THE BOOK IN A FEW SENTENCES

Sönke Ahrens presents in this book a critique of the current educational system and the way writing and note-taking are promoted within it. He defends his alternative definition of writing and exposes a system that allows us to take “Smart Notes”: the Zettelkasten Method. Popularized by the german psychologist Niklas Luhmann, this method is based on the proposition that writing is the means through which learning takes place and is supported by a note-taking system that allows us to capture, process, interconnect, and develop ideas with the ultimate goal of generating insight and create original content.

PERSONAL OPINION

This book results from Söhnke Ahren’s experience applying the Zettelkasten Method. The number of examples and interconnected ideas he deploys is a good example and a convincing argument for using this note-taking system. However, given the number of repeating concepts partially explained through different chapters, and the fact that some headings do not correspond to the content under them, the reading sometimes feels confusing.

This book is purposely not a “how to implement the Zettelkasten” manual. It explains mainly the concepts that support the use of the Zettelkasten Method and the principles on which this method is based. Given that most ideas explaining the structure and elements of the note-taking system are scattered throughout the book, it is rather difficult to understand how the Zettelkasten works and how it needs to be implemented.

Although the book contains good insights into the Zettelkasten Method, the reasons why it works, and its foundation principles, I recommend that newcomers look for more comprehensive literature before stepping into this book. The perfect reader for this book is someone acquainted with the Zettelkasten Method, who has already implemented it and wants to gather some ideas, reminders of necessary habits, or gain a deeper understanding of the principles to support its implementation.

SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION

The current educational system presents and teaches writing as the culmination of the learning process and a tool to communicate the found conclusions. Opposite to the standard view, writing is the medium through which endeavor, research, and learning occur. Writing is the actionable form of thinking, reflecting, and understanding.

Schools and universities rely on syllabi that students need to follow. This has two negative consequences. First, students learn to use note-taking as a rigid way to isolate relevant information under subjects or topics. Second, students are not encouraged to connect ideas among different disciplines. Instead of letting them think for themselves and learn by doing, they are forced to memorize many isolated facts——becoming uncreative planners, archivers, and librarians.

Everything You Need to know

A different approach is presented in this book, in which students are encouraged to follow their interests, ask themselves questions, and use writing as a means of reflection and exploration. This hands-on approach is supported by what Sönhke Ahrens calls “smart note-taking”. This consists of using a Personal Knowledge Management System that undertakes the task of memorization. Released from this burden, students can focus on the creative process——thinking, understanding, connecting, and developing ideas.

Writing——by extension, learning and researching too——is not a linear process. It is explorative and unpredictable: it cannot follow a sequential structure. This explains why frameworks like “Getting Things Done” cannot be successfully applied to writing. Yet we need a methodology that enables us to deal with the non-linearity of writing in a similar manner that GTD does with tasks. The answer to it is the Zettelkasten Method.

The german sociologist Niklas Luhman became a prolific author thanks to the use of the Zettelkasten Method. Nowadays, virtual forms of the Zettelkasten are popular, and although Luhman’s version was physical, the principles remain the same. His workflow consisted of the following steps:

1. Capture:
   Whenever Luhman had thoughts he didn’t want to forget, he captured them in a note. Equally, when he read a book, he would take notes of the relevant ideas he found in it.
2. Process:
   He would then reflect on the relevance of the information captured in his notes and ask himself how these fit into his system. If not relevant, he would throw them away. If applicable, he would write a Permanent Note.
3. Note writing:
   For relevant ideas, he would write short notes——one single idea per note——so that it could be understood in the future even if he had forgotten the context. He would include all necessary references as well.
4. Organizing:
   He then would position and link the notes within the system.
   Positioning means putting the notes in sequential logical order, with which he would eventually have coherent lines of thought. He would achieve this with a complex numbering system——outdated nowadays and made easier to use thanks to digital tools.
   Linking means connecting the notes with other notes whenever he finds a meaningful relationship among them.
5. Indexing:
   He would use an Index where he could find an entry point to his lines of thoughts.

Everything You Need to Do

The ultimate goal of the Zettelkasten note-taking system is to facilitate the creation of original content. Under this premise, the most desirable situation would be to have small pieces of well-written content that we can reuse repeatedly—the so-called Permanent Notes. We could then create an outline, connect the notes and rewrite a coherent text.

For this method to work, it is essential to read for understanding. While reading, we should not use highlights or sidenotes but rather a rephrasing of ideas——in the form of Permanent Notes——to enhance comprehension and prove our understanding of the concepts we encounter.

The process of writing a paper can be then outlined as follows:

1. Write Fleeting Notes:
   Anytime we have an idea we don’t want to lose, we write it down. These notes are temporary and should be processed in a short period of time.
2. Write Literature Notes:
   Anytime we consume information, we selectively paraphrase the relevant concepts and write them down, including references.
3. Write Permanent Notes:
   We think about how Fleeting and Literature Notes relate to our system and why they are relevant to us. In this process, we develop our own ideas, opinions, and thoughts; we make arguments and discuss with ourselves. The system becomes a self-reflecting tool. Permanent Notes reflect all these ideas, one at a time.
4. Integrate the note in your system:
   Once we create a Permanent Note, we can integrate it into our system differently. First, we connect it with other Permanent Notes. Second, we position it within a Line of Thought by relating it sequentially with additional Permanent Notes within this Line or directly in the Index Note——if it doesn’t belong yet to any Line of Thought.
5. Develop your topic bottom-up:
   It is essential to develop the habit of reviewing our system and periodically reencountering notes while asking ourselves questions about the concepts and ideas they contain, investigating any identified knowledge gap, and challenging, strengthening, changing, and developing any argument further.
6. Find out topics to write about:
   With time, the system will be populated with more notes that contain transversal connections. The consequence of these connections is that notes will organically gravitate around some topics. These reflect our interests and are the perfect choice for our writing.
   This is one of the advantages of the Zettelkasten for creators. Making use of the system allows us to avoid starting from scratch. Since we populate it with our inquiries, question, and further investigations on the notes that we find interesting, topics to write about are just an organic consequence of using the system.
7. Write a draft:
   Having decided on a topic we want to write about, we can now gather all related notes within the system, make an outline, fill it with notes, investigate the gaps, and translate the outline into a coherent text.
8. Edit and proofread:
   Any draft needs to be reviewed in terms of editing, proofreading, and rewriting. It is crucial to separate writing from editing because our mental states for both activities have opposite natures.

Everything You Need to Have

Students and academics usually use various note-taking techniques to support their learning. However, using different methods in different contexts turns into a bunch of unintegrated and inconsistent notes——something too complex to handle, eventually failing to fulfill its purpose.

This is why the Zettelkasten is presented not as a technique but as a workflow that aims to absorb, simplify and support the whole learning process——resulting in a single-format homogeneous collection of interconnected notes.

The tools we need to implement our Zettelkasten Method are:

1. A capturing tool:
   Niklas Luhman used small paper notes, but nowadays, it might be easier to use a virtual tool. Ideally, we process captured notes within a day.
2. Reference manager:
   Tools like Citavy or Zotero are ideal for keeping, editing, and managing our references and bibliography.
3. Slip Box:
   It doesn’t matter if the Zettelkasten is physical or virtual. We need a place where we store our notes.
4. Text Editor:
   We will benefit from carefully selecting our word processor. For example, LaTeX is the best text editor for technical and scientific documentation.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

It is important to remember that tools are just as good as our ability to use them. Independently of the tools we use, we need to understand the process and apply it correctly to benefit from it.

Similarly to the In-Tray in the “Getting Things Done” methodology, we must develop consistency and process our notes regularly. Otherwise, we risk turning our Zettelkasten into an archive, a graveyard of unprocessed ideas——turning the whole system into useless notes.

We must remember that writing can only be learned through experience——learning by doing. By exposing ourselves, failing, getting feedback, and going through the experience process, we become experts in opposition to planners. Skill, knowledge, and intuition are direct consequences of experience.

THE FOUR UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

P1 – Writing is the Only Thing that Matters

Our educational system is based on what Paulo Freire describes as the “Banking Model of Education”, in his book “The pedagogy of the oppressed”——a metaphor describing a teaching method in which the teacher deposits some information into the student’s brain as if they were bank accounts. In this method, the students are passive objects that need to comply with the worldview presented by the teacher and are not invited to participate in the process of learning but urged instead to memorize and be able to recall all the information provided by the teacher.

In such a system, students are not encouraged to think for themselves. Writing is a mere tool wrongly used after the learning process. Yet writing is the medium through which learning takes place.

Paraphrasing is the first form of writing that we encounter if used as a means of learning. This is how we force ourselves to think about a concept and prove our understanding. Putting somebody else’s ideas into our own words is essential for critical thinking and boosts our comprehension while reading.

Learning through writing makes studying equivalent to independent research because it consists of gaining insight into a subject we have not previously known. Writing our findings and sharing them becomes the equivalent of peer-reviewing because we can only falsify our ideas and identify gaps and mistakes by getting feedback.

Truth is not unique to a single person; it is the product of the exchange of ideas——and this exchange usually happens through writing. The production and presentation of knowledge are indivisible because it is through this intellectual exchange that ideas come together and knowledge is plurally built.

P2 – Simplicity is Paramount

The way students and academics learn promotes writing down notes, making highlights, or taking excerpts of books, which eventually turns into a bunch of disaggregated notes. This becomes a complex system and forces us to rely on our memory to find information.

With the Zettelkasten Method, we don’t organize notes under topics but ask ourselves, “Under which circumstances do I want to find this information again?” and then make the corresponding connections with other notes. Opposite to top-down methods, there is only one layer: notes. The connections are what make the system unique and valuable. The more it grows, the more valuable it becomes.

In this sense, the Zettelkasten promotes simplicity and scalability while allowing us to focus on thinking and creating rather than memorizing.

To keep the simplicity, it is essential to filter and keep only relevant information and make a clear distinction among these three types of notes:

• Fleeting Notes:
  Reminders of information meant to be processed and deleted.
• Permanent Notes:
  Notes written as if they were ready for publishing, containing a single idea of our creation.
• Project Notes:
  Notes relevant for a unique use (for example, an article).

It is vital to avoid also the following three mistakes:

1. Taking notes as if journaling:
   Taking Permanent notes and arranging them chronologically will not allow us to build up any mass of content.
2. Taking notes only of specific fields:
   Limiting ourselves to a single topic will deny us the possibility to explore further and find connections between different fields, which is the essence of the Zettelkasten Method.
3. Taking too many fleeting notes:
   Most unprocessed information will create too much friction, making the system useless. We need to develop the habit of processing Fleeting Notes within a reasonably short time, as well as filtering and processing only those truly relevant notes.

P3 – Nobody Ever Starts From Scratch

Writing is currently misunderstood. It is based on the precondition that we have already decided on what we will write about and already know something about it. The education system encourages students to decide on a topic, plan the research, do the research, and then write about it.

The issue is that to decide on a good subject to write about, we first need to have learned something about it. It is contradictive and wrong. We never start from strath, but rather from existing knowledge that somebody else has already developed.

In the Zettelkasten method, we focus on our interests and explore ideas based on what we already know or what other people already wrote. We let the exploration process become the body of our work, the topic of our writing.

P4 – Let the Work Carry you Forward

If used properly, the Zettelkasten Method can turn into a virtuous circle——the more we use it, the more it rewards us with new content we can reuse. With time our system becomes a more prominent source of inspiration, starting points for exploration, and triggers for questions. The only fact of using the system will contain enough thrust to carry us forward.

THE SIX STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING

Step 1 – Separate and Interlocking Tasks

Some people, victims of the “exposure effect”, are under the false impression that they understand something only because they became familiar with it. This is one of the reasons why some people believe that multitasking works——they confuse familiarity with skill.

Multitasking means dividing our attention among several things, which decreases the quality of our work and even impairs the ability to deal with more than one thing at a time.

Writing a paper can be divided into several tasks——writing, reflecting, thinking, organizing, rewriting, and spell-checking——which require two different types of attention: focused and sustained. Focused attention is related to rational thinking and requires willpower to maintain it, while sustained attention is related to creativity and a state of flow.

It is essential to avoid multitasking while writing a paper to prevent the different types of attention from interfering with each other. For example, writing is a creative process that requires sustained attention; while spell-checking requires focused attention. Trying to spell-check while writing will interfere with the creative process, destroying our state of flow——making the whole writing process inefficient and frustrating.

We need to differentiate also between two possible roles we assume while learning, depending on whether we are consuming and understanding information from others——the impartial reader——, or creating our ideas while processing and challenging other ideas——the critical reader.

Step 2 – Read for Understanding

The act of reading has the ultimate goal of understanding somebody else’s ideas. If we cannot explain something clearly, we don’t truly understand it. This is why we should read “with a pencil”, meaning we should take notes of what we read, rephrase the ideas we encounter, and confront us with our understanding of what we read while putting it into words. This will also help us develop the essential skill of filtering important information and identifying and formulating the main ideas of a text.

The current approach to writing is based on having defined a topic or the goal we want to reach. If we fall into the linearity trap of this approach, we will find ourselves victims of our confirmation bias. While reading, only those points that support our defined proposition will capture our attention. Reading is not a linear process. Therefore, we should approach it with an open mind and let the exploring process shape our writing and ideas.

The Zettelkasten promotes confronting ideas from different points of view, forcing us to revisit and make sense of them in other contexts. This makes understanding and retention much more manageable and has a clear advantage compared to cramming——the intense studying over a short time, retaining facts without necessarily comprehending them to pass an exam——which is, unfortunately, often promoted by traditional educational systems.

Step 3 – Take Smart Notes

Writing is not a linear and predictable process. When we learn, we go through a process of inquiring, reading, investigating, rephrasing, testing our knowledge, researching, and filling the gaps. If this were predefined, it would turn into a sterile process, so learning usually takes longer than expected.

Permanent Notes are the essence of the Zettelkasten. To avoid turning it into a graveyard of ideas, we must review our notes regularly, ask ourselves questions, and confront ideas in different time frames——it allows us to build new meaningful connections.

Taking smart notes means rephrasing ideas we encounter while reading, paraphrasing them, putting them into our words, writing Permanent Notes out of them, and reviewing our system periodically while making meaningful connections among all our notes.

Step 4 – Develop Ideas

Lines of Thought are Permanent Notes related in sequential order. This determines the logical structure of our notes, but if we want to avoid becoming encyclopedists, we also need crossed references.

To be able to develop our ideas while reviewing our system, it is essential to make our notes as brief and understandable as possible, as well as make meaningful connections——by asking ourselves, “When or in which context do we want to find this note in the future?”.

Reviewing the Zettelkasten forces us to revisit notes and check our current understanding of them while allowing us to make corrections, expand ideas, or identify knowledge gaps we can further explore.

Yet Reviewing is not the only strategy we can follow to develop new ideas. Comparing notes can also turn into a powerful insight creator through three mechanisms:

1. Contradiction:
   Finding contradictive ideas is a source of discussion we can use to elaborate and further investigate a topic.
2. Paradox:
   Finding a hole in our knowledge forces us to ask ourselves where the gap is and explore further the related topic.
3. Opposites:
   The empathic process of understanding opposite points of view——the steel man technique——creates contrasts and understanding of any topic.

Another approach is to learn the fundamental concepts of the major disciplines. This allows us to make meaningful connections between disciplines on a basic level.

Another good practice is to take simple ideas very seriously. Developing a good and deep understanding of simple ideas allows us to elaborate and extrapolate to more complex ideas more meaningfully.

Step 5 – Share your Insight

The ultimate goal of using the Zettelkasten is to create insight. To generate actual knowledge, we must share our ideas with others to get feedback and identify gaps in our understanding.

The Zettelkasten can also be understood as a perfect brainstorming tool. With time our system will be full of interconnected ideas we developed in the past that are now ready for us to use in our brainstorming sessions. This presents a serious advantage compared to brainstorming, relying exclusively on the most recent ideas our brain can store.

Step 6 – Make it a Habit

The Zettelkasten Method is based on simple principles, but to successfully implement it, we need to incorporate certain habits in our lives:

• Writing while reading.
• Rephrasing the ideas we encounter.
• Be scarce in the number of notes we take.
• Write clearly and concisely.
• Review our system regularly.
• Process Fleeting Notes within a short period of time.
• Do not Multitask.
• Use Permanent Notes to create content.
• Share the content we create.

New habits are sometimes difficult to develop, but it is essential to incorporate these into our routines. Given that the Zettelaksten is based on the compounding effect, our success will depend on the compound of good practices over time. Consistency will be rewarded with a system full of interconnected ideas and ready-to-use notes from which our learning, writing, and research will benefit; inconsistency will turn our system into an archive of useless notes.