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I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten
Dormouse:
wrt the x..n system. I'm reading the Ahrens book at the moment (How to Take Smart Notes); one place ought to be easier than a myriad of webpages. Very concentrated on academic research and writing papers or books. I can understand that - it's what Luhmann did and it's the motivation for a lot of people interested in the system. But Luhmann went into an office and did his academic stuff - I do many things (and quite a lot of quick switching) and I can't see why the system would not work for anything that requires thinking. Creative writing, building a garage, organising holidays. One input system is so much easier than working out where everything should go.
I'll use the system as I read. I've already learned that I need to develop kindle skills and techniques.
kfitting:
Interesting discussion... I've responded about zettelkasten in IanB's discussion on OneNote, but here are a couple of thoughts from loosely following this thread:
Having loosely followed the zettelkasten idea for a few years, I believe you're correct in noting that's a little more process oriented than tool-oriented.
Back a few posts there was some discussion about ideas vs facts. Don't know if you've read the post on the Collector's Fallacy: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/ I find this very true and something I fight against continually. It is so important to collect why the fact was interesting.... and try to relate it to other things. A jumble of other people's text bits is meaningless to me. A file system of my own thoughts continues to show it's power, again and again.
I've "started" a zettel several times now, with tree-based information managers, with markdown textfiles, and now with Dokuwiki. My biggest piece of advice: just start capturing information, attempting to always write why you found the information important. Eventually, YOUR OWN system will come into being and things will flow more smoothly.
Random thoughts, I know, but hopefully something will prove stimulating!
Aside: the tagging discussion (and this entire discussion in general) reminds me of a debate about tags vs links. Here is a critique of tags:
"Tags are vague. They’re a very primitive way of spelling out how things relate to each other. A tag on a news article says “this article has something to do with this concept or thing”. But what exactly? A tag doesn’t tell you whether an article is a critique of a person, an interview with a person or whether it just mentions that person in passing. A tag doesn’t even tell you if the reference to Samuel Adams is about the person or about the kind of beer (which is why we so desperately need vocabularies). A tag can’t tell the difference between an event that merely took place at the local café and an event that the aforementioned pub actually organized." http://debrouwere.org/2010/04/07/tags-dont-cut-it/
Instead, use meaningful relationships (links with explanations). Some like to call it "tight" vs "loose" linking (http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2011/08/loose-links-versus-tight-links.html). With a zettel, you're trying to link things tightly, not just throw things into your garage randomly.
Dormouse:
Back a few posts there was some discussion about ideas vs facts. Don't know if you've read the post on the Collector's Fallacy: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/ I find this very true and something I fight against continually.-kfitting (October 27, 2019, 12:27 PM)
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I hadn't. I agree with the comment about collecting books and papers, but believe that the premise of the post is fundamentally misconceived. There's too much focus on facts.
Taking notes thoroughly means you can rely on your notes alone and rarely need to look up a detail in the original text.
I rarely consult secondary sources again. If I have to do so, it means that I did not do the job right the first time.
–MK, of “Taking Note Now”
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The problem here is the idea that there is a virtue to extracting information from a source and storing that information as a note. There may be a gain if it becomes more accessible, but it's a lot of effort simply to copy facts that are possessed already.
If we read without taking notes, our knowledge increases for a short time only. Once we forget what we knew, having read the text becomes worthless. You can bet that you’ll forget about the text’s information one day. It’s guaranteed. Thus, reading without taking notes is just a waste of time in the long run. It’s as if reading never happened.
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This is also wrong. It assumes that the only value is in transferring facts to the brain or keeping them close in an accessible form. That's part of the way that computers work, but it's not the way the human mind works. If we read something that has a meaning to us on some level, we may or may not be able to recall the facts involved in the future. But we don't simply store facts. We have models about the way the world works. Some may be precise and others very fuzzy. We may know what our models are but more likely we don't. When we read something, whether we remember the details of any facts or not, that reading will have produced a shift in the network of probabilities in the relevant model. Even if it is only to strengthen some of them.
It is so important to collect why the fact was interesting.... and try to relate it to other things. A jumble of other people's text bits is meaningless to me. A file system of my own thoughts continues to show it's power, again and again.-kfitting (October 27, 2019, 12:27 PM)
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Exactly. And if we do that, me may or may not need to transcribe the facts. A link should usually be sufficient.
Dormouse:
Instead, use meaningful relationships (links with explanations). Some like to call it "tight" vs "loose" linking (http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2011/08/loose-links-versus-tight-links.html). With a zettel, you're trying to link things tightly, not just throw things into your garage randomly.-kfitting (October 27, 2019, 12:27 PM)
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I read the posts, but I'm not convinced. Some things clearly have direct links. But other links ought to be looser or even tentative. I haven't read enough about zettel to know how it ought to work - but tight links won't lead to serendipitous discoveries. And in some ways I don't care. I will do the reading to see if there's anything more there that's useful and, if not, I'll work out what's useful myself. And I will use tags very flexibly if I use them: some may indicate individuals with a common background, some may be because I think I might at some point write a piece on X or Y.
Dormouse:
Interesting discussion... I've responded about zettelkasten in IanB's discussion on OneNote, -kfitting (October 27, 2019, 12:27 PM)
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I'll check them out. Though it is a very long discussion.
Random thoughts, I know, but hopefully something will prove stimulating!-kfitting (October 27, 2019, 12:27 PM)
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Certainly stimulating. Every contribution like this helps shape my ideas. And random is good!
I've "started" a zettel several times now, with tree-based information managers, with markdown textfiles, and now with Dokuwiki. -kfitting (October 27, 2019, 12:27 PM)
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So what made you stop? And then restart?
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