Zettelkasten Notetaking Method

[Charlotte]

I recently came across this interesting article (https://writingcooperative.com/zettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125) on the Zettelkasten notetaking method and enjoyed it. I thought I'd post it here and see if anyone has a similar method that they use.

My notes and organizational skills need some work and this might be time consuming but also helpful. Thoughts?

[Nightshade]

Fascinating! I want to try this, but wonder whether analog or digital would be best for me. I like to write things down, but it would likely be unwieldy to move over time. Maybe an undergraduate research assistant could, at various points in a year, digitize the analog version for me as it grows?

[AJ_Katz]

I agree, this is interesting.  As noted in the article, this approach seems to provide the greatest returns once there is a mature database.  With technology constantly changing, it seems the longest lasting approach would be to go "old school" and avoid the digital software tags / labels. 

What is your approach, Charlotte?  Are you doing this with software or a filing system?

[Charlotte]

I'm still trying to figure out how to adapt it best to suit my purposes. As Nightshade mentioned, having physical copies could become unwieldy, but as AJ_Katz mentioned with technology changing so much I'm hesitant to commit to a specific software. However, digital would allow for easier searching.

I prefer to write things down so I am leaning that way, but potentially typing it up at some point to save digitally.

There is a professor I know who uses a similar technique as the article. He learned it in graduate school decades ago and has been consistent with it. He takes notes by hand, types them up later, prints them out on paper (he says index cards are limiting and more expensive), cuts them up into a smaller size, and files them away. He has written several books using this technique and has a wonderful collection of his references!

I did not learn good organizational skills in graduate school and I regret that I have not developed a good system yet. That is one thing I want to work on this coming year. Developing good habits now sounds time consuming, but imagine years from now when I have built it up!

I am hoping others will be willing to share how they organize and keep their notes. I'd love to see if others have found success with a similar style.

[teach_write_research]

Interesting! I also didn't learn good idea organization strategies as part of my training. For scholarly sources and online articles I like zotero.

Currently I'm using a system of index cards and small post-its to organize next term's classes. I'm realizing it can also work for research too. The physical actions of moving the cards and notes around helps me see everything at once and feels more fun than being stuck on a computer. I'm not a huge fan of physical files though - whether file cabinets or shoe boxes. Once I have something in a closed box it's just going to sit there. My dream work space is wall shelves and tables where I can get to what I need, spread it out, and clean it up when I'm done.

Ripping a completed post-it or index card in half is also very satisfying.

[Vkw10]

Interesting! I also didn't learn good idea organization strategies as part of my training. For scholarly sources and online articles I like zotero.

Currently I'm using a system of index cards and small post-its to organize next term's classes. I'm realizing it can also work for research too. The physical actions of moving the cards and notes around helps me see everything at once and feels more fun than being stuck on a computer. I'm not a huge fan of physical files though - whether file cabinets or shoe boxes. Once I have something in a closed box it's just going to sit there. My dream work space is wall shelves and tables where I can get to what I need, spread it out, and clean it up when I'm done.

Ripping a completed post-it or index card in half is also very satisfying.

I used inexpensive self-stick cork tiles to create a huge bulletin board. I can arrange and rearrange cards as I work through a project, everything's visible, and I don't knock cards off table or render them illegible with spilled tea. When I finish a project, I stuff the cards in a project envelope. Not great organization, especially as I frequently raid the envelopes for future project, but I've never been successful maintaining a more elaborate system.

[Katrina Gulliver]

Intriguing. I'm going to have a crack at it....

[Caracal]

Interesting! I also didn't learn good idea organization strategies as part of my training. For scholarly sources and online articles I like zotero.

Currently I'm using a system of index cards and small post-its to organize next term's classes. I'm realizing it can also work for research too. The physical actions of moving the cards and notes around helps me see everything at once and feels more fun than being stuck on a computer. I'm not a huge fan of physical files though - whether file cabinets or shoe boxes. Once I have something in a closed box it's just going to sit there. My dream work space is wall shelves and tables where I can get to what I need, spread it out, and clean it up when I'm done.

Ripping a completed post-it or index card in half is also very satisfying.

I used inexpensive self-stick cork tiles to create a huge bulletin board. I can arrange and rearrange cards as I work through a project, everything's visible, and I don't knock cards off table or render them illegible with spilled tea. When I finish a project, I stuff the cards in a project envelope. Not great organization, especially as I frequently raid the envelopes for future project, but I've never been successful maintaining a more elaborate system.

Research organization is the kind of thing that wouldn't be very useful to teach in grad school. Like VKW I can't maintain elaborate organizational systems. That's  an ADD and working memory thing for me, but the point is that things that would be a time saver for other people would actually be a huge time suck for me. I have a good memory for things I read and write and that compensates for my organizational shortcomings.

[polly_mer]

I, too, am a big fan of the large bulletin board with index cards for an active project.

I just spent many hours writing my own Python modules so I can script reading plain text files into LaTeX tables organized by whatever keyword I choose.   That's working pretty well for my TODO lists.

For my notes, I've always had huge stacks of written notes.  In the past few years, I've taken to writing small reports for myself on topics that point to other notes and reports.  Again, I've drawn on LaTeX to integrate hyperlinks to bring up the relevant PDFs (emails, reports, articles).  I also use BibDesk extensively by adding references with keywords and notes to myself that are searchable.  The underlying file is plain, human-readable text, but the BibDesk interface allows me to add PDFs and other files so I can just click on an entry to bring up the relevant files.

I much prefer the new hyperlink capabilities over the old-school subject cards/vertical file methods that I learned from years of mandatory library use in 4-12 grades.

[Vkw10]

Research organization is the kind of thing that wouldn't be very useful to teach in grad school. Like VKW I can't maintain elaborate organizational systems. That's  an ADD and working memory thing for me, but the point is that things that would be a time saver for other people would actually be a huge time suck for me. I have a good memory for things I read and write and that compensates for my organizational shortcomings.

Our college graduate seminar introduces several methods for organizing research, with emphasis on importance of identifying and using a method that works for individual or research group. We don't spend much time on it, just introduce a few possibilities. Many students seem to try several possibilities before settling on a system during the dissertation process.

[Katrina Gulliver]

I'm trying out Obsidian (note-taking app), just trying to get my head around it so far. Anyone else use it?

[polly_mer]

Research organization is the kind of thing that wouldn't be very useful to teach in grad school. Like VKW I can't maintain elaborate organizational systems. That's  an ADD and working memory thing for me, but the point is that things that would be a time saver for other people would actually be a huge time suck for me. I have a good memory for things I read and write and that compensates for my organizational shortcomings.

Our college graduate seminar introduces several methods for organizing research, with emphasis on importance of identifying and using a method that works for individual or research group. We don't spend much time on it, just introduce a few possibilities. Many students seem to try several possibilities before settling on a system during the dissertation process.

Having a great memory works fine for the first few research projects that are individual.  Once one has several projects in the air all at once after a good decade of several in the air all at once and every project is a collaboration, relying only on memory is how people get fired from the collaboration.

[Caracal]

Research organization is the kind of thing that wouldn't be very useful to teach in grad school. Like VKW I can't maintain elaborate organizational systems. That's  an ADD and working memory thing for me, but the point is that things that would be a time saver for other people would actually be a huge time suck for me. I have a good memory for things I read and write and that compensates for my organizational shortcomings.

Our college graduate seminar introduces several methods for organizing research, with emphasis on importance of identifying and using a method that works for individual or research group. We don't spend much time on it, just introduce a few possibilities. Many students seem to try several possibilities before settling on a system during the dissertation process.

Having a great memory works fine for the first few research projects that are individual.  Once one has several projects in the air all at once after a good decade of several in the air all at once and every project is a collaboration, relying only on memory is how people get fired from the collaboration.

I'm in a humanities, not social science discipline. There's sometimes  collaboration, but not  of the sort where a bunch of people are sitting around poring over your notes.   You need to be able to record citations correctly-but how you do that it isn't a concern for anyone else.

Also, there's this frustrating belief among organized people that the less organized are just lazy and if they would apply themselves, they could be organized too. I spent way too much time in secondary school with well meaning people who really thought they could teach me some organizational system which would make my life easier. None of it worked.

The problem, as I understand it, is really about working memory-which is the thing that helps people keep track of what they are doing when they have to do some mundane multi part task like filing. Basically, my brain has a hard time with that kind of memory. I can do it, and if you asked me to file one thing in some filing system it would be fine and nobody would notice a problem.  If you asked me to file 100 items, however, it would take me forever because I just forget what I'm doing constantly and the task never becomes automatic and efficient.

That basically makes it impossible for me to manage any sort of organizational system that requires me to do that kind of sorting and filing. Stuff just ends up in some equivalent of a pile. The trick is just figuring out ways that I can find things in that pile when I need to. What that means for me as an adult is that I just take notes in Word, make files with the notes from any research sessions, throw them in a folder and always make sure to email things to myself at some point and use Carbonite. Usually my memory is good enough to quickly find stuff, search helps when it isn't and creating backups is always important because I want to insure that if I screw up a file name or put something in the wrong spot-which is always a possibility-I can always go dig it up somewhere. I doubt anybody is going to be writing IHE articles on my amazing system but it lets actually do my work in ways that more complex note taking systems wouldn't.

[Parasaurolophus]

My main note-taking format consists of writing up articles/presentations and the like. Otherwise, I scribble in the margins, highlight, and keep a separate document full of paper ideas and initial references.

This seems like a plausibly useful system. I want to get started on a book idea soon (concurrently with the one I'm working on now, but that's the press' project, not mine), and I think I might try it out for that project. Seems like it would be especially useful for a large self-contained work for which research will run across several disciplines.


But I'll do it with index cards and a box. I don't want to fuck around with learning how to make it all work on my computer when I could just read things with a pile of index cards next to me.

[Parasaurolophus]

Yesterday I finally got my hands on a book I need to start that book project. Since I have a lot of other stuff to do before I can devote real time to it,  I've started reading it very slowly, just a few pages at a time here and there when I have a few spare minutes.

I've taken this opportunity to start my zettelkasten. I'll post back once it's more substantial, and once I have a better feel for the technique.