Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive

Luhmann... published more than 70 books and over 400 scholarly articles... one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century ... “I’m not thinking everything on my own. Much of it happens in my Zettelkasten”...

adopt his method and ... learn better, think better, publish more, and be more creative... A Zettelkasten is ... a box of notes ... other notetaking systems ... don’t really help you find connections among ideas... lock ideas away to be forgotten ... mind maps, concept maps, and outlines... closer to a solution.... only ... properly work with a few dozen ideas... tags still make it difficult to see how notes are connected ... Each tag just yields a big messy pile...

organize ... interesting ideas ... over your lifetime as a web of notes ... knitted into a larger web of ideas ...

surprisal... how much information is contained in a message is determined by how surprising the message is... Zettelkasten is bursting with ideas that you added years ago and no longer remember... explore it with a question in mind... [it] will provide answers in surprising ways... At the beginning it will just contain a few notes ... Over time... a full-fledged writing collaborator ...

already a better notetaking system from the first day ... Reading doesn’t magically increase your knowledge... only entered your short-term memory ... forgotten ... useless in the long term... if you’re reading to increase your knowledge, take notes. And if you’re going to take notes, use a Zettelkasten... [Lots of] studies suggest ... remembering of information is most effective with non-linear strategies...

turns reading into a ... quest to hunt down ideas, extract ... feed ... my Zettelkasten as notes... end up in a flow state... store knowledge for the rest of your life... information ... not relevant now... may turn out to be relevant eventually ...

forces you to write... using your own words ... forces you to turn vague notions into clearer thoughts... look for already existing notes ... store a train of thought ... gives you a systematic way to research information, structure your knowledge, and develop your thinking ... find connections between any past idea ... and any present or future ideas ... a tremendous tool for creativity ... creativity is nothing more than connecting ideas ...

to make the most of a Zettelkasten... atomicity... each note should contain one idea and one idea only...; self-contained and comprehensible on its own;... link it to already existing notes ... explain why you are linking them;... Use your own words;... Keep references;... Add your own thoughts;... Don’t worry about structure;... create connection notes... to link together other notes and explain their relationship;... create outline note... a sequence of links to other note... to create a story, narrative, or argument;... Never delete... link to new notes that explain what’s wrong with the old ones... reflect how your thinking has evolved ... prevent hindsight bias;...