A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer

A zettelkasten is a method. In addition to being an object, a zettelkasten is a methodology—a way to capture ideas in notes, establish relationships between them, and leverage both for knowledge work. The formula is relatively straight forward: Capture ideas in the form of fleeting and/or reference notes. Turn these captures into individual main no

We aren’t connecting notes. We’re establishing relationships between ideas contained inside the notes. These ideas are imported into the zettelkasten as they arise, in no particular order, often without any preconceptions about how they’ll relate to other ideas (3.5:3). The ideas contained in the notes above are neither hierarchically organized as

The more “atomic” an idea, the more broadly you can employ it. The more complex an idea, the less surface area it has to be connected to others.

Just as weight training, writing a book, and giving birth are considered forms of “eustress,”70 that is high-intensity activities that have beneficial results, so too is folgezettel a form of “eufriction,” a slowing down to better engage with the work in front of you.

Whether you have five or five thousand notes, establishing relationships is the same: interrogate the content of your ideas. Read the subtext. Stretch their relevancy. Flip them over and turn them inside out.

Wrong ideas, if given context, can serve not only as counter arguments to be incorporated into your writing, but can be used to show how your own beliefs have shifted over time. Ideas you once held with which you no longer agree, if handled with humility, show your humanity. This makes for good writing.

Fleeting notes form the basis for much of what you’ll create inside your zettelkasten, though they themselves will not make it past the velvet rope. Fleeting notes live in a state of potential, waiting to be transformed into more useful “main notes,” the notes that will make up the bulk of your zettelkasten.

Juliana Spahr in her book, Everybody’s Autonomy: Wild reading…critiques the status quo because it disrupts schooled reading’s conventions, its socialization. One’s approach to reading…defines how one engages the larger social apparatus.28

Keep an eye out for character behaviors and traits, narrative arcs, scenes, and settings, all of which can be mined for insights. Even an author’s use of grammar (or lack thereof) and story-telling techniques (such as nonlinearity and disjunction), can be read as comments on social issues.