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

The reason we’re able to relate ideas within different trains of thought is due, in part, to atomization, the practice of reducing ideas to their essential points.

A fleeting note is taken when you think of or want to remember something on the go.

If you’re using a digital platform, create a folder within your “Zettelkasten” folder titled “Reference Notes.”

A reference note is a single long-note containing brief citations or “references” to what caught your attention while reading a book, listening to a podcast, watching a video, or having a conversation.15 These long-notes are stored in your zettelkasten sometimes in a separate section or folder.

In her seminal book, The Reader, the Text, the Poem, leading theorist of “transactional” reading, Louise M. Rosenblatt, states: The range of potential responses [to a text]...are infinitely vast, since they depend not only on the character of the text but even more on the special character of the individual reader.23

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

You have thoughts. You write them down. For most people, this is where the process ends. Only, with a zettelkasten, you’re asked to make a very important cognitive shift: know that the note you just took has yet to realize its potential.

Kieserling goes even further to conclude that Luhmann’s slip box mirrors this “democratic” process of meaning-making “as it shows everyone who works with it a different theory.”75 Add to this Luhmann’s appreciation of “disorder,” “unexpected linkings,” “heterogeneous things,” and “combinatorial possibilities which were never planned, never preconce

ideas stored in a zettelkasten aren’t organized according to semantic logic.