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General Software Discussion / Re: I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten
« Last post by Dormouse on May 10, 2020, 03:34 PM »Just a look at a few quotes where Rizvi explains his move from zettelkasten to PARA. I think it contains a number of common misconceptions of the zettelkasten system.
I love reading. But retaining what I read tends to be a challenge. I usually walk away from a book feeling good but with only a faint idea of what was in there.
Herein is I think the core of his problem. Zettelkasten is specifically not about retaining the content of what has been read - it's about retaining thoughts about the content.
Its core idea is to create atomic notes, where each note is about exactly one topic (not more than a few paragraphs tops)
By definition, something that takes two paragraphs is more than one thought. Two paragraphs will also contain associations that make the note cumbersome to use.
If you take a lot of notes, the stream of incoming notes can quickly leave you overwhelmed.
The idea was being selective, both in what was read and the notes taken. They had to be worthwhile and had to be separate. There shouldn't be an overwhelming stream.
The key here is that the linking process groups relevant notes together.
I suspect linking to have been less important than many advocates claim. Linking was hard to do with his technology, so he went to great effort to describe his method. He may have believed that the process of having a thought was obvious and didn't need description. Linking was essential, but I don't think it was the key. That was in the process of recording the first thought and then refining it.
And then some comments on PARA
By creating purpose-based folders and putting all notes related to that purpose inside it, we’ve created a new way to group relevant notes together.
This is just the old tagging/folder dichotomy.
How do you reference old notes? When you start working on a new project (like a writing assignment) you search the relevant folders and pull out notes that seem relevant to your task.
Effectively doing the work from scratch when the original thought is no longer in your mind.
His justification is that it avoids the useless work of making notes which are never used. Avoiding Luhmann's recommendation not to do useless reading in the first place.
He also never picked up on his advice to only work on what interests you at the time, and to move on if the interest drops.
I love reading. But retaining what I read tends to be a challenge. I usually walk away from a book feeling good but with only a faint idea of what was in there.
Herein is I think the core of his problem. Zettelkasten is specifically not about retaining the content of what has been read - it's about retaining thoughts about the content.
Its core idea is to create atomic notes, where each note is about exactly one topic (not more than a few paragraphs tops)
By definition, something that takes two paragraphs is more than one thought. Two paragraphs will also contain associations that make the note cumbersome to use.
If you take a lot of notes, the stream of incoming notes can quickly leave you overwhelmed.
The idea was being selective, both in what was read and the notes taken. They had to be worthwhile and had to be separate. There shouldn't be an overwhelming stream.
The key here is that the linking process groups relevant notes together.
I suspect linking to have been less important than many advocates claim. Linking was hard to do with his technology, so he went to great effort to describe his method. He may have believed that the process of having a thought was obvious and didn't need description. Linking was essential, but I don't think it was the key. That was in the process of recording the first thought and then refining it.
And then some comments on PARA
By creating purpose-based folders and putting all notes related to that purpose inside it, we’ve created a new way to group relevant notes together.
This is just the old tagging/folder dichotomy.
How do you reference old notes? When you start working on a new project (like a writing assignment) you search the relevant folders and pull out notes that seem relevant to your task.
Effectively doing the work from scratch when the original thought is no longer in your mind.
His justification is that it avoids the useless work of making notes which are never used. Avoiding Luhmann's recommendation not to do useless reading in the first place.
He also never picked up on his advice to only work on what interests you at the time, and to move on if the interest drops.
Would want to check out export to WriteMonkey or Scrivener (etc).