How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

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AxelHeyst
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How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by AxelHeyst »

This is 'the' book on the Zettelkasten method of taking notes. I thought the book would be a practical how-manual for how to take notes per the method. Turns out, the method itself is so simple that it takes very little to explain the How. The rest of the book digs into how
  • Writing is Thinking,
  • beginning with a thesis and then writing towards that goal is backwards and leads towards confirmation bias,
  • how your workflow should be a structure to work in, not a structure imposed upon you,
  • how you can build a delight-led practice of reading, thinking, and writing, that turns into a positive feedback loop,
  • how reviewing and highlighting is such a shit method of study it basically isn't even learning,
  • etc.
I highly recommend this book for everyone, not just people with writing projects. We all consume a lot of information. The practice and the philosophy in this book is a super solid way of taking most advantage of the information we consume, and weaving that information into a latticework of thinking and insight.

This is my literature note for the book (which, once I've generated permanent notes, will get archived and not used). Inset paragraphs are quotes from the book, everything else is my attempt to put my reading into my own words.

My literature note won't be worth much to you, just a teaser for skimming.

# l.How to Take Smart Notes
Created: 11:55

In the introduction Ahrens talks about how writing is not what happens after you've done your thinking, writing is the process of thinking. You don't know what you think until you've written it.

The time to start writing is not when you've decided to Write Something. It's now, every day. Do this well, and you'll never face a blank page again.

What determines success is what people do - meaning, that people have good processes and use discipline to consistently do it. Anyone can perform highly, there's no secret sauce. Just doing the right thing over long periods of time. The trick seems to be willpower - but that's not it. Intrinsic motivation kicks willpower's ass any day of the week.

"And nobody needs willpower to do something they wanted to do anyway. Every task that is interesting, meaningful and well-defined will be done, because there is no conflict between long and short-term interests. "

A good stucture for writing, taking notes, accomplishes this, by getting you to trust the process/system. If you can trust the system, you can get it out of your head, and then focus all of your attention on the present moment.

Also, if your system is essentially self-organizing, you can switch to a different task in it if you get bored of the first.

Ahrens main point here in the introduction is that it is bad workflow that makes writing very difficult and leads to procrastination. A good workflow removes the friction and makes it more enjoyable, something we intrinsically want to do.

He talks about how the structure is an environment to work in, not a goal or a plan. A plan is imposing a structure on yourself, making you inflexible, where a system is a structure for you to work in fluidly. This is a key difference and very important for creative and insight-led work. You can't make a plan for insight and epiphany. Making a plan will make insight seem like a distraction.

Smart Notes is similar in intent to GTD, but the gtd system doesn't map well to writing projects at the level of nitty gritty. It's best to have your GTD system point to your zk system for the writing/thinking process.

Luhman was insanely productive, but swore that he never did anything he didn't want to do. If he get stuck on something, he switched to something else that grabbed his attention. He was always doing something he was intrinsically motivated to do, which is a good explanation for how he was so productive. People perform better under stoke! Under flow! Like WAY better than when they're grinding. Luhman figured out a way to be in control, in intrinsic motivation, for a high ratio of his time. This is key. This is schwernpunkt.

HERE'S A KEY FUCKING POINT. When you make a plan, and then things get hard or weird but you've still got this idea that you've got to stick to the plan-goal, you lose a sense of agency. You lose control. This external thing - the plan-goal - becomes a thing weakening your sense of agency. *And agency is required for intrinsic motivation and flow*.

With writing, you can stay in control by by keeping your options open, and not locking in to an initial idea of what you're supposed to be writing about. Chase stoke through your writing; get pulled through your topics by your stoke.

Only if the work is set up in a way that is flexible enough to allow these small and constant adjustment can we keep our interest, motivation and work aligned - which is the procondition to effortless or almost effortless work.

Success is not about hammering through difficulty with willpower, but the result of smart working environemtns that avoid difficult circumstances in the first place. There's a mindset thing here. Being macho about things is a way to hold yourself back. Yes lean in to the effort, but embody tai chi / judo mindset when it comes to friction, to bullshit, to working circumstances that bring you out of flow, are counter to your interests, and make you feel not in control.

The system:
1. write fleeting notes. These will last a day or two.
2. Make brief literature notes. Write your own summary, don't just copy. Do take quotes, but be very selective about them.
3. Permanent notes, which begin bottom up, and link to each other. A permanent note is basically one idea, always put in your own words. Have the literature note open, and the slipbox, and start seeing connections and interesting ideas and write them down and get them into the system. Write one note for each idea. Use full sentences. Add links to related notes.
4. An index that serves as a jumping point into the contents of the permanent notes. It doesn't point to every single note, but serves to get you into the midst of any topic you happen to be interested in - you can explore links once you're in it.

A key here is the mental focus and strain, and attention, required to put the text into your own words. This is the first place actual thinking happens. Copying excerpts does almost nothing for learning. Translating it into your own words makes it stick, gets you into the material.

To write: look at your slipbox, gather a line of ideas into an outline, and order them. Turn the notes into a rough draft. Don't just copy the notes, translate them again into a manuscript.

Since writing is how we think, you can approach everything as if the only thing that matters is writing. Reading, watching youtube videos, lecutres, taking notes, it all ought to be done with the purpose of writing. Reading or listening to podcasts without turning it into writing is like flushing that time down the drain. You don't learn anything. Having this purpose (writing) helps focus the mind on the thing, keep you more engaged.

Take notes on what interests you. Don't have a more rigid intent than that. You will accumulate thinking (writing) around your interests, which of course vary through time. Eventually you can start mining your written-down interests for writing projects.

A good workflow can easily turn into a virtuous circle, where the positive experience motivates us to take on the next task with ease, which helps us to get better at what we are doing, which in return makes it more likely for us to enjoy the work, and so on. But if we fell constantly stuck in our work, we will become demotivated and mch more likely to procrastinate, leaving us with fewer positive or even bad experineces like missed deadlines. We might end up in a vicious circle of failure. (cf. Fishback, Eyal and Finkelstein, 2010)

The intent/aim is to create positive feedback loops of good experience which leads to improved performance which leads to even better experience etc, an upwards spiral of good experience and performance. The key is a workflow that supports this.

External rewards cannot establish a positive feedback loop! The work itself must be rewarding for the activity to become self-reinforcing.

The growth mindset is about finding pleasure in improving. The only way to improve is by recieving feedback, information about the errors we've made. The only way to make errors is to do stuff, to try. The more we do stuff, the more errors we generate, the more feedback we get, the more we improve, the better we feel, the better we get. High quality feedback is a super critical piece of this, and generating lots of reps is another piece (Huberman).

The feedback in zk is the process of trying to rewrite the text in our own words. It's often hard to do, or we write something and realize it's not quite right - that's the immediate feedback for error. Practically it tends to occur when we try to create permanent notes out of our literature notes.

Plans are like being on rails, which is fine if you are a train but not fine if you want to be intrinsically motivated to do stuff because you want to be able to explore and chase stoke and feel like you're in control.

Stop making plans. Become an expert.

Here, gut feeling is not a mysterious force, but an incorporated history of experience. It is the sedimentation of deeply learned practice through numerous feedback loops on success or failure.

Noobs need rules and plans, and they're slow. Experts actually think less, because they're at the level of intuitive sense. They just know what to do.

The purpose of the literature note is to generate good permanent notes.

Developing ideas bottom up rather than top down is a method for avoiding confirmation bias. traditionally, you choose a topic or thesis and then look for information to build your case. But this is like handing your brain over to confirmation bias on a silver platter. With the end goal in mind, you're going to find stuff that supports it, and will tend to unconsciously avoid information that contradicts that end goal. The zk method instead encourages you to indiscriminantly find interesting information and generate insight, which, as you follow it, leads you to some end goal / insight / thesis.

...if insight becomes a threat to your academic or writing success, you are doing it wrong.

The slipbox becomes the center of the writing process, and the attention and focus scans the potential connections between all contents within it. Delight is sparked by discovering interesting dynamics and interrelationships between the conversation that emerges out of the slipbox. Done right, contradiction and disconfirming information becomes sought after, rather than avoided, becuase (now this is me making a link) the dopamine peaks come from the connections and interactions, the richness of stuff happening in the slipbox. If I find some bit of information that seems at odds with something else in my slipbox, I'm delighted because I get to put it in, raise questions, and open up the possibility of an even greater level of insight or intellectual discovery happening. It's like it is Events in the slipbox that my brain enjoys, and it isn't much concerned about any specifc thesis or end goal. The slipbox itself is the point. Every once in a while a line of discussion arises from it that I carve into a specific project. Enrichment of the slipbox is rewarding. Facts that are all aligned on one side of an argument aren't enriching.

It takes practice to develop the skill of taking concise notes that are relevant to converting into permanent notes. Over time you'll become more efficient at it, at spotting patterns of information that are relevant.

If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself. -John Searle

Not writing ideas down as you encounter them in a text (in your own words) is barely better than not reading the text in the first place.

Converting the text into our own words is like testing ourselves on the information in realtime, forcing recall and forcing our brains to wrestle with the concept. Connect this to scott young, active recall is the way, reviewing is a waste of time.

when we try to answer a question before we know how to, we will later remember the answer better, even if our attempt failed (Arnold and McDermott 2013). If we put effot into the attempt of retrieving information, we are much more likely to remember it in the long run, even if we fail to retrieve it without help in the end (<Roediger and Karpicke 2006). Even without any feedback we will be better off if we try to remember something ourselves 8Jang et al. 2012).

Elaboration is the best way to understand material, it's been studied to death. Reviewing material is so shitty a method it's basically not even learning. Elaboration takes longer to do, and it takes effort, but reviewing is the real waste of time.

It might make sense to measure your productivity in terms of number of permanent notes written.

The brain seems to be able to remember just about everything. It seems that we forget stuff because there's a kind of inhibitory mechanism in the brain that makes irrelevant information fade quickly. So 'remembering' useful stuff isn't so much about retaining information, but about establishing connections of relevancy to the information we want to have on hand, cues in the mind that ties everything together. The ability of the brain to recall things is actually incredibly vast - we just have to learn how to take in information in a way that retains access to it. The key is to establish connections to meaningful contexts.

Topic guide notes: You can create a note that is about the best way to structure a line of thinking about a topic. Then link to this note from the index, thus creating a nice efficient route into a topic, and beginning the seed of a writing project if you want.

The ability to change the direction of our work opportunistically is a form of control that is completely different from the attempt to control the circustnaces by clinging to a plan.

Okay this is big. This is about maintaining interest and therefore motivation, and a sense of control, ie agency, is critical. Nothing signals agency more than the freedom to change your mind.

The aim here is to have your workflow set up so that you can course correct as you go to follow your interest, your stoke. This is the only way to maintain interest, and thus motivation, and thus high levels of performance. Because stoked people send it, grinders don't.

Luhmann always worked on several books or projects at the same time, so that he never got stuck at a high level. If he got stuck on one project, he just switched to another that interested him. So his overall level of momentum was always high. I have to speculate that this also contributed to seeing and making even more connections, by switching between various topics, and being able to cross fertilize at a project level in addition to the natural connections made in the slipbox.

Humans are basically incapable of making good schedules/plans. e.g. ability to estimate how long a project will take. So, like, don't.

It's more helpful to visualize the effort and training required to perform at the level you want, rather than visualize the success at the end. Lots of reasons, but this is related to dopamine scheduling and subjective control.

Also, humans find it difficult and daunting to Do A Project. Much easier to Do Make a lit note, or find a connection here. Aka next action thinking vs project thinking. Classic gtd.

Note sequences are the sweet spot. A running conversation with the ideas. I've been thinking too standalone... maybe.

## References
1. How to Take Smart Notes, Sonke Ahrens 2019

Western Red Cedar
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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by Western Red Cedar »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Jul 08, 2022 6:38 am
The system:
1. write fleeting notes. These will last a day or two.
2. Make brief literature notes. Write your own summary, don't just copy. Do take quotes, but be very selective about them.
3. Permanent notes, which begin bottom up, and link to each other. A permanent note is basically one idea, always put in your own words. Have the literature note open, and the slipbox, and start seeing connections and interesting ideas and write them down and get them into the system. Write one note for each idea. Use full sentences. Add links to related notes.
4. An index that serves as a jumping point into the contents of the permanent notes. It doesn't point to every single note, but serves to get you into the midst of any topic you happen to be interested in - you can explore links once you're in it.
Does he talk about how he practically applies this system (or do you want to elaborate on how you do)? Is it a combination of taking notes in the physical books and with a physical notebook? How much of this is digital?

I've found the practice of taking notes or collecting my thoughts really impacts my reading habits. For example, reading next to a computer or needing to bring a notebook with me while I'm out and about deters me a bit from reading, or at least enjoying the activity as much.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by Western Red Cedar »

I'll add a link to Dereck Sivers' practice here. I heard about this on a podcast, and implemented it a few years ago. My system could definitely be improved, but I have a 45+ page file that is nice to look back on. Through my teens and twenties I could remember almost everything I read in detail, but I noticed as I got older my memory wasn't as sharp.

https://sive.rs/bfaq

Here is a list of his actual books, ranked from highest recommended:

https://sive.rs/book

*ETA - Here is a link to Ryan Holiday's practice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT1EExZkzMM

AxelHeyst
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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by AxelHeyst »

Zettelkasten is platform agnostic, but doing it analog is pretty hardcore. There are a variety of software tools that are zettelkasten friendly. I use Obsidian. Here's how I 'do' the method, but the caveat here is that I consider reading the in depth treatment Ahren's gives it in his book to be crucial to doing it 'right'. The actual implementation is simple, but there is nuance in how to think about it and do it. Easy to screw it up if you don't actually read the book and grok the philosophy of this approach, imo.

1. I read a book and highlight places to come back to if I'm on kindle, or tick the top page corner and specific passage if physical.
2. I go back and generate a literature note. This is much faster than initial read, because I'm just zooming to my highlights/ticks. Key point: I'm putting what I find interesting about the text in my own words. This requires thinking, which is sort of the whole point. I
3. After making the literature note, I make 'permanent notes'. The idea is you make one permanent note per 'idea'. It shouldn't be much longer than a paragraph or two. I go through the literature note, making permanent notes until I'm satisfied that I've got all the permanent notes I want seeded from the lit note.
4. Then I go and see what connections there are between permanent notes in my 'slipbox', which in digital land is just the place where all my permanent notes lives. Obsidian lets you easily make links between notes.

Here's an example of a permanent note based off Ahrens' book:
If you have a goal or thesis for a writing project, you will unconsciously seek information to get you closer to your goal. So you'll ignore disconfirming information. It's much better to follow interest through topics and let a thesis emerge, to practice [[delight led writing]]
The bracketed text is a link to another note with that title.

Sometimes I just go in my slipbox, read permanent notes, and get more ideas based on the notes I read, so I make more permanent notes and link them.

Here's a permanent note which is almost entirely links to other notes:
Since [[Intrinsic motivation confers adaptive advantages]] and [[The Purpose of strategy is adaptation]], [[Intrinsic Motivation]] plays a vital role in the design of good strategy.
The links in this note point to notes based off a paper on intrinsic motivation and self determination theory, another paper on the dopamine system, and Boydian strategic theory.


A key point of Zettelkasten is that your permanent notes aren't categorized - they don't exist in topical silos. You just chuck em in the slipbox, and make connections to other notes. The fact that they aren't categorized allows you to see them 'out' of their hierarchical context, and it makes it easier to make connections between ideas that otherwise woudln't be seen next to each other.

You do keep an Index note, which is a pointer to notes on different topics. But it isn't exhaustive, the idea of the index note is just to get you in the right general area of your slipbox if you want.
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Fri Jul 08, 2022 2:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

AxelHeyst
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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by AxelHeyst »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:14 am
For example, reading next to a computer or needing to bring a notebook with me while I'm out and about deters me a bit from reading, or at least enjoying the activity as much.
Same. This is why I just highlight (kindle) or tick (physical) passages I want to come back to when I'm ready to process notes. It keeps my reading flow from being interrupted. I also like to quickly read the whole text to get an overall sense of it, before feeling like I'm ready to process stuff I think is relevant.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by mountainFrugal »

Seems like an interesting book. I will take a look and add to my own Obsidian research workflow. Thanks!

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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by Bonde »

I read the book. Great inspiration. I wish that I have read the book years ago so I could have replaced all my notes saved as drafts in gmail or other places as well as the long lists of hyperlinks I have saved in other documents. Rarely I have used any of it as it was out of sight or too difficult to find again in my imperfect system.

I have downloaded Obsidian and started making some permanent notes. I think the instant gratification will be good for me and hopefully it will help me with the blank page syndrome. I also use it for process and meeting notes which it much better than LibreOffice. It is faster to open different files and easier for me to get an overview

There is some friction as I cannot use Obsidian on my work laptop which I also bring home. We are not allowed to install programs. I have looked for an alternative that has an online platform but have not found any with a good free version. A blogger suggested Trello but I do not think it will work well for zettelkasten. For now I will make note draftes in my gmail and edit the notes later in Obsidian. It is not a good solution but it will also be a way to keep fleeting notes out of Obsidian.
Any suggestions?

I used 5-10 hours to learn about Obsidian. Watched some youtube videos and made a note about how I want to use the tags (mostly process e.g. #notdone for notes that need more work) and backlinks (basicly for everything else). I made a few shortcuts of my own and added a template note.
My biggest challenge is probably the quality of the notes and not just put in fleeting notes.

My work cannot in the near future be much bottom-up as I have some assignments to do but within each assignment/topic I have a lot of freedom. The conclusions are not carved in stone. It also gets me motivated that the topics are related to research that I most likely will work on for many years if not my whole career.
I still have other problems with low energy and procrastination but this tool gives me other measurements than I have to write about x topics during x days. And the system of permanent notes makes it more tangible to divide manuscripts into smaller pieces. I think it will be good for me to be less focused on outcome and instead appreciate the process more. Nevertheless, I cannot avoid outcome as I have many deadlines in the coming weeks that I need to focus on just a bit.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by mountainFrugal »

Bonde wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:45 pm
There is some friction as I cannot use Obsidian on my work laptop which I also bring home. We are not allowed to install programs. I have looked for an alternative that has an online platform but have not found any with a good free version. A blogger suggested Trello but I do not think it will work well for zettelkasten. For now I will make note drafts in my gmail and edit the notes later in Obsidian. It is not a good solution but it will also be a way to keep fleeting notes out of Obsidian.
Any suggestions?
All the notes in obsidian are text based documents that default to using markdown style tags. You can edit these with any text editor (standard on mac and windows machines). So it might be as simple as having a syncing service for these notes between machines if allowed by your employer. If you have access to gmail on your work laptop, then you could save the markdown notes from work to your google drive and have them sync on your home machine. This would not allow as easy of linking between documents on your work computer, but it would get you part of the way there.

https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9308834?hl=en

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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by Bonde »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:02 pm
Thanks for the suggestion. I thought about something similar and that is why I am not that concerned about the friction. I mostly use Mega drive and my Obsidian notes are saved there. So at least I will always have access to them on my work computer and will be able to add notes online but the linking and other features will be missing.

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Re: How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens (aka zettelkasten)

Post by AxelHeyst »

I also only have obsidian on one computer. I treat getting content into it in a GTD way - I'll make my notes in one of my gtd inboxes (for me that's either my paper notebook I always have on me, or a temporary note in Standard Notes on my phone), with a "ZK THIS" note to myself in the title of it. Later, when I'm processing my inboxes at my computer that has Obsidian on it, I'll get that content put into my zettelkasten system appropriately depending on if it belongs in a lit note or permament note.

I have my obsidian set up somewhat like these videos:
https://youtu.be/Etr_Wyfpyvk (intro to zk)
https://youtu.be/ziE6UExsOrs (zk step by step with obsidian)

I found the minimum effective dose of learning for Obsidian to be about one hour. I'm sure there's more power to be had for longer learning curves, but one hour to learn how the vaults work, and to set up my note template and graph the way I like, was adequate.

In my opinion, the zettelkasten system shouldn't be approached in a fast, ad hoc way in between other things. I only 'do' ZK when I've got at least thirty minutes to drop my attention in to it, either generating a lit note or going on a curiosity/delight driven dive through my slipbox. As such, not having access to it on all of my devices in a fully synced way is actually sort of an unintentional benefit.

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