Cal Newport vs Zettelkasten – SAD! (Clickbait)

• Nov 28th, 2024
• by Sascha

Dear Mr. Newport,

I listened to your podcast Episode 287 - Minimalist Notes with great horror and deep concern. I’m sorry, really sorry that you still don’t have a Zettelkasten.

Interim note: Below are a few comments on Cal Newport’s podcast. I can’t hold on to fake outrage for too long. :)

Reducing Friction Costs Is Part of the Zettelkasten Method

Cal Newport’s initial thesis is that most systems are a combination of complicated software and even more complicated methodology.

I think he makes a valid point, but he also incorrectly attributes it to the Zettelkasten Method: One of my important goals is to minimize these friction costs of complicatedness.

Cal Newport is right that many people do indeed build unnessecarly complex machines, perhaps assuming that capturing information is a complex problem. It isn’t. But he misunderstands the Zettelkasten as a note management system. If you’re only interested in note management, you don’t need the Zettelkasten Method. I do suspect that you can develop a pretty nimble note management system using structure notes. After all, one of the effects of structure notes is that you solve the multiple storage problem and at the same time get direct and quick access to what would equal “folders”. Or you could just tag notes in your system.

It also seems to me that Newport does not differentiate between merely read and thoroughly processed sources: Notes are just “stuff” that you have to put somewhere.

The whole concept has little to do with the Zettelkasten Method: Strictly speaking, we don’t store anything in the Zettelkasten, but rather develop our understanding of something within the Zettelkasten. The fact that we capture quotations in the Zettelkasten or refer to a source is a necessary part of the process, but is not the focus of the work.

For example, I use my adaptation of Tiago Forte’s 2nd Brain to store sources. It works as a “feeder system” that holds pre-products ready for actual processing. Similar to Newport’s system of project folders, my only concern is to place a link to a website or a locally stored PDF with as little effort as possible. Even if I have ideas about how I want to use a particular source or which articles I could write, this also goes into my feeder system.

But the work in the Zettelkasten is extremely low friction: For example, if I want to enter an idea on “self-control” like the restraint bias,¹ I go to the appropriate place in my Zettelkasten within a few seconds and get started. This speed is largely due to the fact that the Zettelkasten also trains the brain, which brings me directly to the next point.

The Zettelkasten Method Is Brain Training

Newport addresses the claim that note systems serve to relieve the user of the work of remembering: If you have such a system, so the assumption goes, you don’t need to remember anything yourself, but simply look it up.

Here, too, I basically agree with Newport. If you can’t remember what’s on the tip of your tongue, you can look it up in the Zettelkasten. But this rather points to an error in the use of the Zettelkasten Method.

To go into this aspect of the Zettelkasten Method with a bang: If you would destroy my Zettelkasten, the work building it would be still worth it.

I mentioned above that I go to the right place in my Zettelkasten within a few seconds when I want to enter an idea. This is due to the fact that my brain is trained on the relationships of the ideas when working with the Zettelkasten. When I go into my Zettelkasten, it is not a mysterious, unknown place to me. I know all the important hubs and entry points, I know the relationships between the different subject areas and places of thought. In my Zettelkasten, I am a London cab driver with his internal map of everything. The London cab driver’s medium is the streets of London, my medium is the Zettelkasten. What we have in common is that we swim through the medium like a fish. A fish doesn’t have to think about how to get from A to B. It sees B and swims. That’s the way I move through my Zettelkasten. Of course, that’s not one hundred percent accurate. But almost.

This inner map that you develop when working with the Zettelkasten has a similar function to the memory palace. The memory palace is a mnemonic technique in which you first build up a mental image of a building and then store information in certain places, so to speak.

The difference between what you work out using the Zettelkasten and the memory palace technique is that the memory palace is a pure memory technique. It uses meaningless connections and the way the brain works to gain access to information. For example, if I mentally write the date Rome was founded with the mnemonic “BC 753 Rome came to be” as a number on an egg in the kitchen fridge, the only reason for this link between the egg in the kitchen fridge of my memory palace and the year Rome was founded is that I can remember this number. You make yourself aware of what the brain otherwise does unconsciously.

The inner map that you develop through the Zettelkasten, on the other hand, is directly linked to the knowledge structures themselves. The connection between the notes about restraint bias and self-control exists because of the actual connection between the two phenomena. Of course, I remember how the notes are linked, I know where which link is placed and the like. But I don’t think of the link, I think of the connection between the concepts and models in terms of content. In this respect, the Zettelkasten is superior to the memory palace in the way associations are created. I cannot claim that the Zettelkasten Method leads to better recall performance than the memory palace itself. That is an empirical question that would require controlled experiments.

Newport says at one point that his system has the effect of constantly bringing his brain into contact with sources. In this way, his brain is constantly working out new ideas and connections. This effect is much more pronounced in the Zettelkasten than in Newport’s system: If you follow the links in the Zettelkasten, this is exactly what happens: You are repeatedly confronted with ideas that have already been processed. In this way, the Zettelkasten activates you and stimulates new ideas and new thinking. The difference is that with the Zettelkasten you come across ideas that you have already made your own. Each idea triggers many more associations because you have already dealt intensively with the thought in advance and recorded the process on the respective notes.

The Zettelkasten Method is intensive brain training.

Newport mentions another point that goes in this direction: the memories are part of the pattern recognition needed for later reading.

This is exactly what the Zettelkasten does and more. The patterns you learn are not only formed by reading. Reading itself is a very superficial way of interacting with ideas. What you have processed with the Zettelkasten, on the other hand, much better produces the effect that Cal Newport emphasizes.

This effect is not a unique characteristic of the Zettelkasten Method. Any intensive processing of sources would lead to this brain training. But the Zettelkasten builds on this effect.

Luhmann himself formulated this as follows:

If you have to write anyway, it is pragmatic to exploit this activity by creating a system of notes that can act as a competent communication partner.²

The longer you work with the Zettelkasten, the more it becomes an integrated thinking environment. Luhmann called this a “communication partner” because he thinks in his system-theoretical terms. The common and here essential factor is that the Zettelkasten is not a passive storage space, but has an activating effect on the user. It offers you something.

The above quote provides the transition to the next point: simply reading and highlighting books is not enough for deep processing.

Books and Marginalia

With his highlighting system, Cal Newport describes almost exactly what I do myself: minimal annotations to highlight passages in a book. I myself only put dots in the margins (I think I copied this from Christian) and rarely underline a word. My further notes are, after all, I have a Zettelkasten, at best short processing instructions. In the margin of a book by Nietzsche, for example, I might write “cf. attachment/Buddhism” as an invitation to relate the highlighted thought to the Buddhist concept of attachment.

So, I agree one hundred percent with Newport that you should concentrate on the reading itself. I almost never take notes while reading. Only rarely do I write a trace in the form of a question on the index card that I use as a bookmark. I don’t want to interrupt the flow of reading.

But just making a few highlights isn’t enough to really make the book’s ideas your own. Newport seems to rely on his brain to do this for him automatically in the background. I don’t. I agree with Fiona McPherson in Effective Note Taking: To really understand and internalize something, you have to actively work through the content.

I do this in my Zettelkasten, my integrated thinking environment.

Newport tries to interpret the need to look in the book when you remember an idea from the book positively: You kind of use a built-in spaced repetition technique.

I don’t need to do that, for example. It’s extremely rare that I have to pick up a book again once I’ve processed it to see exactly what the idea I’m trying to remember is. I know it because I have already worked through it extensively. I have it right at my fingertips. On the rare occasions when I don’t, I look it up in my Zettelkasten, which is significantly faster than looking it up in the book itself. So, Newport is wrong when he claims that looking in a book is only slightly slower and more cumbersome than looking in your own note-taking system. But to defend Newport a little: He states that he deliberately stays away from dealing with systems because he feels he is in danger of falling too far down the rabbit hole. I assume that this also applies to the Zettelkasten Method.

Of course, deep processing in the Zettelkasten has to be selective. You can read much faster than you can process books. So I process books purely according to priority, as dictated by my current projects. Currently, I only process books that I’m considering for my habit book. There are three shelves full of unprocessed books next to my desk. They’re processed the same way Cal Newport does: by highlighting, which is superficial.

The advantage of processing them in the Zettelkasten is that I do what you have to do anyway to write a book. But the by-product is an integrated thinking environment that helps me to think. The Zettelkasten proposes to check this or that connection. In other words, exactly what Newport advertises as a positive effect of its system, only better.

But that’s not all: I turn every book into a mini subproject, so to speak. For example, I’m currently working on the book The Willpower Instinct by McGonigal. The main topic is “self-control”. But the topic is not only relevant for my habit book. The resulting notes are also relevant to my work on nutrition, training and self-development.

The fact that I am processing the book so thoroughly is probably delaying the completion of the habit book. After all, I am processing material that may not become substance for the book. But to stop there would mean restricted thinking. Writing projects in the areas of nutrition, training and self-development gain speed on their own. This applies to everything: books, blog posts and videos.

In other words, as long as you don’t work on completely absurd material, the work you do will benefit you for later projects.

Because I can rely on my Zettelkasten to link the work I’ve done to the contexts relevant for later projects, I can concentrate fully on processing the source itself. I don’t have to keep interrupting myself while processing because I’m moving away from my direct path towards my primary goal. This gives me two advantages:

1. Quality. My mental state is fully focused on the processing of knowledge itself. I can focus my full attention on the source, which improves the quality of my thinking itself.
2. Quantity. Because I have to deal less with constant course correction, I manage to do more knowledge-based value creation per time.

In the coming years, I’ll be bringing this to the outside world by prioritizing the publication of my work. The habit book will be the first demonstration of the power of the Zettelkasten. Along the way, I am creating other smaller works that will then be published in other formats (blogposts, members area, videos).

Final words

Cal Newport’s skepticism is absolutely justified. Anyone with a well-functioning system should have some resistance to a complete change.

But Newport’s skepticism (also shown by his other reviews of the topic) is based on misconceptions about the Zettelkasten Method. As I explained above, the goals and conditions at work in the Zettelkasten Method are nearly identical to those Cal Newport has for his system. Likewise, the implementation: Cal Newport emphasizes that his system should be as simple as possible, so that there is as little friction as possible that hinders him in his actual work. Those could be my exact words.

Cal, if you’re reading this: I’m happy to give you a little introduction to the Zettelkasten Method, complete with demonstration on my Zettelkasten, of course.

Dear reader, Cal Newport once said that he is very happy about the numerous suggestions to give the Zettelkasten a chance. I’m sure he’d also be happy to receive a link to this article. :)