> During his almost 40 years of research, he \[[[Niklas Luhmann]]] published more than 70 books and over 400 scholarly articles on a wide variety of subjects, connecting sociology with such diverse topics as biology, mathematics, cybernetics, and computer science. ^prolific > His productivity is even more impressive considering how old school he was. [...] > He \[[[Niklas Luhmann]]] revealed that he used no computers, only pen and paper and a typewriter, which he operated using hunt and peck typing. ^old-school > When asked how he published so much, Luhmann used to answer: > > ![[Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen#^luhmann-about-zettelkasten]] > It means we can adopt his method and get the same benefits that made him such an eminent intellectual: > - learn better, > - think better, > - publish more, and > - be more creative. ^benefits ## What is a Zettelkasten? > Luhmann described his Zettelkasten in different ways. Sometimes he called it a conversation partner and sometimes he described it as a second memory, cybernetic system, a ruminant, or septic tank. ^descriptions ## Why other notetaking systems fall short > If you’re anything like me, you’ve tried taking notes in all sorts of ways. > - You’ve written in paper notebooks, > - you’ve written on the margins of books and printouts, > - you’ve used smartphone and web apps, > - you’ve taken notes using a word processor or text editor and tried to organize the resulting files in a sensible folder structure on your computer, > - you’ve drawn both analog and digital mind maps and concept maps, > - you’ve used outliners, and > - you’ve buried your desk under a chaos of post-it notes and random slips of paper. ^tried-everything > The problem with all these approaches is that they don’t really help you [[Wisdom|find connections among ideas]]. Instead, they lock ideas away to be forgotten in a box under your bed, in the cloud, or in a folder somewhere on your [[computer]]. ^no-connections > If you wrote notes into paper notebooks, you’ve fixed them into a rigid chronological order. The ideas are stuck to the pages as if you had poured concrete over them. If there is a connection between an idea at the bottom of page 17 and an idea at the top of page 89, you’re not going to see that connection. ^concrete > Tools like Evernote quickly devolve into dumping grounds as you succumb to the collector’s fallacy - the tendency to collect heaps of information without ever doing anything useful with it. ^collectors-fallacy > If we now consider mind maps, concept maps, and outlines, we’re getting closer to a solution. These tools are a good approach to find relations among ideas. The problem, however, is that they only allow you to properly work with a few dozen ideas. You’re certainly not going to put 90,000 ideas into a single concept map over the time span of 40 years and draw connections among the ideas. But that’s precisely what Luhmann did with his Zettelkasten! ^mind-maps ## What made Luhmann’s approach unique?  > Had Luhmann kept his notes in notebooks [...] the notes would have been cast into a rigid structure where it’s impossible to rearrange them. ^notebooks > If, on the other hand, he had simply kept them on index cards or slips of paper, without any organization [...] the notes would have been free-floating, but it would have been impossible to track how they relate to each other. ^free-floating > He could have done what other users of slip boxes did at the time and kept his notes on index cards and then filed them away by category into separate drawers or folders. [...] This provides some organization and looks tidy. ^filed-by-category > The problem with this approach, however, is that each folder constitutes a separate silo even though real-world ideas rarely fit into neat categories. For instance, the idea of complexity is present in biology, physics, mathematics, society, technology, and who knows where else. So in which folder should you keep a note about the concept of complexity? ^folder-silos > A second problem is that a folder-based approach makes it hard to draw connections between ideas that have been filed away in different folders. Each note is clearly related to the ones in the same folder, but a note may also be related to notes in different folders. [...] With a folder structure you can’t capture these relationships. ^folder-connections > This is a big improvement over folders because now the categories are no longer mutually exclusive. A note can have more than one tag and you can look at your whole collection from different points of view, depending on which tag you’re focusing on. ^tags-improve > Tags are commonplace now and many notetaking apps support them. But you don’t need a fancy app to use them. Luhmann knew about them and in fact used them in his paper-based Zettelkasten. ^tags-luhmann > As anyone can attest who has filed away thousands of notes and dutifully tagged them, tags still make it difficult to see how notes are connected. In fact, with thousands of notes per tag, your collection of notes is just as confusing as if you had no organization at all. Each tag just yields a big messy pile. ^tags-limits > Luhmann thus went one step further. Instead of relying on tags alone, he also linked his notes together. [...] Notes, and therefore ideas, are no longer just grouped together, but their connections are explicitly tracked. This creates a web of ideas and results in massive advantages. ^links > Now imagine that instead of the Web being a web, all of the world’s webpages had just been dumped into a big folder without any links. [...] You’d never make any sense of it. > > Now imagine further that someone proposed that the solution to this mess was to use tags. You’d consider the idea ludicrous. What? I should organize the gazillion webpages in this folder by using what? A million tags? That’s absurd! ^web-without-links > No, the way to organize a massive amount of information and make sense of it is to use a web. That’s why the world’s webpages, as well as the neurons in your brain, are organized as a web. And that’s why you should organize all the interesting ideas you want to keep track of over your lifetime as a web of notes as well. ^web-of-notes ## The Zettelkasten’s massive advantage > By using the Zettelkasten method, your notes become entities that are knitted into a larger web of ideas. Instead of the system deteriorating the more you add to it, it becomes better. Again, it’s like your brain. No one would suggest that having more neurons would make you dumber. It’s the same with the Zettelkasten. More notes means more ideas and more connections, and the more ideas and connections you have, the “smarter” your Zettelkasten becomes and the more insightful your writing will be. ^gets-better > Since it contains so many ideas, which you’ve been collecting over a time span of years, you’ve forgotten a huge chunk of them. [...] Thus, if you explore it with a question in mind, the Zettelkasten will provide answers in surprising ways. In this sense, the Zettelkasten is smarter than a duck and it’s why Luhmann described it as a conversation partner. ^surprisal ### You’ll learn better > A Zettelkasten will not only be a safe repository for the knowledge you accumulate over time, but, by forcing you to create notes and then links between those notes, a Zettelkasten will improve your understanding of the reading material. ^learn-better > As researchers Annie Piolat, Thierry Olive, and Ronald T. Kellogg put it: > > > [Lots of] studies suggest that nearly all non-linear note-taking strategies (e.g. with an outline or a matrix framework) benefit learning outcomes more than does the linear recording of information, with graphs and concept maps especially fostering the selection and organization of information. As a consequence, the remembering of information is most effective with non-linear strategies. ^non-linear ### You’ll focus better > I noticed that using the Zettelkasten method allows me to concentrate much better while reading. I think this is because the method turns reading into a mission. I’m not just reading. I’m on a quest to hunt down ideas, extract them from texts, and feed them to my Zettelkasten as notes. ^focus-better ### You’ll think better > First, using the Zettelkasten method forces you to write. In particular, according to the method you have to write notes using your own words to ensure that you’ll understand them in the future. And as anyone who’s done any writing knows, writing things down forces you to turn vague notions into clearer thoughts. > > Second, whenever you add a new note, the Zettelkasten method forces you to look for already existing notes you can link to. That broadens your thinking by forcing you to consider how new ideas relate to others you’ve encountered before. > > Third, a Zettelkasten can store a train of thought. A train of thought is nothing but a sequence of ideas and a Zettelkasten is all about linking ideas. ^think-better ### You’ll be more productive > First, having a process to follow automates how to proceed at a given task, eliminating the need to think too much about what to do next. This makes you more efficient and thus more productive. ^more-productive ### You’ll be more creative > A Zettelkasten is designed to find connections between any past idea you’ve recorded and any present or future ideas you’ll record. This makes a Zettelkasten into a tremendous tool for creativity. After all, creativity is nothing more than connecting ideas. All novel ideas are based on previous ones. ^more-creative ## The Zettelkasten principles As any method or tool you will use, there are always some principles of [[Notes management]] that will make a use of it even better [^1]: 1. **The principle of atomicity** - each note should contain one idea and one idea only. This makes it possible to link ideas with a laser focus. ^atomicity 2. **The principle of autonomy** - each note should be autonomous, meaning it should be self-contained and comprehensible on its own. This allows notes to be moved, processed, separated, and concatenated independently of its neighbors ^autonomy 3. **Always [[Link]] your notes** - whenever you add a note, make sure to link it to already existing notes. As Luhmann himself put it, “each note is just an element that derives its quality from the network of links in the system. A note that is not connected to the network will be lost, will be forgotten by the Zettelkasten” ^always-link 4. **Explain why you’re linking notes** - whenever you are connecting two notes by a link, make sure to briefly explain why you are linking them. Otherwise, years down the road when you revisit your notes, you may have no idea why you connected them. ^explain-link 5. **Use your own words** - you must express that idea with your own words, in a way that you’ll be sure to understand years later. Don’t turn your Zettelkasten into a dump of copy-and-pasted information ^own-words 6. **Keep references** - always add references to your notes so that you know where you got an idea from. E. g. links to web pages ^references 7. **Add your own thoughts** - if you have thoughts of your own, add them to the Zettelkasten as notes while keeping in mind the principle of atomicity, autonomy, **and the need for linking** ^own-thoughts 8. **Don't worry about a structure** - `There are no privileged positions` and `There is no top and no bottom`. The organization develops organically. ^structure 9. **Add connection notes** - specific notes whose purpose is to link together other notes and explain their relationship ^connection-notes 10. **Add outline notes** - as ideas begin to coalesce into themes, create outline notes. An outline note is a note that simply contains a sequence of links to other notes ^outline-notes 11. **Never delete old notes** - instead, link to new notes that explain what’s wrong with the old ones. In that way, your Zettelkasten will reflect how your thinking has evolved over time, which will prevent hindsight bias. Moreover, if you don’t delete, you might revisit old ideas that may turn out to be correct after all. ^never-delete 12. **Add notes without fear** - you can never have too much information in your Zettelkasten. At worst, you’ll add notes that won’t be of immediate use. And it won't break Zettelkasten. Luhmann is said to have 90k notes. ^add-without-fear ## How to implement a Zettelkasten > If you want to go old school and implement a paper-based solution, all you got to do is get a shoebox or similar container and a set of index cards or paper that you’ve cut up into appropriate sizes. Then start reading or thinking and each time you stumble across a new idea you want to keep track of, write it down on a separate index card. ^paper-based > Since a Zettelkasten is supposed to be used for a lifetime, I would definitely go with something that’s future proof and doesn’t have any vendor lock-in. I personally chose a plain text solution. ^future-proof [^1]: https://medium.com/p/997e4e0ca125