Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

The four main contexts around which I’ve designed my own rituals are: active, lying down, reclining, and upright. This

He’s not telling you everything he knows, yet that knowledge is adding grace and confidence to his writing.

The way people choose their keywords shows clearly if they think like an archivist or a writer. Do they wonder where to store a note or how to retrieve it? The archivist asks: Which keyword is the most fitting? A writer asks: In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note, even if I forget about it? It is a crucial difference.

Now take only the most interesting ideas from the literature notes, and turn each into individual permanent notes. Permanent notes should have one idea per note. Later,

re-writing this passage didn't make me think of the example in parentheses. Rather, I stopped and made myself think of an example, to solidify the concept in my mind.

Associative thinking promotes a positive mood, so it shouldn't be a surprise how fun this task is.

Mind Management, Not Time Management

highlights and re-write the interesting ones in your own words. You're now turning your fleeting notes into a literature note. It's okay not to summarize every highlight. Only worry about the information you most want to learn or that you can foresee wanting to use in the future.

Experienced academic readers usually read a text with questions in mind and try to relate it to other possible approaches, while inexperienced readers tend to adopt the question of a text and the frames of the argument and take it as a given.