A Tale of Complexity – Structural Layers in Note Taking • Zettelkasten Method

In response to this tweet, a link from Sascha who "distinguishes [only] between content notes and ... notes on notes". But it appears a little more complex than that.

"A Zettelkasten is neither a neatly structured filing system ... nor a turmoil deep sea generating ideas out of the ununderstandable chaos. There are three layers in my archive..."

• Layer 1: "content notes. I write, I research, I get ideas"
• Layer 2?: "hub-like notes when I had between 500 and 700 notes ... an overview of the most important notes on that topic... [but] between 1000 and 1500 notes when this became too much to handle. I needed more structure."
• Layer 3? " Then structure notes emerged... tables of contents... with hierarchy and order."
• Layer 4? "structure notes that mainly structured sets of structure notes... float[ing] on the top of my archive"

That top level can emerge organically/bottom-up, or be created deliberately.

It sounds complex (and the post needs diagrams), but as it was developed piece by piece, as required, it probably doesn't appear complex to the author. The final remarks are spot on:

"If you chose software that doesn’t deal with those layers in a sophisticated way, you will not reap the benefits in the long term.... [and miss] the opportunity to create something that is greater than you. "