📚 Node [[zettelkasten]] ☆
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📜 zettelkasten.md (contribution by @flancian) ☆ 📎 ️🔗 ✍️

Zettelkasten
🕒 Last updated 2026-03-26 23:53:53
📜 zettelkasten.md (contribution by @vera) ☆ 📎
  • The notes are numbered hierarchically, so that new notes may be inserted at the appropriate place, and contain metadata to allow the note-taker to associate notes with each other. For example, notes may contain tags that describe key aspects of the note, and they may reference other notes. The numbering, metadata, format and structure of the notes is subject to variation depending on the specific method employed.
🕒 Last updated 2022-01-28 17:25:08
📜 zettelkasten.md (contribution by @neil) ☆ 📎 ️🔗 ✍️

zettelkasten

See [[A System for Writing]] for the best intro.

Zettelkasten at its simplest:

  • One idea / thought per note.
  • Link those that inform or speak to one another (giving context for why).
  • As trains of thought develop that interest you, bring those ideas into a structure note or writing doc where you can explore the ideas and their connections further.

Rinse and repeat.

– Bob Doto 📿 🗃 🚩: "Zettelkasten at its simplest: …" - PKM.social

Literally, "box of notes". But with a process around that.

He wrote only on one side of each card to eliminate the need to flip them over, and he limited himself to one idea per card so they could be referenced individually.

– How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and …

-Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive

It feels a bit like the philosophy of [[tiddlers]], to me.

The purpose of recording and organising information is so that it can be used again. The value of recorded information is directly proportional to the ease with which it can be re-used.

– Philosophy of tiddlers - TiddlyWiki

Notes / steps

  1. Literature notes
  2. Reference notes
  3. Permanent notes
  4. Review and repeat
  1. Capture ideas in the form of fleeting and/or reference notes.
  2. Turn these captures into individual main notes.
  3. Establish connections between the ideas recorded in these main notes.
  4. Keep track of developing trains of thought in hub notes, structure notes, and indexes.
  5. Turn these trains of thought into writing

– [[A System for Writing]]

Digital Zettelkasten

I use [[org-roam]] for this.

Does it make sense to have a timestamp in the filename?
🕒 Last updated 2025-06-23 01:54:06
📜 Zettelkasten.md (contribution by @binnyva) ☆ 📎

Zettelkasten

Zettelkasten is a note taking process and a knowledge management system. It’s really good for researchers, academics who want to create content - but also good for people trying to learn.

Rational

When learning reading and re-reading is useless for understanding. This is called the [[Mere-Exposure Effect]]. What helps is trying to explain what you learned - that will show all the gaps in your understanding. Taking notes is a simple way of doing it. Micro testing.

When taking notes, you should [[Capture Understanding - Don’t Quote]] - don’t copy the text as is. This will show you how much you understood - and what the gaps are.

Process

1. Fleeting Notes

When consuming content - a video, podcast, article or books, take down fleeting notes. These are temporary notes that serve as memory reminders when creating the actual notes.

2. Literature Notes

You can convert these notes into a better formatted version called literature notes. It will be a summary of the entire content. Keep it short, be very selective and use your own words.

3. [[Permanent Notes in Zettelkasten]]

When you have finished the content(or at some smaller point if you are reading a book or consuming something big), you go thru these fleeting notes and write down the main concepts that are presented. These are the permanent notes. Make sure the permanent notes meet the following criteria

  • Write one idea per note - but as complete as possible
  • Write as if you are writing for someone else - use full sentences, show sources.
  • Be precise, clear and brief
  • Should be understood even if you don’t know the context it was taken from.

Think of how the new notes are connected to the other existing notes in the system…

  • How does this idea fit into what I already know
  • What does this idea mean for another idea I already have
  • Does this add to, contradict or explain another idea I already have

If the new idea is connected to an existing idea, link out to that idea from the current one. After a while, this will end up being an interconnected web of ideas.

Tags

#zettelkasten #permanent-notes
🕒 Last updated 2021-03-28 22:31:16
📜 content/Zettelkasten.md (contribution by @houshuang) ☆ 📎
🕒 Last updated 2021-03-28 22:31:14
📜 zettelkasten.md (contribution by @vera.wiki.anagora.org) ☆ 📎

A Zettelkasten is neither a neatly structured filing system for notes easy to access nor a turmoil deep sea generating ideas out of the ununderstandable chaos. There are three layers in my archive which emerged from the years of working with the Zettelkasten Method. I didn’t plan them in advance. It rather was an organic process.

A [[personal knowledge management]] process.

The core of the process revolves around two collections of notes - [[Reference Notes]] which summarise source material and include a link to the source, and the collection of [[evergreen notes]] which are written in the interpretive part of the process.

The 20th-century German sociologist [[Niklas Luhmann]] managed to publish 70 books. He credits much of his success to his Zettelkasten, or "slip box."

Luhmann, N. (1992). Communicating with Slip Boxes. In A. Kieserling (Ed.), & M. Kuehn (Trans.), Universität als Milieu: Kleine Schriften (pp. 53–61). [http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes page]

see also [[Zettelkasten project]]

below content stolen from [https://zettelkasten.de/posts/three-layers-structure-zettelkasten/ here]

Bottom Layer: Content

The first layer of course consists of content notes. I write, I research, I get ideas. All of that goes into my archive. The full text search and the search for tags are sufficient enough to handle a smaller archive. At this stage it is only natural to stress the importance of tags. You are using them frequently and they serve as important entrances into your archive.

But after a while, you won’t be able to keep up. When I search for tags I get a couple hundred of notes. I have to review them to connect a note to some of them, or get a grasp of what I wrote and thought about a specific topic.

Naturally, a need to organize the archive arises at this point. I can’t remember how many notes I had when I experienced this. I introduced hub-like notes when I had between 500 and 700 notes. 1 I gave myself an overview of the most important notes on that topic.

It must have been between 1000 and 1500 notes when this became too much to handle. I needed more structure. With every additional note I continued to lose my grip on the archive. I wasn’t very concerned because Luhmann, the godfather of the Zettelkasten Method, never had a grip in the first place. But I thought: I have a big technical advantage over him. I need a grip.

Then structure notes emerged.

Middle Layer: Structure Notes

My archive became opaque like the sea: You can see a couple inches into the deep but you know there is much more that you can’t access. You can dive deep, but still you just see a couple of inches at any time. Therefore, I thought of it in terms of unexplored territory for which I need mapping methods and such.

I started with structured lists to have tools to get a precise idea quickly how a certain space in my archive is structured. (similar to what Luhmann had with his hub notes, by the way).

Now, I am at a point where my structure notes embed the structure itself. Take a look at one of my structure notes:

They look much like a table of contents. It’s because they are tables of contents. A table of contents is a structured set of chapters of a book, a set with hierarchy and order. Of course, a book’s page sequence is ordered according to the table of contents for the reader’s convenience. A structure note doesn’t need to adhere to any didactic needs or any needs other than yours.

In the Zettelkasten there are at this point two layers:

  • The content. Tiny, tiny bits of content.

  • Structure notes. Tables of contents.

Structure notes share a similarity to tags: Both point to sets of notes. Structure notes just add another element. They are sets with added structure. This added structure provides a better overview and adds to the utility of the archive.

Top Layer: Main Structure Notes and Double Hashes

After a while, I did not only have structure notes that structure content notes, I also had structure notes that mainly structured sets of structure notes. They became my top level structure notes because they began to float on the top of my archive, so to say.

My structure note on human movement is a perfect example of it. First, I wrote a lot about training. The training structure note linked to strength training, endurance training, sprint training, strongman training, mobility training, and more. But after a while a couple of topics didn’t fit into this space. What about physical work like wood chopping or the whole space of non-movement (like chronic sitting)? The topic broadened and I found a new umbrella: Human Movement. This structure note just keeps on floating on top. It is like the tip of an iceberg. No matter how much water freezes and is added to its body, the top stays on top.

Another type of top-level structure notes are the one I design in this manner right away. I worked a lot on the topic of self-worth from various perspectives (even from the perspective of cardinal sins; the perspective is broad!). The structure note is tagged with a special tag: ##self-worth. If I search for #self-worth (note the single hash!) I get all the notes that deal with this concept but with a double hash I go directly where the money is in my archive: The top-level structure note.

The difference between these two kinds of top level structure notes is in how they turn out to become top level: Human Development emerges because of the structural changes in my archive, while the one with ##self-worth is marked as a top-level structure note because I designed it to be a top-level note right away. (I mark the human development note with a double-hash, too).
🕒 Last updated 2021-11-06 23:04:06
📜 content/pages/Zettelkasten.md (contribution by @wilde-at-heart) ☆ 📎

What is a Zettelkasten?

In German, Zettelkasten means "slip box." It is both a method of [personal knowledge management]({{< ref "personal knowledge management" >}}) and a physical (or digital) system you maintain. The method was popularized by German scholar Niklas Luhmann who used it as a "conversation partner" to help write hundreds of articles and books. To create a Zettelkasten, you need two compartments: literature notes and Zettels. Literature notes are just bibliographic information. Niklas Luhmann wrote the citations of resources on index cards. I keep my references in Zotero. Zettels are what you will see in my digital garden as 🌳 evergreen notes. They are not notes I would take while reading something. Rather, they are insights and my own thoughts on what I read or in general. Zettels should be one idea, called an atomic idea. Remember: Niklas Luhmann wrote his Zettels on index cards. Although they are a tidied up atomic idea, they are not immutable.

As you write Zettels, you create links between them. The more Zettels you have, and the more links exist between them, the easier it is to see where clusters of ideas form. This is the "conversation partner" aspect of the Zettelkasten. When clusters form, it shows you what you’re interested in and where you have a lot of information already created. From there, you can combine the Zettels and use them to express something larger and more complex.

You can learn more about Zettelkasten at zettelkasten.de. I also like how Bob Doto explains the Zettelkasten.
🕒 Last updated 2022-06-26 22:52:23
📜 zettelkasten.md (contribution by @agora@botsin.space) ☆ 📎
🕒 Last updated 2023-05-26 03:08:46
📜 Zettelkasten.md (contribution by @agora@botsin.space) ☆ 📎
🕒 Last updated 2023-07-10 09:46:24
📜 zettelkasten.md (contribution by @an_agora@twitter.com) ☆ 📎
🕒 Last updated 2022-11-05 23:01:52
📜 Zettelkasten.md (contribution by @an_agora@twitter.com) ☆ 📎
🕒 Last updated 2022-11-02 00:35:23

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