An Intro to Zettelkasten

I'm an avid reader and note-taker but I've always struggled with the best way to organize my notes. No matter how diligently I tagged them or put them in folders, I rarely found one when I needed it. When I did make connections between ideas, it usually just happened through memory or happenstance. A few months ago, I discovered the Zettelkasten method and while I'm still in the early stages of building my Zettelkasten, I've found it really valuable and can see it being something I use for a long time.

Ways of Organizing Notes

Before getting into the Zettelkasten method, a brief overview of methods of organizing notes. The most common ways of organizing notes are through folders, tags, and linking between notes.

Folders work great for notes that fit very clearly in a single category. Problems arise when you have notes that straddle two or more categories: you have to choose which one it goes in. Consequently when you are thinking or working in a context that brings you to one of the other categories that you didn't place that note, chances are you'll miss it.

Tags solve this problem by allowing you to have multiple tags for a note. Tags have their own problems though. They can be hard to manage in a big system. If they are your primary way of organizing notes, you really need to make sure you tag something correctly in order to be able to find it again. It can be tough to find the right balance managing a tagging system. If you are diligent about keeping a manageable number of tags, you end up with dozens or hundreds of notes for a tag. If you end up with a huge number of more specific tags, they may return valuable results but the act of tagging new notes can be difficult when there are so many to choose from.

The third, less common way of organizing notes is to create links between them. This is similar to a personal wiki where a note or article contains hyperlinks to other pages in the wiki. Adding references between notes is one of the key principles of the Zettelkasten Method.

The Zettelkasten Method

The Zettekasten method was developed by Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist who was known among many other things, for being quite prolific. His Zettelkasten system helped him write more than 70 books and publish nearly 400 scholarly articles on wide-ranging topics. A detailed description of the system and philosophy can be found in an essay he wrote, titled Communicating with Slip Boxes but the main principles are as follows:

• Luhmann's system consisted of a physical slip box. Luhmann's description reminds me of the card catalog system my elementary school's library used to track books and who checked them out back before the system was computerized. It was a wooden box with drawers just big enough to store a stack of index cards. Instead of an index card with book details and checkout information, in Luhmann's system the card (actually a sheet of paper folded in half) consists of a note or idea
• Rather than ordered alphabetically, as my library's card system was, Luhmann gave each note a unique number
• New notes could either be added at the end after the most recent note, or, if a note was closely related to another one, it could be added behind it with a number or letter appended to it. A new note added behind note 57 would be given the number 57 / 12, for example. In this way the numbering system facilitated branching
• This was not the only way to reference other notes. Notes could reference other notes by including its number somewhere on the note. This solved the problem of where to put new notes that didn't necessarily fit next to another note (because it referenced more than one note, for example). This note could be simply added to the end and include the numbers of the relevant notes on the card. As well (and this is key), when a reference is added to the new note, the note being referenced is updated to include the number of the new note. As Luhmann writes: "In this working procedure, the content that we take note of is usually also enriched".
• In order to make it easier to rediscover notes, Luhmann also included a keyword register. These were themselves cards that just contained a word or a topic and a list of all the cards that referenced that topic
• Similarly to the register, Luhmann kept a second slip box that contained bibliographical notes and summaries of articles or books that he read
• Luhmann kept a second "reference" slip box that contained bibliographical notes and summaries of articles or books that inspired notes in the main slip box

What's the Big Deal

As you can see, the system was very simple. The key to the method though, is establishing connections between the notes. When you add a note to the system, you are encouraged to figure out how it's connected to other notes or ideas. Not only does this force you to think more deeply about the note, but the act of searching through existing notes makes you think about those notes as well. And because of the two-way references, when you do find a note to connect your new note to, you can see which notes are connected to that note as well, adding additional context that may be enlightening to you. The combination of tags/keywords and linking makes it easier to find notes and follow them either to what you were looking for or to other areas that are relevant.

Benefits

The main benefits I've experienced so far are:

• I'm reviewing my old notes more frequently. They aren't just ending up deep in the archives of my note apps anymore.
• It's encouraging me to think creatively by finding connections between things I'm reading and thinking about.
• It's helping me to write. When I sit down to write, I feel confident I have a lot of good notes to start the essay with and that I'll be able to find them.
• It's helping me to read. I finally feel like I have an effective framework for capturing and retaining information as I read about it in books and articles.

Next

In an upcoming post I'll describe some of the existing tools for building a Zettelkasten and describe my own.