Rewriting Notes Is Thinking Work, Not Maintenance

• Jan 22nd, 2026
• by Sascha

I wrote a post that outlines rewriting as one element of how the Zettelkasten Method trains your mind. Rewriting is basically an externalisation of wrestling with an idea.

u/UnderTheHole asked on Reddit two very good follow-up questions:

1. Wouldn’t the effort of rewriting be better channeled into the final products (blogposts, essays, papers, etc.)?
2. What would be a more quantitative measure/ratio/heuristic/etc. for balancing slipbox maintenance and general writing?

Let’s start with the first question.

Rewriting is done in a specific context. In our case, there are two contexts:

1. The Zettelkasten
2. The draft

The draft introduces additional influences on our thinking. If we are working on our ideas in a draft, rewriting is motivated by making the ideas work for the intended product. If we write blog posts, our goals can be to convince, self-present, push a narrative, be objective, relate to other people, and more. All these motivations will influence the way we work on our ideas. This creates the risk that we think about the ideas through the lens of these motivations. This can distort our thinking. That doesn’t mean that our thinking is submitted to these motivations. Nevertheless, their influence will have an effect.

I like to think freely of these influences. I don’t like the intrusion of all the constraints and nudges imposed by a draft. Rewriting is part of working and wrestling with the idea. Wrestling with an idea to make it work for a writing piece means that you pigeonhole the idea through the requirements of the writing piece.

Separating writing-to-think and writing-to-communicate to manage mental energy. Rewriting describes the external manifestation of two different processes in the same medium. The medium is language. But thinking and communicating are two different types of action. Thinking is private, communicating is public. While thinking is also subject to many internal constraints like your self-esteem, your biases, and values, the constraints of communication are pretty strict and intense. Self-censoring is a big part of communication, especially in writing for people. This constraint is so intense that it may lead to a full-blown writer’s block.

There are also positive constraints in writing to communicate. You rewrite to make your text more pleasing, funny, and concise. You want to rewrite to make the writing a better act of communication.

But thinking and communicating relate to each other with some tension. Thinking often involves rapid trial and error, exploring ideas without regard to any social norms, and working with ideas, so it makes sense to you and only you. The goal of thinking is to understand. Communication has to be played safe. You can’t just blurt out what is in your mind. You organise your words so you are understood, so you don’t embarrass yourself, and so you are compatible with the people you want to be compatible with.

These two processes require different mental states. Thinking and communicating have different needs.¹ Just focusing on the external action of rewriting might obscure that two distinct processes are at play that need their separate space.

If you have done all the thinking, you can focus more effectively on proper communication. If you rewrote an idea in your Zettelkasten, it is not “lost” effort. It is work that you would’ve (or should’ve) done in the draft anyway. Rewriting notes in your Zettelkasten doesn’t take anything away from rewriting in your drafts. It is just a separation of two processes, so you can focus on each process more effectively and efficiently.

However, there might be one issue. We might waste time and energy rewriting notes too much. This issue is hinted at by one word in the second question:

What would be a more quantitative measure/ratio/heuristic/etc. for balancing slipbox maintenance and general writing?

The basic assumption seems to be that rewriting notes is part of the Zettelkasten maintenance. From this perspective, it makes perfect sense to rewrite just enough to make the Zettelkasten work. But rewriting is not part of the Zettelkasten maintenance. It is the external manifestation of thinking.

If you give ideas what they deserve, not more but not less, the balance is already built into the workflow. You only put ideas into your Zettelkasten if they meet a certain threshold of relevance and value. Putting anything in your Zettelkasten is a waste of effort anyway. Of these ideas, you work on the most just to the point at which the note is coherent and understandable. This effort is justified by the previous selection step. Only a selection of the ideas in your Zettelkasten are worth more effort.

So, my answer to the question is not quantitative measures, ratios, or heuristics. The underlying problem is solved by a filter mechanism in the workflow that I don’t need to follow consciously, but is guided by the ideas I am working on.

It may be that I don’t invest more than the bare minimum in any idea for weeks, when I don’t encounter any idea that is worth the effort. But it may be that I wrestle with a single idea for days or even weeks if it’s that valuable. Its value depends on my current goals. Right now, I don’t invest any effort into my fantasy world-building because it is just a hobby, and I am short on time. But if I read about a training method that can improve the effectiveness of my coaching, I am in.

I try my best to work in a way that doesn’t require conscious effort. I don’t need to follow any complicated guidelines to decide whether to put in the effort to write a particular note. I merely do what the idea is asking me to do. This thinking process guided the Barbell Method of Reading, too. The effort I invest in each source I process is informed by the reading process. I just have to read the source and highlight it. Each highlight is a processing task. Some sources generate many tasks, and others generate very few. More tasks mean more opportunities to create knowledge and learn. So, I spend more time with the source.

These are the best workflows: they are self-regulating. While following them, they leave your mind in peace so that you can focus on the task at hand.

What’s the verdict then? Rewriting in your Zettelkasten is not maintenance work that competes with your writing projects. It is thinking work that you would have to do anyway, just moved to a place where you can think more freely. The draft brings motivations and constraints that shape how you work with ideas. Sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. But sometimes, you need space to wrestle with an idea without worrying about how it will play out in the final product. Rewriting notes is not effort stolen from your drafts. It is an effort invested in understanding, which makes the communication part easier once you get to it.

The balance between rewriting in your Zettelkasten and writing your drafts isn’t something you calculate. It is something that emerges from working with ideas themselves. Some ideas need five minutes to capture. Others need days of wrestling. The idea tells you what it needs if you pay attention. Your current goals and interests naturally guide this. You don’t need a formula or a ratio. You need a filter that keeps low-value ideas out of your Zettelkasten in the first place, and then you invest in proportion to what each idea asks from you.

That’s it for now. If you have thoughts on this, share them. If something doesn’t sit right, push back. The conversation continues.

Christian’s Comment: This distinction between thinking for yourself and writing to communicate lies at the heart of why working in a shared wiki is not the same as having a Zettelkasten. I have a hard time making this plausible when people ask me about the application of the Zettelkasten Method to their Confluence pages. Yes, you can link. Yes, you can write small notes. But where the stated goal is to think with and within your Zettelkasten, a company/team/… wiki cannot be the same. The self-censorship can be large or small, but it’s never not there. You’re missing out on something that stays with you and grows with you if all you do is communicate.