The Zettelkasten method has totally changed my approach to learning for the better. There are five different types of note-taking processes that build on each other. I’ll go through each of these and demonstrate how I implement them in my own system below.
1. Fleeting notes¶
2. Literature notes¶
3. Permanent notes¶
4. Index notes¶
5. Keyword notes¶
There are a couple of differences between Literature notes and permanent notes:
- Literature notes are written in the context of the source they were inspired by. Whereas permanent notes are written in the context of your own ideas and interests.
- Literature notes only have one connection, to the book they came from. While permanent notes can have many connections (to individual notes, as part of multiple topics etc).
These differences are key to understanding how to write permanent notes, because unlike literature notes, they must be connectable across multiple contexts. This is why it’s important to capture a single idea on each page.
When you have a single idea, you can click it together with another idea, like a jigsaw piece with infinite sides. However, the moment you bind two or more ideas together (into one note), then you lose the ability to take them apart or insert new ideas between them.
Here are four examples of how I write permanent notes:
Content first topics (writing)
Example of topics forming from content
Embed dynamic content into elements with JSX (programming)
What is perspective (art)
How to connect permanent notes to other permanent notes¶
Connect notes chronologically
Connecting notes chronologically is where we provide a link to another note that can be combined with our current note in a way that still makes sense without needing to modify either of them. Some examples:
- A term mentioned in a note which links to a term definition note.
- An author mentioned in a note which links to an author biography note.
- A note which directly contradicts findings in a note that contains a fact, study, opinion.
- A note which adds something to the existing note.
- A personal comment on the idea contained in another note.
Connect notes with a bridge note
Connecting a note through a bridge is where you link two seemingly unrelated ideas together with a separate note that explains why you think they’re connected. This prevents you from looking at the notes years later having forgotten why you thought they were related.
Connect notes with a topic index
A topic index is a note which contains a of links to ideas that are directly relevant to a specific topic, question or discussion etc. You create topic indexes once your notes have naturally formed into their own topic clusters (see next section).
Index Notes¶
An index note represents a cluster of related permanent notes. They are very similar to an individual article/chapter outline, and they are created from content that already exists. A really cool thing about index notes, is that you can end up writing an entire chapter or article just by linking related notes together.
Strategies
Concepts
Keyword Notes¶
Keyword notes are very similar to index notes in that they contain a list of links to relevant notes, except at a more general level than index notes. So, while an index note might represent a table of contents for a chapter or an outline for an article, a keyword note might represent a table of contents for a book or entry points to many different sub-topics within a broader area.
In the example below, I used a hashtag to differentiate my keyword note from an index card. The links in my keyword notes generally lead to index notes that contain links to relevant notes on each of the sub-topics mentioned.
Art
Writing your first Zettelkasten note¶
To write your first Zettelkasten note, start with an article about something you’re interested in. This process will work for books too, but an article is easier to practice with.
Take fleeting notes, then literature notes. Use the first literature note you write as your first permanent note. After that, write every new permanent note with an eye towards how it fits in with what you already have. If it doesn’t, just add it as a new, standalone note.
When you first get started, you’ll probably find that your initial topic clusters form quite quickly. It’s going to take time for clusters to start forming between-topics instead of in-topics, but that’s the whole point of doing this. As long as you make an effort to connect your current note to relevant existing notes, those will form by themselves.
Some notes are going to end up getting totally lost in your Zettelkasten, just like how we forget things naturally. That’s okay. The advantage with a Zettelkasten in this case is that you can actually scan through orphan (forgotten) notes to see if they spark reminders that you can turn into connections now and again.
Obsidian for Zettelkasten¶
When I first tried Zettelkasten, I started with a bunch of flashcards. I hated it because it caused all sorts of perfectionist issues to flare up. I’m also a minimalist who moved to Australia with a backpack, and the thought of lugging around physical notes made me feel opposite of free. That being said, I like to write down my notes on paper before I add them to my digital Zettelkasten, to get the benefits of both worlds.
My tool of choice (after trying a couple) is Obsidian for a few reasons.
- I like that every time you write a note, it is stored as a markdown file in a folder that you specify on your computer/cloud etc. So if the software ever breaks down, you have all of your notes with working links (as a software developer myself, I wanted to make sure I had full control over my notes in an easy to backup/use format if the software ever gets discontinued/corrupted).
- It’s pretty simple to use, and seems perfect for Zettelkasten.
- You can hover over links in your notes and see a preview of the note it links to without clicking on it (turn this feature on in the settings).
- You can add a date and timestamp (like this: 202010051024) to the start of the filename when you create a new note. This means I can create notes with the same title (I try not to), but distinguish them by the unique date and timestamp which acts as an ID.
- You can create aliases for notes when you link to them. This is useful when you want to link to a note as part of a sentence, but the exact phrasing you want to use for the link doesn’t match the title of the note it refers to. In this case, you can link to the note as normal, and also provide alternative link text at the same time. Like this: [[original-title-name|link text you want to use]].
My favorite part of Obsidian is the graph view. At the time of writing, my graph view looked like the below image (Oct 2020). To see a more recent snapshot (a year plus later), check out the feature image right at the top of this blog post.
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