Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

So, resist the urge to copy and paste. Even when you're recording an exact quote, take the extra effort to re-write it (very carefully!) You'll be surprised what you discover.

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

try to write down only the important things, but I limit myself only because I don't want to spend all my brain power thinking about other people's ideas. I want to leave mental energy left over to daydream and see what I come up with on my own.

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.

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

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,

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.

Mind Management, Not Time Management