Dear Zettlers, Currently, I am slowly processing “How to Read a Book” by Adler and
van Doren. It is a classic book on reading, which I read more than a decade ago.
Contrary to the contemporary praise, I didn’t like it. The reason is
that you can learn a lot about reading, but I didn’t find anything
actionable. It reminded me of the SQ3R reading method which we learned
in university, only to find out that in practice nobody uses it.

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I’d like to address the legitimate criticism of the Zettelkasten Method that there is little real world demonstration of its might and power. For this reason, I’d like you to present you my current project. I decided to attack a book on habit, because this book can hit two birds with one stone: The habit book is an essential part of my “What is a good live?”-series. It is one of the central supplementary instalments to the 5 volumes of the main series.

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"The things you own end up owning you." (Fight Club) -- The following is taken from the introduction to the second edition of the German book on the Zettelkasten Method.

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This little snippet is from the section One Sentence Summary in the chapter How to Write Good Notes. You will read from other sources that a Zettelkasten is idiosyncratic. It can hardly be understood by another person. The reasoning is that you write in your own Zettelkasten in such a way that only you can really understand. But the thought of the future self does not allow such a weak position: You are not yet who you will become. The future self is someone other than oneself. Technically, we always write for someone other than ourselves. It is difficult to be understood – even by yourself. If you write in such a way that you can be understood by as many other people as possible, there is a high probability that you will understand yourself later, too. In the span of two decades we all (hopefully) develop considerably. We are not just a little bit different. We are (hopefully) a completely different person. Arrange your Zettelkasten in such a way that anyone could operate it.

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Hello dear knowledge workers, I just want to announce another win for the Zettelkasten Method. I successfully published a new book, called Lebenswandel: Reflexion und Analyse. In English, it should be translated to “Way of Living: Reflection and Analysis”. It is a very comprehensive overview on designing and thinking properly about one’s lifestyle. Here is a rough translation of the blurb:

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Hi folks,

I just want to announce that the first rough draft of the second edition of the book is ready. I wrote it completely from scratch and added a lot of learned lessons by myself and through the communication with other knowledge workers.

It is still in German but fear not: Its content will be the basis for an online course which takes you step by step through all the content. And … it will be in English! (And polished, too, so you don’t have to suffer from my pathetic English.)

Big advancements are coming you way.

I finished reading and commenting Sascha’s manuscript for the 2nd version of the Zettelkasten Method book. Here’re a few first impressions and why I’m excited to get a hold on the next draft. The most apparent change is the change of focus: instead of a bird’s-eye view of the method and its components, Sascha now emphasizes teaching the reader to work with her Zettelkasten. I liked the systematic approach of the 1st edition, but with this fundamental change, the book becomes so much more inspiring!

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Hi folks, I just want to announce that the first rough draft of the second edition of the book is ready. I rewrote it completely and added a lot of the lessons I learned on my own and through the communication with other knowledge workers. It is still in German only but fear not: Its content will be the basis for an online course which takes you step by step through all the print content. And … it will be in English! (And it will be more polished, so you don’t have to suffer from my pathetic English.)

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Who would’ve thought Sascha finishes the German edition before I get the English manuscript done?¹ Now there it is, available on amazon.

I’ve added a little announcement at the top of the page already. Here’s the text, in case you missed it:

Staying on top is key to manage knowledge and information. It’s important to be quick and have a flexible process you can trust to achieve this.

The Zettelkasten Method is that flexible technique to deal with knowledge in an individual way. You can realize the principles with a few keystrokes without having to learn complex or expensive software.

The Zettelkasten Method is second to none in its power and simplicity. Your Zettelkasten will become the almost invisible helper throughout your day and life.

Buy on amazon.de (German)
Buy on amazon.com (International)

So that’s the reason we’ve been so quiet lately. Sascha was busy writing the book, while I was proof-reading and doing other stuff. There’s a lot of cool stuff prepared for the blog already, but we just didn’t come about finishing it as of late.

For those of you who can’t read German, peek through our overview to get started with the Zettelkasten method today.

Hi folks,

I am very happy to announce that the second draft of the German Zettelkasten Method book is ready to get revised by Christian. I included extensive advice on productivity as a last chapter.

Now it is Christian’s turn to revise. Then, after a last checkup, I will be able to publish the German Version! At that point, it will be the third publication of mine. So I hope that there will be very few reasons to delay the release.

If you missed the first post, have a look, you can find a table of contents there.

– Sascha

Hi folks, I am happy to announce that I finished the first draft of the Zettelkasten Method Book in German. It turned out to be shorter than I thought. At this moment, I have no clue what the word count is, but did turn out not to be the behemoth I expected it to be. Here is the preliminary table of contents (translated):

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I released a book two weeks ago. It’s called “Exploring Mac App Development Strategies” and it’s available for $9.99 on Leanpub. Today, I want to share with you the process of its creation. The book “happened” in two weeks of me coding an example project to solve a particular problem I encountered. I decided to jot down lots of notes and write about my decision making. It took some more hours to edit the copy, and even longer to proof-read and typeset the whole thing, but in the end I finished the 107 pages in under 14 days. I think this was possible because I knew the topic rather well, and because I am able to sit down and write or code for many hours straight. I stay focused by taking breaks regularly every 25 minutes or so.

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Recently, I took a look at my Zettelkasten to see which Zettel notes would make a good next post in the series. I re-discovered plenty of material, no doubt. Still, it occurred to me that there’s a lot of important things which don’t fit well in short blog posts and which neither do well when split into a series of posts.

I talked to my pal Sascha about my concerns who has plenty of experience as a writer. He’s running a thriving German blog about nutrition and healthy lifestyle called ImprovedEating which I can only recommend because of the genuine research he’s providing. His blog is a platform to get feedback for the vast amount of research material for the upcoming book he’s writing for about a year now.

The point is: Sascha is a blogger, a book author and a Zettelkasten user. Without a Zettelkasten, he wouldn’t be able to manage all the material he’s researched so far. Of course I wanted him to give me some feedback.

We considered the vast amount of notes on maintaining a Zettelkasten both of us collected through the years. In the end, we decided to create an information product together, that is: a book.

Thanks to our efficient note-taking method, the book will be available soon for feedback from early adopters. I’m pretty excited about this project and I’ll definitely keep you in the loop!