(2021-03-04) Kadavy My Zettelkasten An Authors Digital Slipbox Method Example Using Plaintext Software

David Kadavy: My Zettelkasten: An Author’s Digital Slip-Box Method Example (Using Plain-Text Software) – Love Your Work, Episode 250. I talked about Zettelkasten in my How to Take Smart Notes book summary on episode 249, but here’s a quick review

Now, writers are adapting the Zettelkasten method to digital software.

Here’s what I aim to do with my Zettelkasten:

Retain what I read:

Access my knowledge

Direct my curiosity

Develop my ideas: I want to guide ideas through the four stages of creativity

Ship writing:

Four misconceptions about note-taking

1. Note-taking does not take the pleasure away from reading

2. Note-taking is not mindlessly writing down everything you read

Note-taking connects your consumption of knowledge with your creation of knowledge. If you mindlessly write down everything, there’s no room for creativity.

3. Note-taking is not boring

looking at a highlight you’ve made, then writing it in your own words, looks boring. But it’s fun. It’s just enough of a challenge to keep you engaged.

4. Google is not a substitute for notes

My Zettelkasten notes are plain-text Markdown files

I have a lot of notes in Evernote, but those notes are distinct from notes in my Zettelkasten. Evernote is mostly for project-related or operational things

I like the portability, simplicity, and offline-capability of plain text.

My plain-text Zettelkasten notes are synced through Dropbox.

My notes are text files (with the extension .md) sitting in folders on my hard drive, and are also synced to Dropbox.

I edit my plain-text Zettelkasten notes through Obsidian, 1Writer, and Ulysses

1Writer on iPad

As I covered in my How to Take Smart Notes book summary, the general structure of a Zettelkasten is:
Fleeting Notes
Literature Notes
Permanent Notes

I have three additional categories:
Inbox
Someday/Maybe
Raw

The Inbox is where I put notes that need to be processed. This could be highlights from a book that I need to condense and summarize

I don’t always want to deal with everything in my Inbox, so if not, I put the note in my Someday/Maybe folder

Raw is where I store my exported highlights after I’ve condensed and summarized a book or article

I name my Zettelkasten files in plain English

I personally name my files with a plain-English description of what the note is about, such as “The Queen’s Gambit took 37 years to become a bestseller.md”.

I link my files within my system using a feature called WikiLinks, aka FreeLink. Basically, any filename I put in double brackets is automatically linked to

WikiLinks isn’t native to Markdown, but Obsidian does support it, and makes it easy with auto-suggest. On 1Writer for iPad, these links only work for files that are within the same folder, which limits the tasks I can do on iPad.

I manage my Zettelkasten through a series of comfortable habits/rituals

There are four main contexts around which I’ve designed the habits and rituals for managing my Zettelkasten.

Active: I might be cooking, taking a shower, or having dinner conversation with friends. If an idea comes to me, or I hear something great on a podcast, I want to capture it.

Lying down: I do most of my reading lying down, and I do the initial stages of book summaries lying down

Reclining: I do as much of my writing as possible slightly reclined, with my iPad and keyboard on an over-bed table, over my recliner.

Upright: I have a standing/sitting desk where I work at my computer sparingly.

My process for reading and summarizing a book

Read the book: I do this on my Kindle.

I highlight as I read, and I will occasionally take a quick note

Export the highlights to Markdown

Highlight my highlights: Like my reading ritual, I highlight highlights while lying on my couch

Tiago Forte calls highlighting of highlights “progressive summarization.”

Condense my highlights: I look at the highlights I’ve bolded and re-write the interesting ones in my own words.

This is all a “Literature Note.”

Break my condensed highlights into notes: I make individual “Permanent Notes” in my slip box – one idea per note

I do this on my desktop computer, using Obsidian

I follow this process for only the best books

Readwise helps me review books I don’t fully process

Readwise sends me three random highlights each day – from my database of 20,000+.

If I see a highlight I’d like to develop into a Permanent Note, I copy and paste it into Drafts, from where I will process it later.

My process for academic articles and web articles

I highlight it. I export my highlights to plain text

I rarely read web articles

Probably more so than an academic writer, my writing as a self-help author is driven by my own ideas. When I get an idea, I either capture it in my Moleskine Volant with collapsible Zebra mini-pen, or I capture it with Drafts

If I want to put something I’ve tweeted into my Zettelkasten, I “like” my own tweet. This triggers a Zapier automation that collects the tweet and basic metadata, and saves it as a text file in my Inbox on Dropbox

As I describe in the final chapter of my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, my ideas initially go into one of several inboxes

I then have to clear those inboxes

I’m far from having “Inbox zero” in my Zettelkasten. It’s full of book or article highlights that need to be progressively summarized, or tweets that need to be tagged and turned into Permanent Notes

Choosing the right keywords or tags for your Zettelkasten allows it to work as a non-hierarchical database of your knowledge and ideas. This is an important piece many Zettelkasten practitioners miss.

Should related notes share the same tag AND be linked?

I do whatever seems right in the moment

Linking helps spawn ideas

linking notes makes you think about the meanings of those notes differently.

Once I have many notes collected related to a particular tag, I develop a Tag Index. This is a note, stored in my Slip Box or Permanent Note folder, with an overview of my thoughts on that topic. (Roadmap page)

I link to the various notes I have under that tag – as well as any other related notes – then arrange them as a list in an order that makes sense to me. I write short phrases next to each link to add any thoughts that give structure to this logical progression.