I'm trying to find a system where I can organize my thoughts, find patterns and also help with my projects.
"Full" Zettelkasten seems a little overkill, tbh. Do you guys know any other method or maybe a simplified Zettelkasten approach?
Has anyone had experience with a FOSS (free and open source) alternative to Obsidian? I am not looking for names, and suggestions, there are quite a few lists out there, I'm looking for personal experiences?
I've realized that consuming information is the easy part.
Actually remembering it months later is much harder.
I've tried highlighting, note-taking, digital notes and even mind maps.
Some work better than others, but I still feel like most great ideas slowly disappear over time.
I'm curious:
What system has genuinely worked for you?
Not while reading...
But months later, when you actually need those ideas.
I'd love to hear real experiences.
Hi everyone,
Does anyone know of a YouTube video, blog post, or other resource showing how someone actually uses their Zettelkasten to write a paper, book, blog post, or another finished piece?
I have found plenty of content explaining how to set up a Zettelkasten and how to move from fleeting notes to literature notes and permanent notes. However, I have not found much that demonstrates the next stage: how someone develops permanent notes into a coherent final product.
Thanks in advance!
I’m working on a book-length project now and still using the analog approach at the note-taking and idea card creation stage, but in the interest of facilitating outlining and draft compilation I’ve been experimenting with Obsidian’s Longform community plugin, and it actually seems to work pretty well for me. This involves inputting my physical cards of course as I would have anyway, but since it’s in an Obsidian vault, I’m inputting them as Zettels keeping their titles (for outlining convenience) and their unique IDs (not sure why). Anyway it gives me the feeling of having “gone over to digital” (or at least hybrid). Longform allows me to rearrange the order of the cards and assign them to chapters, but can also compile them by stripping links and titles and generating straight text when I’m ready, which can be exported or copied to a Word file. I’ll report on details soon as the project proceeds!
Promote your PAID (and FREE) note-taking tool/software, courses, newsletters, and books here!
To avoid bombarding the community with ads, please share any promotions solely within this post, or your post/comment will be removed.
Thank you!
More and more I find myself thinking of the zettelkasten as comorised of two hemispheres.
One hemisphere is distributed, rhizomatic, bottom-up, and cross-topical. This is the "main compartment" containing single-idea notes (1) used for cross-topical interactions between information, at times leading to experiences of serendipity, and the building of different trains of thought (established through the linking of said single-idea notes).
The other hemisphere is centralized, arborescent, top-down, and topically-situated. This hemisphere is comprised of what I call "drafts," which include structure notes, project notes, and writing drafts. These docs are used to further develop interactions between single-idea notes, and capture any questions, comments, further thinking, etc you have on the topic they speak to.
These two hemispheres correspond to two different modes of work / ways of thinking. The first embraces false starts, meandering trajectories, and not quite understood relationships (as well as their opposite). The second is more discerning, topically focused, and determined to sew up loose ends.
Of course, I can see someone arguing for only the distributed aspect, as well as only the discerning one. If I had to choose between one of these and not my own, I'd go with the former.
(1) I'm using the term "single-idea notes" for convenience. Really what I mean are notes containing information regarding a single concern.
I'm in my first year of an MBA program in Korea.
When I'm looking for a thesis topic, I do a lot of research.
I have multiple papers open in separate tabs, and I also keep an eye on research trends.
So I always have a lot of tabs open.
The hardest part is when I come back to my desk after eating.
I have to reopen all those tabs one by one from scratch.
How do you guys keep all this scattered information and research topics organized in one place?