This is a guest post by Jeannel King (@jeannelking on our forums), a follow up to her Zettelkasten use in class from 2 years ago. Enjoy! Update now that I’m three years in to my PhD program and am about to start on my lit reviews and dissertation research…

How to make principles of roguelike RPGs and self-imposed constraints work for you when using a Zettelkasten.

My goal is twofold: (1) I hope to motivate those who prefer paper-based thinking systems, and (2) I hope to present an alternative perspective for those who use digital Zettelkasten systems. I hope my perspective will add one or two valuable insights you can add to your Zettelkasten workflow (even a digital one).

Austin Ha compared Folgezettel and structure notes using tools of cartography, providing replicable example notes (download at the bottom).

Ahrens discusses five categories of notes: three main descriptive categories of notes: fleeting notes, permanent notes and project notes; and two subcategories of permanent notes: literature notes and Zettels. These terms are defined and discussed in this article.

We users of a Zettelkasten strive for a set of ideals: that we don't only collect knowledge but integrate it and use it in the service of our own knowledge work; that use of a Zettelkasten generates new connections and insights for us in that work (as Luhmann said, as a conversation partner); that our organization of notes allows for clear thinking and organized ideas.

My research area is machine learning. My first zettel was created on 02/23/2020 and most of them focus on my research area or research in general. This mostly consists of extra the key ideas in short 4-10 page article. Throughout my life I have read many books, but I remember little about them. For instance, I say books like “The Double Helix” or “The Art of Learning” made a big impact on me, but outside of a few anecdotes, I remember nothing. More than that, I have no notes to go back and refer to. My plan this year was to change this and systematically process any book I read.

It is not difficult to find articles that herald the benefits of using a Zettelkasten and because of this, a dose of skepticism is perhaps healthy. Do you really get magically productive? Produce world-class research? Uncover secret connections for elevated understanding? Write 10 books spontaneously?

Here’s a highlight from the forum from recent days. User @zappino4 asked: I am trying to understand the relationship between literature notes and permanent notes. My doubts are the following:

This is a recent highlight from the forums: Jeannel King reported how the Zettelkasten Method and preparing for a PhD at university work together. This is the first semester where I’m using my Zettelkasten for my courses (PhD program in humanistic psychology, creativity studies specialization). Now that I’ve got some reps under my belt, here’s how it’s working so far:

Please welcome Gerrit Scholle, aka gescho from the forums! Gerrit kindly took the time to write up his recent thoughts as a self-contained blog post, with colored pencil drawings and all! Enjoy.

This is a recent highlight from the forums. Nick Milo posted this the other day; we’d like to feature his essay on the blog so you don’t miss it. The following is a verbatim copy of his forum post, plus a link to @daneb’s post that @nickmilo22 added for context.

If you paid attention to the comments feed of the past couple of months, you will know Nick already. He’s tinkering with interesting plain text stuff – I won’t spoil anything right now; I hope Nick will some day show us the power of plumber, instead.

Today DutchPete, one of the most avid commenters on this blog, will help us fill the gap in software reviews for Windows by talking about OneNote as a Zettelkasten note archive. OneNote is part of the Microsoft Office family and thus available for a lot of different platforms, too, so this is not strictly speaking a PC-centered review. Now let’s see which conventions and techniques make DutchPete productive.

Erik Pfeiffer joins us today to write about his experience with the well-known Zettelkasten application by Daniel Lüdecke. Read the full article to get to know the good and the bad from Erik's point of view and why he switched to a plain text approach later.

Today we host our good friend Marko as he tells us of the basic note-taking capabilities of DEVONthink and its appliance to the Zettelkasten method. The Zettelkasten method propagates heavy use of the note archive, stuffed with your own interpretations of things you have learned. The user we have in mind usually is a student of humanities, reading a lot and writing a lot. DEVONthink is capable of doing far more than managing notes, though. It can also in part replace a reference manager. Or you may benefit from its ability to deal with large amounts of files when it comes to seeking similarities in original sources. This can become really interesting for historians, for example.