Zettelkasten

How to Do Research with The Archive

Dear Zettlers,

Currently, my mind is captured by a phenomenon that I called the ST-gap. This is shorthand for “slow twitch gap”, a model that allows to justify the need for low intensity cardio training and allows you to calculate your needs depending on how you train otherwise. If you have an active lifestyle (going on hikes, walks, work in a garden), perform both strength training and higher intensity endurance training (like interval training, CrossFit-esque training) there is a type of muscle fibre that is undertrained.

In my Zettelkasten, there is such a simple setup that it should disappoint you a little bit because of its simplicity:

  1. I created one structure note titled “The ST-Gap in Training”, which started as an ordinary atomic note, grew alongside my thinking until I had to break it apart. More on that below.
  2. I assigned a special tag ##stgap to this structure note. This tag with the double-# marks this note as my entry point.
  3. There is one other note tagged ##stgap, titled “The ST Interval Training”. This is the “hottest” note in the area aside from the above-mentioned note, since one of my objectives is to design a dedicated workout that aims to close the gap (as opposed to using multiple workouts or the structure of the total workout schedule to close the gap)

Perhaps the more unusual aspect (speaking from the Zettelkasten perspective) is that I don’t push for atomicity right away, but slowly and incrementally refactor the content to extract it into its own note. So my structure note right now is pretty messy, containing a mix of half-backed ideas, links to notes, “research”-blocks (a mix of an outlines and short commentary). There are also some links to external sources, that I think move my thinking forward if I process them (which I don’t commit to yet).

And that is it.

The hard and complex part is the actual knowledge work. The deliberateness that is needed to create the models, the boring arithmetics to assign each movement an efficiency-value for its suitability to close the ST-gap (time-efficiency, imposed structural fatigue, etc.).

What’s the verdict then? If you do research, if you think about a specific problem or question, you just create an entry point from which you can reach every supporting and derived idea. You highlight this entry point with a special tag, my recommendation is to use a double-#. Whenever you advance your thinking, you enter your Zettelkasten directly via this entry point and work on the notes.

This is, for the curious, how it looks like at this moment:

Screenshot of my Zettelkasten

This is a short piece, and the reason for that is simple: I am presenting you a technique. Techniques should be, in practice, very simple. The complexity of any technique or software that adds to the overall complexity that you have to handle. So, try to minimise the complexity of both the techniques and the software that you are using to handle your knowledge work.

Live long and prosper,
Sascha