to excellence.
(this is an ironic statement of mine because a Zettelkasten asks a lot of work over time. However, it doesn't have to be on a day to day basis. Plus you work only on what you want, hence it doesn't require that much discipline.)
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"If you do one or two positive contributions a day, it adds up." - Ryan Holiday
Perhaps this is the essence of both Zettelkasten and Commonplace books; Marginal Gains.
Exponentional Increase over time. Upon first glance, it seems linear (1+1 = 2)... However, the formula is different because, at least in Zettelkasten, a new note means N new possible connections as this new note can virtually be connected to all other notes. In a Zettelkasten this is explicit, in a commonplace book connections are implicit.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Engaging in a Zettelkasten/Commonplace book in this way is equal to inherent spaced repetition and recall perhaps?
Especially if you allow some time of rumination... Read book, wait a few days to a few weeks before processing it. The book's contents remain in the back of your mind.
Then when processing you get engaged with the substance again and therefore interrupt the ebbinghaus curve.
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Perhaps I need to argue more with the authors and the content, as Adler & van Doren also recommend.
This might be a limitation in (the way I do) Zettelkasten. Because I am not writing in the margins and not engage in "tearing up" the book, I am less inclined to argue against/with the work.
Maybe I need to do this more using bib-card. Further thought on implementation necessary...
Perhaps a different reason is that I like to get through most books quickly rather than slowly. Sometimes I do the arguing afterward, within my ZK.
I need to reflect on this at some point (in the near future) and optimize my processes.
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Watching this now, I am reminded that I really want to read more. To become erudite.
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vimeo.com vimeo.com
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Reporter John Dickerson talking about his notebook.
While he doesn't mention it, he's capturing the spirit of the commonplace book and the zettelkasten.
[...] I see my job as basically helping people see and to grab ahold of what's going on.
You can decide to do that the minute you sit down to start writing or you can just do it all the time. And by the time you get to writing you have a notebook full of stuff that can be used.
And it's not just about the thing you're writing about at that moment or the question you're going to ask that has to do with that week's event on Face the Nation on Sunday.
If you've been collecting all week long and wondering why a thing happens or making an observation about something and using that as a piece of color to explain the political process to somebody, then you've been doing your work before you ever sat down to do your work.
Field Notes: Reporter's Notebook from Coudal Partners on Vimeo.
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Local file Local file
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This is the great advantage of the Card-System overthe ordinary Scheme (on a single sheet of paper), forwith the latter one has to be thinking of two things atthe same time, namely, of the Arrangement of theIdeas as well as the Collection of the Ideas.
Using a card-system over writing on a single sheet of paper or in a notebook allows one to separate the thinking work. Instead of both capturing the idea and arranging them simultaneously, one is splitting these tasks into smaller parts for simpler handling.
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- Sep 2024
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www.platformer.news www.platformer.news
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databases are not designed to be browsed.
Casey Newton makes this blanket statement. Any real evidence for this beyond his "gut"?
Many "paper machines" like Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten were almost custom made not just for searching, but for browsing through regularly much like commonplace books.
Perhaps the question is really, how is your particular database designed?
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- Aug 2024
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www.etsy.com www.etsy.com
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https://www.etsy.com/shop/LettersWithImpact
Someone selling individual typed index cards with quotes for $9.99 each?!? Who knew this was a business?
example:<br />
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Useful advice. I will not integrate it into notebooks most likely though, I'll use the principles to add certain sections to my slip-box. Doing this in a Zettelkasten manner allows me to: A) Bypass page size limitations, I do not have to think about how many pages to leave free as I can simply add more index cards to the sequence B) Have both the treasury and manuscript style at the same time... C) Reference everything whenever I need it for my overall research for my Grand Theory of Optimal Education, and other writing/research projects. For the treasury I can simply thumb through "Wise Saying" collection cards without any particular organization/order (although I might add one, I have to think about this)... And for the manuscript I can just reference the unique IDs of those sayings and then write about them. This is the ideal scenario for me.
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Doing commonplace books using index cards (Zettelkasten) also bypasses a page limit, no need to think about amount of pages to leave free.
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Of course if you write the quotes/sayings in your Zettelkasten you can have both the treasury & manuscript style commonplace book at the same time. For treasury you just look through the sayings, but for manuscripting, you reference the notes and then write about it. Ideal situation.
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Useful tip to collect wise sayings; mark them in the book and write "Proverb" next to them, or a symbol...
Can also then write the page number on your bib card, or perhaps a dedicated index card to proverbs per book.
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Those different types of commonplace books can be integrated into a notebox as well instead of a notebook... Give them all a unique ID and integrate them into a ZK.
Especially the wise sayings "Pocket Proverbs" one this would be cool.
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Aspects of commonplace books by Parker Settecase: - Scope: General or topic-bound; specific? - Purpose: Treasury or Manuscript
A treasury is used whenever you like, simply a collection. A manuscript you add your own context, thoughts, observations, etc.
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- Jul 2024
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pluralistic.net pluralistic.net
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Daily links from Cory Doctorow by [[Cory Doctorow]] 2024-02-19
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www.jonmsterling.com www.jonmsterling.com
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https://www.jonmsterling.com/index.xml
ᔥRichard in A forest of evergreen notes at 2024-06-02<br /> (accessed:: 2024-06-07 11:14:53)
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- Jun 2024
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disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org
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Furthermore, web annotation also affords curation, creating a static but unstable record of this emergent and dynamic performance, accenting via hypertext particular ideas and moments from a malleable document.
Comment by chrisaldrich: One of the pieces missing from Hypothes.is is the curateable notebook which more easily allows one to create new content from one's annotations.
Search is certain there, but being able to move the pieces about and re-synthesize them into new emergent pieces is the second necessary step.
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Platforms like Hypothes.is, which afford social and collaborative web annotation, demonstrate the ease with which authors and their audience can create a sociotechnical milieu to share thinking in progress, voice wonder, and rehearse informal dispositions in service of publication.
Comment by chrisaldrich: I personally identify with this since I'm porting my annotations and thoughts to a notebook as part of a process for active thinking, revision, writing, and eventual publication.
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- May 2024
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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In his renowned essay,“Battle of the Books” (1698), Jonathan Swift celebrated these texts asmore excellent than moderns realized—and he bequeathed a phraseto describe the honey of the ancients that Matthew Arnold wouldlater make infamous: “sweetness and light.”
note the "honey of the ancients" description here with a tangential nod to the commonplace tradition
see: <br /> - https://hypothes.is/a/mCsl9voQEeuP3t8jNOyAvw<br /> - https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22jonathan+swift%22+tag%3A%22commonplace+books%22
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theinformed.life theinformed.life
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39:00 Vanevar Bush misses out on a whole swath of history regarding commonplace books and indexing. In As We May Think he presents these older methods to the computer. "Why not imitate?" Aldrich says, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel (or thinking you are doing so).
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- Apr 2024
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www.instagram.com www.instagram.com
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https://www.instagram.com/onetypedquote/
An Instagram account that aggregates photos of typed quotes, usually including a part of the typewriter it was written on. It amounts to a group manufactured commonplace book.
Found via https://onetypedpage.com/otq/
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Obsidian-Beginner-Advance-Techniques-ebook/dp/B0BZ11C7KY
What is their specific definition of a digital zettelkasten? (Is it more Luhmann-artig or commonplace book?)
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- Mar 2024
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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How to start a commonplace book .t3_1bfu16h._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #edeeef; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; }
Colleen Kennedy has a nice primer: https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_
It may also help to have an indexing method so you can find things later. John Locke's method is one of the oldest and most compact, though if you plan on doing this for a while, having a separate book for your index can be helpful. You can also create your index using index cards the way that Ross Ashby did; see: https://ashby.info/index.html
For John Locke's method try: - https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock - https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685/
If you're into history, development, and examples of how people did this in the past, Earl Haven's has an excellent short book:<br /> 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. https://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/99718/earle-havens/commonplace-books-a-history-of-manuscripts-and-printed-books-from-antiquity-to-the-twentieth
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victorianweb.org victorianweb.org
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“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”
Indexing the world into a commonplace book, zettelkasten, or other means can create new perspectives on the world in which we live. It thereby helps to prevent the sorts of cognitive bias which we might otherwise fall trap to.
This example of Homes indexing crime gives him a dramatically different perspective on crime in the countryside to Watson who only sees the beauty in the story of "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches."
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www.pcusa.org www.pcusa.org
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- Feb 2024
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Tinderbox Meetup Sunday 18 February 24: Tools for Thought with Chris Aldrich
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My first spread doing this, I am so excited :D
quote from u/Panna1207 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18uqjwk/my_first_spread_doing_this_i_am_so_excited_d/
https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/search/?q=spread&restrict_sr=1
First time I've seen a photo of a commonplace book referred to a "spread" which is more commonly seen in Bullet Journal contexts.
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- Jan 2024
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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With your Kokuyo Binder- do you know of a way to bind relatively large numbers of pages together? I want to use something like this as my commonplace book and archive as I go, but once I get enough archived on a given subject, I'd like to bind it as a sort of compendium. Does that seem possible with these or are they not good for larger numbers of pages?
reply to u/modspyder at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18fbwqx/comment/ko8bksm/
The small plastic binder I use comfortably holds 50 pages, but has room for maybe 25 more (though not 50). You could use several of them for binding together groups of pages like that. Searching around might reveal larger ring binders here if you want larger books.
For larger quantities:
You can use book rings (sold in various sizes) or even binder clips to hold these sheets together in batches, but with the ability to remove them or add sheets later.
File folders might be a useful option too for holding things together in categories.
With some inexpensive book binder's glue and cardboard you could bind together much larger numbers of sheets into custom books for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nivNPCoAHcM is a good basic primer, but you could also do more complicated bindings and covers or have pages bound at FedEx/Kinkos or other higher end professional binders depending on your need and ultimate budget. For this the sky may be the limit, though anything over 1000 pages may be getting awfully bulky.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Without seeming to realize the split between the two ideas, Cahall seems to have organically discovered the basic difference between a topically oriented commonplace book method (on index cards) and a Luhmann-artig method of numbering cards as folgezettel.
He recommends picking one or the other, or potentially doing both and not worrying.
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This is why choosing an external system that forces us todeliberate practice and confronts us as much as possible with ourlack of understanding or not-yet-learned information is such a smartmove.
Choosing an external system for knowledge keeping and production forces the learner into a deliberate practice and confronts them with their lack of understanding. This is a large part of the underlying value not only of the zettelkasten, but of the use of a commonplace book which Benjamin Franklin was getting at when recommending that one "read with a pen in your hand". The external system also creates a modality shift from reading to writing by way of thinking which further underlines the value.
What other building blocks are present in addition to: - modality shift - deliberate practice - confrontation of lack of understanding
Are there other systems that do all of these as well as others simultaneously?
link to Franklin quote: https://hypothes.is/a/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
- Dec 2023
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGGQNqBaFDA<br /> Homekeeping Schedule by FindingKellyAnn<br /> posted Jul 25, 2013
Example of a user's Sidetracked Home Executives card index.
Includes a section of notes she took on a book at one time. She used it for a while and reported that it was successful, but she no longer uses it and has a binder method instead.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Getting over the fear of perfection .t3_188j2xt._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I have so many half-filled notebooks or ones that I abandoned because I disliked my penmanship or because I “ruined” pages. I am the type of person who will tear out a page if I make a mistake or if it looks bad.I really want to start a commonplace book but I feel like I must get over this fear of “messing up” in a notebook. Anyone else struggle with this?
reply to u/FusRoDaahh at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/188j2xt/getting_over_the_fear_of_perfection/
I had this problem too, but eventually switched to keeping my commonplace entirely on index cards, which also allows me to move them around and re-arrange them as necessary or when useful. (It also fixed some of my indexing problems.)
The side benefit is that if I botch a single card, no sweat, just pull out a new one and start over! If you like the higher end stationery scene afforded in notebooks, then take a look at Clairfontaine's bristol cards from Exacompta which are lush and come in a variety of sizes, colors, and rulings. (They're roughly equivalent to the cost per square meter of paper you'll find in finer notebooks like Leuchtturm, Hobonichi, Moleskine, etc., though some of the less expensive index cards still do well with many writing instruments.) Most of their card sizes are just about perfect for capturing the sorts of entries that one might wish to commonplace.
Once you've been at it a while, if you want to keep up with the luxe route that some notebook practices allow, then find yourself a classy looking box to store them all in to make your neighbors jealous. My card indexes bring me more joy than any notebook ever did.
When penmanship becomes a problem, then you can fix it by printing your cards, or (even better in my opinion), typing them on your vintage Smith-Corona Clipper.
And of course the first thing one could type out on their first card and file it at the front where you can see it every day:
"Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien" (The better is the mortal enemy of the good).<br /> — Montesquieu, in Pensées, 1726
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Best Organization/Index System? .t3_18aggj9._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/whiteo3 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18aggj9/best_organizationindex_system/
One of the most common methods may be using John Locke's indexing system. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685/ (And, yes, it's THAT John Locke...)
You could have a single notebook you use as your index which indexes the rest. Not sure how you number pages (or not), but you could keep a running page number from one notebook to the next to make differentiating notebooks a bit easier.
W. Ross Ashby was known to keep running page numbers across notebooks like this, however, instead of a notebook-based index, he actually used index cards to index them (the way libraries used to index books by subject, but instead of indexing books, he was obviously indexing quotes, ideas, and notes). So you could use a card with your index word on it with page numbers (and potentially brief notes). Then just file the category headings alphabetically to find them later. His collection has been digitized, so you can view it online to see what he was doing: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index.html
If you want to do hybrid paper/digital you could look at https://www.indxd.ink/, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears.
I've used Obsidian in combination with Hypothes.is and documented the way I created a subject index out of it: https://boffosocko.com/2022/05/20/creating-a-commonplace-book-or-zettelkasten-index-from-hypothes-is-tags/
I've also used WordPress as a commonplace of sorts and documented what I did to make an index for that: https://boffosocko.com/2021/09/04/an-index-for-my-digital-commonplace-book/
Searching the entire sub may also unearth other options to get your creative indexing juices flowing: https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/search/?q=index&restrict_sr=1
Good luck!
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- Nov 2023
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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Chapter 39 of Zoonomia, “On Generation,” presents Erasmus’ ideas on competition, extinction, and how “different fibrils or molecules are detached from…the parent…to form” the child. The Temple of Nature goes even farther, declaring “all vegetables and animals now existing were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones, formed by spontaneous vitality” in ancient oceans.
Interesting to contemplate the evolution of the idea of evolution through the Darwin family.
Charles would obviously have read his grandfather's book, but it also bears noting that he also had access to his grandfather's commonplace book (and likely his other papers).
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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GRMacGirl · 3 days agoSame. I journal them in a Commonplace Book. If I feel the need to keep a note IN the book for some reason I write it on a separate piece of paper and tuck it between the pages. Exception: cooking/recipe books where I need to have the information right there any time I’m cooking the food.
Interesting use of the verb "journal" to indicate placing something into a commonplace book.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Cannot get it either to be honest. I want to use the antinet method for 2 main topics: Management and Personal growthIn management, for sure needs to add notion of leadership for example: how to approach the coding identification? I’ve assigned 2000 to management: shall I assign 2500 to all cards related to leadership? This is just an example, it’s a bit unclear for me so far.
reply to u/marco89lcdm at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17m7ggz/comment/k839k22/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
The way you're currently thinking is a top down approach in which you already know everything and you're attempting to organize it to make it easier for others who know nothing about the ideas to find them. The Luhmann model supposes you know nothing about anything to begin with and you're attempting to create order from the bottom up, solely by putting related ideas you're building on close to each other and giving them numbers so that you might find them again when you need them.
If your only use is for those two topics and closely related subtopics and nothing else, then consider not using a Luhmann-artig model? Leave off the numbers and create two tabbed cards with those headings (and possibly related subheadings) and then sort your related cards behind them. (This is closer to the commonplace book tradition maintained on index cards and used by those like Mortimer J. Adler et al., Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday and Billy Oppenheimer. Example: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/)
Otherwise the mistake you may be making is mentally associating the top level numbers with the topics. Break this habit! The numbers are only there so you can index ideas against them to be able to find them again! These numbers aren't like the Dewey Decimal system where 510.### will always mean something to do with math. You'll specifically want to intermingle disparate topics, so the only purpose the numbers provide is the ability to find what you're looking for by using the index which will give you a neighborhood in which you'll find the ideas you know are going to be hiding there or very near by.
Cards that are near to each other (using the numbers as an idea of ordering and re-finding) create a neighborhood of related ideas, even if they're disparate in topics. This might allow you to intermingle two related ideas, one which is in anthropology and another from mathematics for example, but which would otherwise potentially be thousands of cards away from each other if done in a Dewey-like system.
Or to take your example, what do you do with an idea that relates to both management AND personal growth? If it's closer to an idea on management you might place it near a related idea on that branch rather than in the personal growth section where it may be potentially less useful in the future. (You can always cross index them if need be, but place it where it creates the closest link and thus likely the greatest value for building on top of your previous ideas.)
For more on this, try: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/
I suspect that Scheper suggests using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as a numbering structure because it's an early choice he made for himself and it provides a perch to give people a concrete place to start. Sadly this does a disservice because it's closer to the older commonplace topical method rather than to the spirit of the ordering that Luhmann was doing. It's especially difficult for beginners who have a natural tendency to want to do this sort of top-down approach.
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- Oct 2023
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80UMxoN0Teo
Megan Rhiannon shows how she's using her FiloFax for planning as well as commonplacing.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Posted byu/practicalSloth2 days agoAnyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I really like the idea of being able to re-sort pages and was wondering if anyone has tried something like this? I've also considered an "Everbook", but was a bit concerned with all the loose pages of paper flying around everywhere
u/practicalSloth interested in implementing a commonplace book using a FiloFax!
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Anyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/practicalSloth at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/17drtzn/anyone_use_a_filofax_or_similar_for_a_commonplace/
For centuries, many have kept their commonplace books on index cards or slips of paper) rather than on book/notebook pages just like you're suggesting. They then indexed them against topic words and filed the ideas alphabetically rather than writing them in books and indexing them separately.
Some popular versions of the practice which are described/viewable online include:
- Ryan Holiday: https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/ and https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/ Ryan has also covered some of his methods on his YouTube channel as well.
- Billy Oppenheimer: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/
- Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
- Mortimer J. Adler et. al.: https://boffosocko.com/2023/09/28/mortimer-j-adlers-syntopicon-a-topically-arranged-collaborative-slipbox/
Others with index card or small slip-based commonplaces include Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Diller (whose commonplaced joke file is now at the Smithsonian), and Joan Rivers.
In German, this general practice was called zettelkasten (which translates as slip box), there are lots of people doing versions of this in r/Zettelkasten following some of Niklas Luhmann's method. Many more are using digital platforms like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. for this.
Certainly putting it into a FiloFax is a flexible and doable option.
I've written a bit about the mistaken identities and differences between Niklas Luhmann's practice which has become popular in English speaking countries over the last decade and index card-based commonplaces: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.
Perhaps some of the examples will give you some ideas for how to best do your own. Good luck!
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- Sep 2023
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kairos.technorhetoric.net kairos.technorhetoric.net
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https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/index.htm
An interesting commonplace book-like old school website with an actual "index" and fascinatingly about "Rhetorics of the Web"!
Example of a collected quote: https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/burke.htm
Note also the linked ideas at the bottom of this example.
It also has a references section: https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/referenc.htm
The separations of the pieces and their form is very reminiscent of a zettelkasten and the building up of pieces in places almost admits to a hand-built wiki.
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jhiblog.org jhiblog.org
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Merchants have their waste book, Sudelbuch or Klitterbuch in German I believe, in which they list all that they have sold or bought every single day, everything as it comes and in no particular order. The waste book’s content is then transferred to the Journal in a more systematic fashion, and at last it ends up in the “Leidger [sic] at double entrance,” following the Italian way of bookkeeping. […] This is a process worthy of imitation by the learned.”(See Ulrich Joost’s analysis in this volume, 24-35.)
I've seen this quote earlier today, but interesting seeing another source quote it.
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I mean, just what I said. If you adapt the zettelkasten to meet knowledge management needs, that’s great. But it does need adapting (as your examples, none of which are conversation-partner zettelkästen but, as syntopicon implies, a collection of information gathered into categories) and is not the best way to do it. (Edit: Ryan Holiday’s system is, by his own admission, not a zettelkästen despite being a bunch of cards with notes on them categorized in a box). Even the source you use about Goitein admits that he was more in the commonplace book tradition, and that other people’s use of his cards is not common to the point of being remarked on here. He doesn’t even call it a zettelkästen, and shouldn’t. There’s not even links or reference numbers, which are integral to the ZK system.It’s not an argument. But as with everything ymmv.(For what it’s worth, my ZK is extremely specific to my individual projects and readings. But I imagine that yes, with time and heavy adaptations, you can make it into little more than a record of my knowledge into broad topics. That you can use it that way does not mean that’s what it is for.)
reply to u/glugolly at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16njtfx/comment/k1l8lyk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
How is it that you're defining knowledge management or knowledge management system?
I would argue that any zettelkasten of any stripe is taking knowledge/ideas from either content or one's own brain and transferring them into some sort of media by which they are managed or structured in some way for later linking, combination, or other reuse. By base definition this is clearly knowledge management. I don't know how one defines it otherwise except by pure denial.
Your view of zettelkasten seems remarkably narrow. As a small sample the original Maschinen der Phantasie Marbach exhibition in 2013, which broadly prefigured the popularization of zettelkasten (and in particular the launch of zettelkasten.de) which we see today featured six zettelkasten of which Luhmann's was the only one with reference numbers or what we might now consider explicit HTML-like links. Most of the others contained either explicit groupings or implied links, but that doesn't diminish the value they held for their creators for creating a conversation of ideas for them. Incidentally most of the zettelkasten featured there prefigured Luhmann's and only two were roughly contemporaneous with his.
If you look more closely at Adler, et al. you'll notice that the entire purpose of their enterprise was to create and nurture a conversation between themselves and their readers with texts and authors spanning over 2,500 years, a point which is underlined by the introductory volume which preceded the two volumes of the Syntopicon. Not coincidentally, that first volume of the 54 book series was entitled "The Great Conversation."
Specifically from Adler's "How to Read a Book", the first edition of which predated the Great Books of the Western World:
Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author.
This is a process which is effectuated by
Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
and later,
That is to make notes about the shape of the discussion-the discussion that is engaged in by all of the authors, even if unbeknownst to them. For reasons that will become clear in Part Four, we prefer to call such notes dialectical.
(As an aside, why aren't more people talking about the nature of dialectical notes, which seem far more important and useful than either fleeting notes and permanent notes?)
In your link to Holiday, he doesn't say his system isn't a zettelkasten, a word which an English speaker was highly unlikely to have used in 2013 in any case, even when referencing Manfred Kuehn from 2007. It simply indicates that "[Luhmann's] discipline seems to exceed mine because I am a lot less ordered".
The Goitein source (which I wrote) may use commonplace book as a descriptor but that doesn't mitigate the fact that the entirety of the zettelkasten tradition arises from it (the primary difference being things written (usually) on bound pages versus slips of paper). Before these there was the closely related idea of florilegia stemming from the earlier locus communis (Latin) and tópos koinós (Greek).
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ryanholiday.net ryanholiday.net
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According to his biographer, Michael Keene, General Patton used to use a similar system: “He read every treatise on warfare ever written. He would take copious notes on 4-by-6 index cards for every book that he ever read. It was that immense knowledge of history that he had that he could bring to battle. So he could almost anticipate what the enemy was going to do next.”
via SAMUEL MORNINGSTAR comment on August 14, 2014 at 5:22 pm
According to Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer by Michael Keene, General George Patton used a 4x6" index card system for note taking.
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I was searching for notecard systems after reading Will and Ariel Durant’s dual autobiography and not having much luck. The book talks a lot about his writing and the use of “classification slips” to cover the depth of material, especially for The Story of Civilization series they did.
via SAM on January 15, 2017 at 8:54 pm
Apparently Will Durant and Ariel Durant used a form of commonplace book set up in which they used "classification slips".
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-It looks like the system is also very similar to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten
Ryan Holiday's system puts some of the work farther from the note taking origin compared with Nicholas Luhmann's system which places more of it up front.
How, if at all, do the payoffs from doing each of these vary for the end user of the system?
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bobdoto.computer bobdoto.computer
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folgezettel pushes the note maker toward making at least one connection at the time of import.
There is a difference between the sorts of links one might make when placing an idea into an (analog) zettelkasten. A folgezettel link is more valuable than a simple tag/category link because it places an idea into a more specific neighborhood than any handful of tags. This is one of the benefits of a Luhmann-artig ZK system over a more traditional commonplace one, particularly when the work is done up front instead of being punted to a later time.
For those with a 1A2B3Z linking system (versus a pure decimal system), it may be more difficult to insert a card before other cards rather than after them because of the potential gymnastics of numbering and the natural tendency to put things into a continuing linear order.
See also: - https://hypothes.is/a/ToqCPq1bEe2Q0b88j4whwQ - https://hyp.is/WtB2AqmlEe2wvCsB5ZyL5A/docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/Introduction-to-Luhmanns-Zette---Ludecke-Daniel-h4nh8.pdf
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iRzF_ZAdUI
Scott Sheper demonstrates one of the lowest forms of zettelkasten: simply indexing an idea from a book into one's index. This includes skipping the step of excerpting the idea into it's own card.
He describes it as zettelkasten knowledge building for busy people. It's definitely a hard turn from his all-in Luhmann-esque method.
In the end it comes down to where one puts in the work. Saving the work of having done some reading for a small idea one may tangentially reference later is most of the distance, but he's still going to have to do more work later to use the idea.
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(1:20.00-1:40.00) What he describes is the following: Most of his notes originate from the digital using hypothes.is, where he reads material online and can annotate, highlight, and tag to help future him find the material by tag or bulk digital search. He calls his hypothes.is a commonplace book that is somewhat pre-organized.
Aldrich continues by explaining that in his commonplace hypothes.is his notes are not interlinked in a Luhmannian Zettelkasten sense, but he "sucks the data" right into Obsidian where he plays around with the content and does some of that interlinking and massage it.
Then, the best of the best material, or that which he is most interested in working with, writing about, etc., converted into a more Luhmannesque type Zettelkasten where it is much more densely interlinked. He emphasizes that his Luhmann zettelkasten is mostly consisting of his own thoughts and is very well-developed, to the point where he can "take a string of 20 cards and ostensibly it's its own essay and then publish it as a blog post or article."
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delong.typepad.com delong.typepad.com
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The first is a commonplace. By combining analysis with experimentation-by combining theorizing with systematic observation of natural phenomena-men like Galileo and Newton launched an intellectual revolution and helped to usher in our modern age of science. Not only did they discover truths about the physical world that continue to be relevant and important, but they also developed new methods of studying nature that have proved to be of wide usefulness in many areas of study and research.
Adler has juxtaposed the ideas of genius and commonplace together, but somehow doesn't notice the ratchet that ties them together to be one and the same tool for making them so productive?!?
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The first is a commonplace.
Interesting use of the word commonplace here. Used in the philosophical sense rather than the meanings of "everyday" or "commonplace book".
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- Aug 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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For context, I don't use a traditional Zettelkasten system. It's more of a commonplace book/notecard system similar to Ryan HolidayI recently transitioned to a digital system and have been using Logseq, which I enjoy. It's made organizing my notes and ideas much easier, but I've noticed that I spend a lot of time on organizing my notesSince most of my reading is on Kindle, my process involves reading and highlighting as I read, then exporting those highlights to Markdown and making a page in Logseq. Then I tag every individual highlightThis usually isn't too bad if a book/research article has 20-30 highlights, but, for example, I recently had a book with over 150 highlights, and I spent about half an hour tagging each oneI started wondering if it's overkill to tag each highlight since it can be so time consuming. The advantage is that if I'm looking for passages about a certain idea/topic, I can find it specifically rather than having to go through the whole bookI was also thinking I could just have a set of tags for each book/article that capture what contexts I'd want to find the information in. This would save time, but I'd spend a little more time digging through each document looking for specificsCurious to hear your thoughts, appreciate any suggestions
reply to m_t_rv_s__n/ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/164n6qg/is_this_overkill/
First, your system is historically far more traditional than Luhmann's more specific practice. See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/
If you're taking all the notes/highlights from a particular book and keeping them in a single file, then it may be far quicker and more productive to do some high level tagging on the entire book/file itself and then relying on and using basic text search to find particular passages you might use at a later date.
Spending time reviewing over all of your notes and tagging/indexing them individually may be beneficial for some basic review work. But this should be balanced out with your long term needs. If your area is "sociology", for example, and you tag every single idea related to the topic of sociology with #sociology, then it will cease to have any value you to you when you search for it and find thousands of disconnected notes you will need to sift through. Compare this with Luhmann's ZK which only had a few index entries under "sociology". A better long term productive practice, and one which Luhmann used, is indexing one or two key words when he started in a new area and then "tagging" each new idea in that branch or train of though with links to other neighboring ideas. If you forget a particular note, you can search your index for a keyword and know you'll find that idea you need somewhere nearby. Scanning through the neighborhood of notes you find will provide a useful reminder of what you'd been working on and allow you to continue your work in that space or link new things as appropriate.
If it helps to reframe the long term scaling problem of over-tagging, think of a link from one idea to another as the most specific tag you can put on an idea. To put this important idea into context, if you do a Google search for "tagging" you'll find 240,000,000 results! If you do a search for the entirety of the first sentence in this paragraph, you'll likely only find one very good and very specific result, and the things which are linked to it are going to have tremendous specific value to you by comparison.
Perhaps the better portions of your time while reviewing notes would be taking the 150 highlights and finding the three to five most important, useful, and (importantly) reusable ones to write out in your own words and begin expanding upon and linking? These are the excerpts you'll want to spend more time on and tag/index for future use rather than the other hundreds. Over time, you may eventually realize that the hundreds are far less useful than the handful (in management spaces this philosophy is known as the Pareto principle), so spending a lot of make work time on them is less beneficial for whatever end goals you may have. (The make work portions are often the number one reason I see people abandoning these practices because they feel overwhelmed working on raw administrivia instead of building something useful and interesting to themselves.) Naturally though, you'll still have those hundreds sitting around in a file if you need to search, review, or use them. You won't have lost them by not working on them, but more importantly you'll have gained loads of extra time to work on the more important pieces. You should notice that the time you save and the value you create will compound over time.
And as ever, play around with these to see if they work for you and your specific needs. Some may be good and others bad—it will depend on your needs and your goals. Practice, experiment, have fun.
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www.instagram.com www.instagram.com
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Journalist John Dickerson [https://twitter.com/jdickerson/status/1458036871531937798 indicates] that he uses [[Instagram]] as a commonplace: https://www.instagram.com/jfdlibrary/ where 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 [[annotation]]s he makes in books.
syndication links: https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/16118vy/john_dickersons_digital_commonplace/
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Sir RichardLivingstone said: "We are tied down, all our days and forthe greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That iswhere contact with great thinkers, great literature helps.
What is the original context of this quote? Which meaning of "the commonplace" does he mean? The generic or the commonplace book?
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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The American Philosopher Eric Hoffer was a great quotation collector. he has boxes and boxes of them all typed up on index cards. I began doing it after reading his biography where before they were scattered everywhere.
Eric Hoffer apparently had a collection of quotes which he kept on index cards in boxes.
Potentially mentioned in one of his biographies. Possibly:<br /> - American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer by Tom Shachtman https://www.amazon.com/American-Iconoclast-Life-Times-Hoffer/dp/1933435380<br /> - Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Hoffer-Longshoreman-Philosopher-Institution/dp/0817914153
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- Jul 2023
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I regularly copy favorite sentences and passages from my reading into a small notebook I’ve kept since I was in my early 20s.
Michael Dirda keeps a version of a commonplace book.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Overloaded with notes .t3_15218d5._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } A few years ago I moved from Evernote to Obsidian. Evernote had this cool web clipper feature that helped me gather literary quotes, tweets, Wikipedia facts, interview bits, and any kinds of texts all around the web. And now I have a vault with 10k notes.I am trying to review a few every time I open Obsidian (add tags, link it, or delete) but it is still too much.Did someone have the same experience? How did you manage to fix everything and move to a bit more controllable system (zettelkasten or any other)?Cus I feel like I am standing in front of a text tsunami
reply to u/posh-and-repressed at https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/15218d5/overloaded_with_notes/
Overwhelm of notes always reminds me of this note taking story from 1908: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/24/death-by-zettelkasten/ If you've not sorted them, tagged/categorized them or other, then search is really your only recourse. One of the benefits of Luhmann's particular structure is that it nudged him to read and review through older cards as he worked and filed new ones. Those with commonplace books would have occasionally picked up their notebooks and paged through them from time to time. Digital methods like Obsidian don't always do a good job of allowing or even forcing this review work on the user, so you may want to look at synthetic means like one of the random note plugins. Otherwise don't worry too much. Fix your tagging/categorizing/indexing now so that things slowly improve in the future. (I'm sitting on a pile of over 50K notes without the worry of overwhelm, primarily as I've managed to figure out how to rely on my index and search.)
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Converting Commonplace Books? .t3_14v2ohz._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/ihaveascone at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14v2ohz/converting_commonplace_books/
Don't convert unless you absolutely need to, it will be a lot of soul-crushing make work. Since some of your practice already looks like Ross Ashby's system, why not just continue what you've been doing all along and start a physical index card-based index for your commonplaces? (As opposed to a more classical Lockian index.) As you browse your commonplaces create index cards for topics you find and write down the associated book/page numbers. Over time you'll more quickly make your commonplace books more valuable while still continuing on as you always have without skipping much a beat or attempting to convert over your entire system. Alternately you could do a paper notebook with a digital index too. I came across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.
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CPB vs Reading Notes .t3_14li1ri._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Does anyone separate their reading notes from their common place Notebook? I’ve always used a notebook to combine my Bullet Journal, reading notes, and Common Place. It’s been a mesh of words and I’ve been ok w that, but I just got the Remarkable 2 and I’m trying to figure out how to set it up. Any ideas?
reply to u/Nil205 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/14li1ri/cpb_vs_reading_notes/
I have a similar and differently formed, but still simple system compared to most here. Rather than a traditional commonplace book, I keep all my notes on index cards. I keep all my reading notes for a particular book on a series of index cards that I staple together with a citation card for the book and then file them by author and title.
When I'm done, I'll excerpt the most important parts each individual note (highlight/annotation) and expand on them on its own index card which I file away and index. In your case you might equivalently have a reading notebook where you might keep a section of notes as you read a book and then excerpt the most important or salient parts into your main commonplace. Some may prefer, especially if they own the book in question, to annotate (put their reading notes into) the book directly and then excerpt either as they go or at the end when they're done and can frame their ideas with a broader knowledge of the area in question. Sometimes at later dates you may realize you read something useful which you don't find in your commonplace book, but you can find the gist of it in your reading notes which you can reference, refresh your memory, and then excerpt into your commonplace.
For more on my sort of card index or zettelkasten (German: slip box) practice you might take a look at one or more of the following which explain the broad generalities:
- 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.
- 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/.
- Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
- Tietze, Christian. “Getting Started: Zettelkasten Method.” Blog/forum. Zettelkasten, 2015. https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/.
If it's useful/inspiring as an example, Ross Ashby had a lifelong series of notebooks, much like a commonplace, and a separate card index where he cross-indexed all of his ideas to make them more easily searchable, findable, and cross referenceable. You can see digitized versions of the journals and index online which you can explore at http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index.html.
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reply to Bob Doto at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14lcb4z/using_diaries_and_journals_as_source_material_for/
Ross Ashby kept his notes in notebooks/journals but he did cross-index them by topic using index cards. Rather than reference them by notebook (name/title/date) and page number, he kept a set of handwritten running page numbers across the entirety of his notebooks, so instead of Notebook 15 page 55, 1952 he'd simply write "3786" for page 3786. This can be seen on his index card for the indexed word "determinate" as an example.
For other examples, see: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html
My own notebooks are usually titled by year and date spans along with page numbers, so I'll use those roughly as Bob describes. This has made it much easier to not need to move all my older notes into a card-based system, but still make them useable and referenceable.
For those with more explicit journaling, diary, or other writing habits, Ralph Waldo Emmerson makes an interesting example of practice as he maintained at least two commonplace books (a poetry-specific one and a general one) as well as a large set of writing journals where he experimented with writing before later publishing his work. Since there are extant (digitized and published copies) and large bodies of scholarship around them, they make an interesting case study of how his process worked and how others might imitate it.
On the diary front, of the historical examples I've seen floating around, only Roland Barthes had a significant practice of keeping his "diary" in index card form, a portion of which was published on October 12, 2010. Mourning Diary is a collection published for the first time from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.
Not as extensive, Vladimir Nabokov recorded a "diary" of sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.
Presumably if one keeps a diary or journal in index card form in chronological order, they can simply reference it by date and either time or card X of Y, if there are multiple card entries for a single day. I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day.
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- Jun 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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What I love and appreciate from Metivier, he will cite his sources. He makes it super easy to go back to his sources and mine those materials myself. He gives credit to other memory experts and is transparent throughout his books and course about where he is in his own process of growing and learning. In summary, we don't need originality, we need what works and in the scholarly world- syncretizing multiple sources and distilling them into a process IS original even if every building block is coming from another source. We're all standing on the shoulders of the giants before us.
My note-taking method is informed by the commonplace book and zettelkasten: why reinvent a wheel that needs no reinventing (it is only, really, about translating things from one medium to another)
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As Chris Aldridge says, for centuries the Zettelkasten approach was the standard and universal method for producing books and articles - until personal computers took over. Nearly every serious work ever published before the 1980s was drafted either with index cards or paper slips, or else with notebooks in a commonplace style. Every writer had their own take on these two options, but that’s what they all used. Then, in a single decade, word processing software took over. These days, most writers use something like Microsoft Word or Google Docs (just try persuading your publisher you’re not giving them a docx file). Scrivener became popular because it critiqued the ‘endless roll of paper’ model and reverted to an index card interface of sorts. But it remained a niche.Today, you either thrive on that word processor model or you don’t. I really don’t, which is why I’ve invested effort, as you have, in researching previous writing workflows, older than the all-conquering PC of the late 1980s and early 90s. At the same time, new writing tools are challenging the established Microsoft way, but in doing so are drawing attention to the fact that each app locks the user into a particular set of assumptions about the drafting and publishing process.The current academic scene is a brutal war to publish or perish. It’s not unusual for a researcher to write or co-write 30-40 peer-reviewed articles per year. General publishing is also frenetic. In the UK, 20 books are published every hour of the day. It all makes Luhmann’s ‘prolific’ output look lazy. Now though, AI is blowing the entire field apart. From now on, prolific writing is what computers do best. There’s no reason not to publish 20,000 books per hour. Soon enough, that will be the output per ‘author’. Where the pieces will eventually land is anyone’s guess. For example, the workflow of the near future might involve one part writing and nineteen parts marketing. Except that AI has got that sewn up too. Meanwhile, until the world ends, I’m just having fun doing my thing.
Before the advent of the computer, the use of a zettelkasten or commonplace book to research was "common place".
What happened with the transition? Perhaps the methodology was lost in the transition, people just dumping things into a word file?
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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According to Henderson, there are three steps to keeping a commonplace book:
1) Read (Consume)
"Commonplace books begin with observation."
2) Capture (Write) Always also capture the source.
3) Reflect Write own thoughts about the material. Synthesize, think.
I'd personally use a digital commonplace book (hypothes.is), like Chris Aldrich explains, as my capture method and my Antinet Zettelkasten as my reflect methodology. This way the commonplace book fosters what Luhmann would call the thought rumination process.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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A commonplace book, according to Jared Henderson, is a way to not collect own thoughts (though sometimes it is) but rather to collect thoughts by others that you deem interesting.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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(1:21:20-1:39:40) Chris Aldrich describes his hypothes.is to Zettelkasten workflow. Prevents Collector's Fallacy, still allows to collect a lot. Open Bucket vs. Closed Bucket. Aldrich mentions he uses a common place book using hypothes.is which is where all his interesting highlights and annotations go to, unfiltered, but adequately tagged. This allows him to easily find his material whenever necessary in the future. These are digital. Then the best of the best material that he's interested in and works with (in a project or writing sense?) will go into his Zettelkasten and become fully fledged. This allows to maintain a high gold to mud (signal to noise) ratio for the Zettelkasten. In addition, Aldrich mentions that his ZK is more of his own thoughts and reflections whilst the commonplace book is more of other people's thoughts.
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www.gutenberg.org www.gutenberg.org
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I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand, and enter in a little book short hints of what you find that is curious or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such particulars in your memory, where they will be ready either for practice on some future occasion if they are matters of utility, or at least to adorn and improve your conversation if they are rather points of curiosity.
Benjamin Franklin letter to Miss Stevenson, Wanstead. Craven-street, May 16, 1760.
Franklin doesn't use the word commonplace book here, but is actively recommending the creation and use of one. He's also encouraging the practice of annotation, though in commonplace form rather than within the book itself.
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- May 2023
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Connecting a Zettelkasten to a Commonplace Book
Interesting to see Scott trying this... I'm sure I've seen it before in a setting like this, but its obviously been done in the commonplace space by itself.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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unemployed diaries - ep. 01 - book haul, my commonplace notebook system
found via Richard Carter
Really nice example of someone using colour-coding and marginal notes/cross-references in a (paper) commonplace book. (My link skips the first 09:20 of the video, which comprises a book unboxing and notebook description.) #PKM<br /> cc. @chrisaldrich https://youtu.be/90gb7Eo8uMk?t=560
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bulletjournal.com bulletjournal.com
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https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/bulletjournalist/the-commonplace-book-as-a-thinker-s-journal
very meh... barely scratches the surface.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaHEgPk0tNM
Rowan Williams quote - not who I thought he was
- Read
- Write (collect)
- Reflect
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Commonplace books begin with observation.
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Jared Henderson defines commonplace books as only containing the thoughts of others collected while reading. In the following breath, he then says he writes summaries of his own ideas and then creates links between the ideas...
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againstthefuture.net againstthefuture.net
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This site is a blog where I write longer form posts, commentary, and announce personal projects, but its most frequent use is as a commonplace book.
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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Let us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. Here we have written down the names of great writers in their order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink. —“Hours in a Library”
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www.instagram.com www.instagram.com
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https://www.instagram.com/dailynotecard/
Someone posting photos of an index-card based commonplace book on Instagram.
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- Apr 2023
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thoughtcatalog.com thoughtcatalog.com
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Ryan Holiday o prowadzeniu commonplace book, choć tak naprawdę nie o tym, bo też o karteczkowej metodzie. Właściwie to niewiele wyjaśnie jak to działa i czym należy się kierować. Wg mnie to mało użyteczny zbiór cytatów i obserwacji, jednak dobry tekst do zainspirowania się, aby gromadzić informację i rozbudowywać swój zbiór wiedzy.
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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Compared to this structure that offers actualizable connection possibilities, the relevance of the actual content of the note subsides. Much of it quickly becomes useless or is unusable for a concrete occasion. That is true for both collected quotes, which are only worth collecting when they are exceptionally concise, and for your own thoughts.
Luhmann felt that quotations aren't worth collecting unless they were "exceptionally concise, and for your own thoughts."
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A Zettelkasten that is constructed based on our instructions can achieve high independence. There may be other ways to achieve this goal. The described reduction to a fixed-placement (but merely formal) order, and the corresponding combination of order and disorder, is at least one of them.
The structural components of Luhmann's zettelkasten which allow for "achieving high independence" are also the same structures found in an indexed commonplace book: namely fixed placement (formally by the order in which things are found and collected) as well as combinations of order and disorder (the methods by which they can be retrieved and read).
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Similarly, you must give up the assumption that there are privileged places, notes of special and knowledge-ensuring quality. Each note is just an element that gets its value from being a part of a network of references and cross-references in the system. A note that is not connected to this network will get lost in the Zettelkasten, and will be forgotten by the Zettelkasten.
This section is almost exactly the same as Umberto Eco's description of a slip box practice:
No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them. -- Umberto Eco. Foucault's Pendulum
See: https://hypothes.is/a/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw
Interestingly, these structures map reasonably well onto Paul Baran's work from 1964:
The subject heading based filing system looks and functions a lot like a centralized system where the center (on a per topic basis) is the subject heading or topical category and the notes related to that section are filed within it. Luhmann's zettelkasten has the feel of a mixture of the decentralized and distributed graphs, but each sub-portion has its own topology. The index is decentralized in nature, while the bibliographical section/notes are all somewhat centralized in form.
Cross reference:<br /> Baran, Paul. “On Distributed Communications: I. Introduction to Distributed Communications Networks.” Research Memoranda. Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, August 1964. https://doi.org/10.7249/RM3420.
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There are two ways for a communication system to maintain its integrity over long periods of time: you need to decide for either highly technical specialisation, or for a setup that incorporates coincidence and ad hoc generated information. Translated to note collections: you can choose a setup categorized by topics, or an open one. We chose the latter and, after 26 successful years with only occasionally difficult teamwork, we can report that this way is successful – or at least possible.
Luhmann indicates that there are different methods for keeping note collections and specifically mentions categorizing things by topics first. It's only after this that he mentions his own "open" system as being a possible or successful one.
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- card index
- decentralized
- privilege
- position
- commonplace tradition
- distributed
- topology of zettelkasten
- network theory
- idea links
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- quotations
- Paul Baran
- Umberto Eco
- topology
- Niklas Luhmann
- topical headings
- collector's fallacy
- commonplace books
- centralized
- commonplace books vs. zettelkasten
- indices
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www.etymonline.com www.etymonline.com
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Etymologia słowa 'collect' w kontekście gromadzenia zbioru, w konkteście charakteru commonplace book i innych sposobów gromadzenia notatek.
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- Mar 2023
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Local file Local file
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The ability to intentionally and strategically allocateour attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world. Wehave to jealously guard it like a valuable treasure.
It would seem that the word treasure here is being used to modify one's attention. Historically in books about "knowledge work" or commonplacing, the word was used with respect to one's storehouse of knowledge itself and not one's attention. Some of the effect is the result of the break in historical tradition being passed down from one generation to another. It's also an indication that the shift in value has moved not from what one knows or has, but that the attention itself is more valued now, even in a book about excerpting, thinking, and keeping knowledge!
Oh how far we have fallen!
It's also an indication of the extremes of information overload we're facing that the treasure is attention and not the small tidbits of knowledge and understanding we're able to glean from the massive volumes we face on a daily basis.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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Or, we canpicture ourselves collecting bones, breaking and roastingthem, and then boiling them for hours or days in a stockpot to release the nutritious and tasty marrow.
We can imagine mining the information we encounter, following veins and seams underground, then smelting and refining the ore into useful metals. Occasionally we might come across gems that are nearly perfect when we discover them, perhaps needing only a bit of cutting and setting to reveal their beauty. But mostly the work involves patience and effort, as we go through the steps of finding, collecting, refining, and concentrating information from a raw material into exactly what we need for our structure
I love these two new clever metaphors (mining and refining and cooking) for note taking for building knowledge. They're a welcome addition to the older and more classical metaphor of bees (Latin: apes) collecting pollen to make honey in the commonplace tradition.
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Oxford English Dictionary first attests 'commonplace' (from the Latin 'locus communis') asnoun in 1531 and a verb in 1656; 'excerpt' (from the Latin 'excerpere') as a verb in 1536 and anoun in 1656.
The split between the ideas of commonplace book and zettelkasten may stem from the time period of the Anglicization of the first. If Gessner was just forming the tenets of a zettelkasten practice in 1548 and the name following(?) [what was the first use of zettelkasten?] while the word commonplace was entering English in 1531 using a book format, then the two traditions would likely have been splitting from that point forward in their different areas.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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At present I am using index cards as to index the books (and documents saved on the computer).
u/zleonska in discussing their paper notebook commonplace practice reports that finding their material within multiple notebooks isn't difficult but that, like W. Ross Ashby, they use index cards to index their commonplaces.
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Local file Local fileZettel1
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We were naturally at first rather puzzled to account for thisbox. Were its contents an accidental collection of left-overs?Was it a receptacle for random deposits of casual scraps ofwriting? Should the large works which were some of its sourcesbe published and it be left on one side?
This section makes me question whether or not the editors of this work were aware of the zettelkasten tradition?!?
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJVHhwyx-Cg
An overly complex method of commonplacing, though oddly with absolutely no mention of indexing of any sort.
reply: <br /> If academia doesn't work out, then perhaps you could shill for "Big Notebook"? Seriously though, this is a pretty heavy/complex method of commonplacing. Do you index any/all of it somehow so you can find the pieces you know you've worked through in the past? A card index perhaps? John Locke's commonplacing method? I do something similar, but use slips or index cards the way Wittgenstein or Walter Benjamin did.... Perhaps one day I'll go more visual like https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/browse/ ?
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This research site has a digitized copy of Jonathan Edwards' commonplace book (aka Miscellanies): http://edwards.yale.edu/research/misc-index
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- Feb 2023
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spectator.org spectator.org
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Reagan’s Note Card Treasures<br /> by John H. Fund <br /> at August 10, 2011, 12:00 AM<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 12:25:06)
archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20151017020314/http://spectator.org/articles/37399/reagans-note-card-treasures
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Consisting of quotes, economic statistics, jokes, and anecdotes, they became the core of Ronald Reagan’s traveling research files.
Ronald Reagan's index card-based commonplace book consisted of quotes, economic statistics, jokes, and anecdotes.
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www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com
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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)
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"You can talk to any number of President Reagan's speechwriters over the years, and when they might hand him a speech, the speeches would come back with a quote, or an expression or a joke that they hadn't seen before," John Heubusch, executive director of the Reagan Library, told CBS News' Mo Rocca.
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takingnotenow.blogspot.com takingnotenow.blogspot.com
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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..."
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petersmith.org petersmith.org
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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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wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com
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Writers struggled with the fickle nature of the system. They often spent a great deal of time wading through Wordcraft's suggestions before finding anything interesting enough to be useful. Even when writers struck gold, it proved challenging to consistently reproduce the behavior. Not surprisingly, writers who had spent time studying the technical underpinnings of large language models or who had worked with them before were better able to get the tool to do what they wanted.
Because one may need to spend an inordinate amount of time filtering through potentially bad suggestions of artificial intelligence, the time and energy spent keeping a commonplace book or zettelkasten may pay off magnificently in the long run.
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“...it can be very useful for coming up with ideas out of thin air, essentially. All you need is a little bit of seed text, maybe some notes on a story you've been thinking about or random bits of inspiration and you can hit a button that gives you nearly infinite story ideas.”- Eugenia Triantafyllou
Eugenia Triantafyllou is talking about crutches for creativity and inspiration, but seems to miss the value of collecting interesting tidbits along the road of life that one can use later. Instead, the emphasis here becomes one of relying on an artificial intelligence doing it for you at the "hit of a button". If this is the case, then why not just let the artificial intelligence do all the work for you?
This is the area where the cultural loss of mnemonics used in orality or even the simple commonplace book will make us easier prey for (over-)reliance on technology.
Is serendipity really serendipity if it's programmed for you?
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sciencegarden.net sciencegarden.net
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Neben den Methoden herkömmlicher Recherche werden daher normalerweise Zettelkästen angelegt, in denen auf Karteikarten notiert ist, was ständig zitiert werden muss. Studenten erproben dies oft zum ersten mal intensiv für ihre Diplomarbeit. Nach Schlagworten und Autoren werden Notizen alphabetisch geordnet und was in den Kasten einsortiert wurde, kann man auch wieder herausholen.
Google translate:
In addition to the methods of conventional research, card boxes are usually created in which index cards are used to record what needs to be constantly quoted. Students often try this out intensively for their diploma thesis for the first time. Notes are sorted alphabetically according to keywords and authors, and what has been sorted into the box can also be taken out again.
An indication from 2001 of the state of the art of zettelkasten written in German. Note that the description is focused more on the index card or slip-based version of a commonplace book sorted alphabetically by keywords and authors primarily for quoting. Most students trying the method for the first time are those working on graduate level theses.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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Categories mean determination of internal structure less flexibility, especially “in the long run“ of knowledgemanagement and storage
The fact that Luhmann changed the structure of his zettelkasten with respect to the longer history of note taking and note accumulation allowed him several useful affordances.
In older commonplacing and slip box methods, one would often store their notes by topic category or perhaps by project. This mean that after collection one had to do additional work of laying them out into some sort of outline to create arguments and then write them out for publication. This also meant that one was faced with the problem of multiple storage or copying out notes multiple times to file under various different subject headings.
Luhmann overcame both of these problems by eliminating categories and placing ideas closest to their most relevant neighbor and numbering them in a branching fashion. Doing this front loads some of the thinking and outlining work which would often be done later, though it's likely easier to do when one has the fullest context of a note after they've made it when it is still freshest in their mind. It also means that each note is linked to at least one other note in the system. This helps notes from being lost and allows a simpler indexing structure whereby one only needs to use a few index entries to get close to the neighborhood of an idea as most other related ideas are likely to be nearby within a handful or more of index cards.
Going from index to branches on the tree is relatively easy and also serves the function of reminding one of interesting prior reading and ideas as one either searches for specific notes or searches for placing future notes.
When it comes to ultimately producing papers, one's notes already have a pre-arranged sort of outline which can then be more easily copied over for publication, though one can certainly still use other cross-links and further rearranging if one wishes.
Older methods focused on broad accretion of materials into subject ordered piles while Luhmann's practice not only aggregated them, but slowly and assuredly grew them into more orderly trains of thought as he collected.
Link to: The description in Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens (section 1.2 Die Kartei) at https://hypothes.is/a/-qiwyiNbEe2yPmPOIojH1g which heavily highlights all the downsides, though it doesn't frame them that way.
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www.edwinwenink.xyz www.edwinwenink.xyzAbout1
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This weblog is a mnemonic device.
Blogs as digital commonplace books
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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With a category you can just bypass idea-connection and jump right to storage.
Categorizing ideas (and or indexing them for search) can be useful for quick bulk storage, but the additional work of linking ideas to each other with in a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten can be more useful in the long term in developing ideas.
Storage by category means that ideas aren't immediately developed explicitly, but it means that that work is pushed until some later time at which the connections must be made to turn them into longer works (articles, papers, essays, books, etc.)
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- Jan 2023
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Local file Local file
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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Maxims and Reflections. Penguin Classics. Penguin Books, 1998.
urn:x-pdf:577d8c2ae537c748bc9ae3d1e12ecb38
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Goethe's Maxims and Reflections represents a commonplace book of sorts.
Who numbered the maxims though? Was it Goethe or someone after him?
(stray note on a slip of paper dated 2022-10-27)
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bactra.org bactra.org