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:

1. Is it a matter of creating a permanent note for each literature note? That is, the relationship is one to one?
2. What happens if when I try to create a permanent note I don’t have any new ideas in addition to what the literature note contains? Does this mean that I should not create the permanent note or that I should just reclassify the literature note as a permanent note?

Find @Will’s excellent instructional answer below, “reprinted” with his kind permission.

Please note that Sascha and I (Christian, who’s awkwardly introducing the post), do not distinguish between “literature note” and “permanent note” in the context of a Zettelkasten, and we don’t want to actively endorse the practice. Our approach is much more simple: There are only notes that are part of the Zettelkasten, and then there are all the other notes. So we think Will’s take on the problem is spot-on to bring simplicity and clarity to your thinking when you run into questions like this.

Will’s Reply: What is “Permanent”?

A bit of a guide and a bit of my philosophy of the zettel. Advice depends on what one’s goals are for a zettelkasten. Are you a Rocket Propulsion Ph.D. candidate or a Creative Nonfiction Writer? It matters.

All the chatter about different types and styles of notes can be confusing at best and off-putting at worst. As humans, we tend to refine and chop up and make an idea more and more into a specialization. That is what we’ve done with note/zettel types.

The goal is to have notes that help and speak to you now and, more importantly, in the future. My advice is to make notes and see where they lead you. By that, I mean, see how you feel about your notes tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Be Bayesian and modify your ideas as new evidence presents itself.

Let’s dispel the idea of a “permanent note” as a note with some special seniority. Each zettel/note should be Bayesian, updated as new knowledge, and new information becomes known. I like @prometheanhindsight’s explanation “Permanent,” just meaning “permanently useful.” Not “unchanging/fully formed.”

Just get the idea of some holy grail/permanent note ideal out of your head. I don’t even think this is possible. All notes are malleable.

All that as background notes evolve from fleeting scratches on the back of an envelope towards something that is a valuable reference in your thinking. You can’t get to the former without the prior. So my suggestion is to capture everything. Set up a mechanism for review and modify and improve the notes. Those that can be improved will advance on, and those that don’t improve will still be there for support, and who knows where they might lead? Over this last week in my review and improvement sessions, I worked with 4 notes from 2018 and 28 notes from 2019, and 31 notes from this year. Making in some cases, small tweaks and, in a few cases, almost total rewrites.

Sometimes my notes are fully formed from the book or paper. Sometimes I have lots of my own ideas about a topic in a book or paper. Both types of notes get put in my zettelkasten with an initial equal weight. As time progress, don’t worry. One of these notes will be added to, modified, more deeply linked than the other. And still, I wouldn’t overvalue one more than the other.

1. Is it a matter of creating a permanent note for each literature note? That is, the relationship is one to one?

The relationship between ideas sparked by reading is often many to one. An author may write about an idea in the first chapter, then return to it later. Both can be combined into a single note/zettel.

1. What happens if I try to create a permanent note, I don’t have any new ideas, and what the literature note contains? Does this mean that I should not create the permanent note or that I should reclassify the literature note as a permanent note?

Don’t be too restrictive on what you put in your zettelkasten. Put stuff in your zettelkasten. It wants to be fed ideas. Some will be great and lead forward. Some will be flat and stiff. Don’t worry, and you’ll have both. Celebrate the flat, stiff notes.