Make Your Notes Work for You: the Secret Sauce of Zettelkasten

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

When you get stuck on your next writing project wouldn’t be great to have a partner who could quickly help you work through the stuck point and arrive at clarity?

That’s how Niklas Luhmann thought of his zettelkasten note-taking system. He saw his notes as an active partner with which he could communicate. He describes his method of note taking as being a conversation in which both partners learn from the other. The greater the investment of time, the deeper the conversation.

As a result of extensive work with this technique a kind of secondary memory will arise, an alter ego with who we can constantly communicate. It proves to be similar to our own memory in that it does not have a thoroughly constructed order of its entirety, not hierarchy, and most certainly no linear structure like a book. Just because of this, it gets its own life, independent of its author.

— Communicating with Slip Boxes, Niklas Luhmann.

Rats. It’s Not Working. Stupid Notes.

About a year ago I plunged head-first into the zettelkasten note-taking method with the expectation that I would eventually arrive at a point where my notes would do at least some of my thinking for me. That didn’t happen.

Every time I tried to have a conversation with my notes they simply parroted back what I already knew — and had written about previously. What was I doing wrong? After all, I was working through the ultimate guide to zettelkasten note-taking:

• One idea per note — making notes atomic makes them manageable, more specfic and more insightful.
• Give each note a unique name — Using a unique identifier for each note is a way to avoid duplicating material, manage links, and prevent link rot. Zettel-heads seem to talk about unique identifiers more than any other topic. But this is not the secret sauce.
• Don’t waste time with categories — How are you ever going to find your note if it’s not in a category? Well, if your note is on a computer then you can use search. The problem with rigid categories is that your understanding of an idea can shift over time. That means recategorizing your notes constantly, which can be a huge waste of time.