- Zettelkasten is German for “slip-box”. The system was developed by Niklas Luhmann to manage reading notes, who reported the system often surprised him with connections and notes he didn’t remember writing.
- The system is made up of a collection of small index cards filled with notes and ideas. Each card has an index, which might look something like “1b5”, indicating the branch that the card is on (child 5 of the b branch, child b of the main branch 1).
- I skimmed through the remainder of the article, but a lot of it is just jabber. There are some nice things here and there, but overall: Zettelkasten is a note taking method where you make notes on small cards and link them together in an expectable way. Ideally you can quickly find a card you’re looking for, or add to a branch of ideas when you have something you’d like to add. The system heavily encourages the creation of a very interlinked web of ideas so that they can be added to and developed over time.
- Having heard about Zettelkasten and Roam together quite frequently, I think I should look into how people are really building this digitally. Then I can transfer some of the ideology into my own system.
- Thinking on this for now, I could have a “zettel” section where I actively add short ideas/thoughts/obserations to chains of files. These could even have a similar notation to that which is used on the original paper version. These of course can then be linked into the rest of the system, and provide valuable context to more informal parts of the thinking process. This is worth consideration at the very least.