INTRODUCTION

The first stage of learning is remembering facts and concepts. But our brain has a limited capacity to store information——that is the reason why people take notes.

Failing to filter relevant data and organize our notes, can lead to information overload——a situation in which the amount of information available exceeds our processing capacity.

Students and researchers not only need to store and retrieve information, but also a tool that allows them to navigate effectively through all learning stages: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

A tidy solution for this purpose is using a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS), a tool that allows you to find, filter, process, and store information; a vault of your knowledge that facilitates the learning processes, allowing you to retrieve and interconnect ideas efficiently. From all existing PKMS, learners who also intend to produce knowledge will benefit the most by using the Zettelkasten Method.

PRINCIPLES

The Zettelkasten——German for Slip box——is a note-taking system that became very popular thanks to Niklas Luhman, a German psychologist who, using this method, became a prolific scholar——with hundreds of publications and dozens of books on diverse subjects.

The revolutionary idea of the Zettelkasten Method is to delegate memorizing to the system, allowing the user to focus on the creative process. Based on establishing relationships among notes, the resulting network of interconnected ideas becomes a tool for self-reflection, inquiry, and knowledge production——that mirrors the operation of the human brain.

The effectiveness of this method is given by simple principles:

P1 – Writing is learning

Writing is the expression of the learning process, through which reflection becomes actionable. In other terms, learning is written thought. The Zettelkasten Method encourages us to interact with the system through writing as a means of thinking, reflecting, and learning.

P2 – Paraphrasing

Since the system takes care of memorizing information, comprehension is the first stage in which we have to participate actively. Based on the principle “you don’t understand what you cannot explain”——famously defended by Richard Feynmann——the Zettelkasten Method encourages us to put in our own words any idea we encounter.

P3 – Information minimalism

Being extremely selective and filtering information is a key element of this system. We need to void becoming archivists. For every note we take, we need to decide whether this piece of information is relevant and adds value to our system.

P4 – Interconnection of ideas

Notes have little value in isolation, they are just registers of ideas we encounter or, at their best, a testament to what we understood from them. The real value doesn’t lie in storing the notes, but in the relationships that we create among them. These cross-references are individual, what makes every single Zettelkasten a unique and original system.

P5 – Emergence, bottom-up structure

In the Zettelkasten Methods notes are not organized vertically, under topics or subjects. The organization of a Zettelkasten is an emerging process, a product of the connections we make. After a while, some notes will appear to have a larger amount of connections. These notes form the centers of gravity that reflect our interests.

P6 – Compounding effect

The compounding effect refers to a process in which the effect of small contributions——both positive and negative——are amplified over time. Thanks to the connections among notes, the number of combinations of ideas grows exponentially with time. The Zettelkasten is, therefore, a tool from which we increasingly benefit as the number of notes and connections grows.

P7 – Content creation

The Zettelkasten Method is a tool conceived for research and learning. Through paraphrasing, connecting, and reflecting, the ultimate goal of the Zettelkasten Method is to generate insight that can be used to create original content.

STRUCTURE

The structure of the Zettelkasten Method is based on six different types of notes, which serve different purposes:

1. Fleeting Notes:
   Fleeting Notes are the product of capturing ideas or thoughts, either when we are on the go or while we consume new information. Formatting is not relevant——these are temporary notes that we should process within a short period of time.
2. Literature Notes:
   Literature Nots capture our understanding of a single idea from an extract of the material we consume (books, articles, videos, etc). It is essential to paraphrase the containing idea, as well as reference the source.
3. Permanent Notes:
   The ultimate goal of Fleeting and Literature Notes is to support the creation of Permanent Notes, which capture our thoughts, original ideas, and opinions. They should contain a single idea and be written not for ourselves, but as if addressing a reader who is ignorant on the subject. We should be able to understand this note in the future, even if we don’t remember the context it came from. Permanent Notes can form a “Line of Thought” when they relate in sequential logical order with other Permanent Notes.
4. Maps of Content (MoC):
   Given the emerging nature of the Zettelkasten Method, with time Permanent and Literature Notes will form clusters around specific notes. A Map of Content is a note we create to materialize one of these clusters and depict the existing connections in an ordered manner.
5. Index Notes:
   An Index Note contains the entry points to our Zettelkasten.These are notes in continuous change. Although there is no single guideline, a general rule is that they should allow us to navigate our Lines of Thought and our interests in the current moment.
6. Project Notes:
   The ultimate goal of using the Zettelkasten Method is to generate insight to create our own content: articles, papers, blog posts, books, etc. We use Project Notes for this purpose.

Although the Zettelkasten Method has no vertical organization and the notes are not organized in a folder structure, we can differentiate four “buckets” or “folders”:

1. In-Tray:
   Where we temporarily store our Fleeting Notes.
2. Bibliography:
   Where we store Literature Notes and sources.
3. Zettelkasten:
   Where we store Permanent Notes, Index Notes, and MOCs.
4. Projects:
   Where we store Project Notes.

WORKFLOW

The Zettelkasten is a flexible tool that requires exploration and some try-and-error loops to find what works for us. The general workflow, however, can be described with six stages:

1. Capture.
   When thoughts come to our mind we write them down in Fleeting Notes, avoiding that we forget about them in the future. If we find out ideas that catch our attention while reading or consuming information through any other channel, we write quotations or bullet points in Literature Notes.
2. Process.
   
   • Filter relevant notes:
     The first part of processing our captured notes is filtering. It is essential to be as ruthless as possible with irrelevant information and separate the chaff from the wheat. If we fail in this stage, we risk becoming archivists and making our Zettelkasten less effective or even useless. Simplicity is the key, we need to take only the essential information that we find interesting and fits our system.
   • Rephrase Literature Notes:
     Once filtered, it is essential to rephrase the extracts and ideas we captured. This is the first time we test our comprehension of the captured information, which alerts us to further explore the subject if necessary. Paraphrasing is also necessary to avoid plagiarism if we want to use our Literature Notes in our creations.
   • Process Fleeting Notes:
     Once filtered, relevant Fleeting Notes are used to extend, modify, or create new Permanent Notes. In any case, Fleeting Notes cease to exist once processed.
3. Integrate.
   Once we have Permanent Notes we need to locate them within our system. In the Zettelkasten framework, this means creating the appropriate connections——putting the note in the contexts in which we want to find it in the future. We can make three different types of connections:
   • Topic:
     If we flag our notes with topics, Maps of Content will emerge from our system, depicting the interests around which our note-taking gravitates.
   • Cross-referencing:
     Making meaningful cross-references requires to do serious thinking. These note-to-note connections are essential for our future exploration of ideas since they foster our originality. There is no single way to come up with good connections, we can reflect, retrieve from memory, review our system, or do some brainstorming. Another possibility is to use the compass method, as described by Vicky Zhao, which consists of linking an idea to upstream, reinforcing, opposite and downstream ideas.
   • Sequential:
     Lines of Thought are the backbone of the Zettelkasten Method. When we create a Permanent Note, we have to either allocate it within an existing Line of Thought or create a new one. Index Notes should allow us to access at least these Lines of Thought.
4. Review.
   Finding meaningful connections is not an easy task. Given that our brains have a limited memory span, our capacity for brainstorming is also limited to the things we can retrieve at that specific moment. Developing the habit of reviewing our system compensates for this, allowing us to reencounter the same information with different retrievable information and see the material from a new perspective. Apart from reviewing, we can also use spaced repetition, the compass method, or just ask ourselves questions.
5. Create.
   The ultimate goal of using the Zettelkasten Method is to generate insight and use it to create our original content. If we use a digital version of the Zettelkasten, it makes sense to create our Project Notes within this environment. With a couple of keywords, we can search and filter existing notes and fill the outline of our next article, paper, podcast, or any other creation.
6. Share.
   Although not necessarily part of the workflow, sharing our work is essential for the learning process. Feedback is the best way to discover new points of view, and compensate for our confirmation and hindsight biases. In the words of Söhnke Ahrnes “An idea kept private is as good as one you never had”.

The Zettelkasten workflow can be better visualized with the following flowchart:

For the Zettelkasten Method to become an effective tool, it requires the user to differentiate between two states of mind: Rational and Creative.

1. Rational State of Mind: capture, process, integrate.
   When we capture ideas we need to empathize with the author to understand what he or she is trying to communicate. Rephrasing, formatting, and spellchecking are other examples of processing activities that require our rational and focused attention.
2. Creative State of Mind: review, create, share.
   The mental energy required for writing, brainstorming, looking for connections, or reviewing is different from the one described above. We are not just routinely processing information, we need to be in a discovery and creative state of mind.

It is, therefore, important to differentiate activities that fall into each of these two categories and avoid doing them at the same time. Writing, for example, requires a creative state of mind, while spell-checking is a much more rational and monotone activity. Doing both at the same time is counterproductive because spell-checking will make us change to a state of mind that cuts the state of flow we might have reached while writing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Zettelkaten Method is a useful framework for people who fancy learning and developing their own ideas. This is, however, a long-term investment. The user gets the benefits of the note-taking technique after having populated the system for a while, what requires a lot of work, discipline, and consistency. But the reward is a system that facilitates the creative process, with which we can talk, reflect, explore, and rediscover previous ideas we would have otherwise forgotten.

Although the Zettelkasten version used by Luhman was paper-based, we can find nowadays digital tools that make the whole workflow portable, easier to maintain, and to work with.

REFERENCES

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[9]. _Take Notas in this way completely changed my life | Zettelkasten in Notion. (2021). Retrieved from link

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[13]. Zettelkasten’s 3 Note-Taking Levels Help You Harvest Your Thoughts. (n.d.). Retrieved December 23, 2022, from link