"제텔카스텐 입문(번역)"의 두 판 사이의 차이

See this picture with all the elements pointed out.

[https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/complete-zettel.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/complete-zettel.png]]]

Up to this point, we have only looked at the individual Zettel. Now, let’s take a look at the relationship between Zettels.

<span id="connecting-zettel"></span>

== Connecting Zettel ==

[https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-08-13-note-link.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-08-13-note-link.png]]]

The true magic of a Zettelkasten, when compared to ordinary note-taking systems, comes from the heavy emphasis on connection. Each new Zettel needs to be placed in some relationship to another Zettel. Luhmann further stressed the importance of connecting every new Zettel:

<blockquote>If there are several possibilities, we can solve the problem as we wish and just record the connection by a link [or reference]. Often the context in which we are working suggests a multiplicity of links to other notes. […] '''In such cases it is important to capture the connections radially''' […], as it were, but at the same time also by right away recording [backlinks] in the slips that are being linked to. '''In this working procedure, the content that we take note of is usually also enriched.''' (from [https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes “Communicating with Slip Boxes”], emphasis mine)

The main benefit from connections is their effect on you and your brain: When you ''relate'' pieces of knowledge to others, you create ''relationships'' between pieces of knowledge. Knowledge relationships significantly improve recall, and forming them also trains your mind to see patterns.

Let’s say you read an article about anthills and think: “Wait a minute. That looks like the organization of the factory I own!” You draw many connections about the ''parallels'' you see between your factory and the anthill. Why do you see those connections? You see them because there is a typical pattern that can describe both the anthill and the factory. And some may contain more than what you do know: hypotheses on what is yet unknown. ''Could there be particularly efficient pathways in the anthill, and you could similarly adapt your factory layout to make it operate more efficiently, too?''

As you connect, you will learn, understand, and thus expand yourself in two ways: (a) Your knowledge will increase and (b) you will be a better observer. By being a better observer, you will be able to draw more insights from observation. More universal patterns arise and become more apparent to you. A fundamental aspect of working like this is that it allows you to access the general patterns of reality.

To make the most of a connection, always state explicitly why you made it. This is ''the link context''. An example link context looks like this:

[https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/202010271850_link-context.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/202010271850_link-context.png|Investing for normal people aims towards positiv chashflow #Cashflow #Liquidity Investing starts with liquidity:[[202001121202]] You have to have the liquidity to make investment decisions unless you are using other people’s money (e.g. using leverage). But if you have to start with liquidity what is the end of investing? If Cash is the Alpha, Cashflow is the Omega. If you buy real estate, there is no question that positive cashflow is key to a good investment. The same is true for stocks. Why should we expose ourselves to the uncertainty of the market if we want to support our normal lifestyles.As an ordinary person, you don’t speculate with real estate, but expect it to generate a steady cashflow: You rent it out. There is no reason we shouldn’t apply this principle to stocks. Dividend should be necessary. However, this line of thought should be viewed in the light of the knockout method of investing: [[202001171046]]]]]

The first paragraph adds context to the link. The link references a note that explains why liquidity needs to be first priority if you start investing. The link context is the explanation that comes after the link itself. I explain to my future self what to expect if he will follow the link.

This type of connection is where one of the leading knowledge creation mechanisms of the Zettelkasten is found: The meaning of the link, the ''why'' of the link, is explicit. The explicit statement of the why is created knowledge.

If you just add links without any explanation [https://zettelkasten.de/posts/understanding-hierarchy-translating-folgezettel/ you will not create knowledge]. Your future self has no idea why he should follow the link. One might think ''now'' that the links are placed for a good reason. However, if you create a web of thoughts where you cannot be confident that following a link will lead you to something meaningful, then surfing your own thoughts will give you a feeling of disappointment. Your future self will judge its past self (you!) as unreliable.

In short, to collect connections without an explicit intention, captured meaning, or statement of relevance is not knowledge production, and as a habit, it is even counter-productive: You make shallowness of work a habit and lower your skill as a creative knowledge worker in consequence.

<span id="structure-notes"></span>

== Structure Notes ==

A Zettelkasten should not ''only'' be a web of thoughts that you create from the bottom up of Zettels and their connection. Some sort of hierarchical structure is very useful. Luhmann himself needed to tackle this problem, too.

We can have a look at how he used his register. Not each relevant Zettel was listed for each keyword. Only the most central Zettels that served as entry points to a topic.

Also, Luhmann had [https://zettelkasten.de/posts/zettelkasten-hubs/ hub notes]. These are Zettels that list many other places to look at for a continuation of a topic. Luhmann’s Zettelkasten posed a severe challenge in getting to all the relevant parts of a search, especially compared to a digital Zettelkasten.

The main benefit of hierarchical structures is the increased potential for knowledge creation. Structuring your knowledge is a very productive method to get ''a bigger picture''. Let’s explore The Structure Note as it is one of the ways to add structure to a zettelkasten.

[https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-07-30-struktur.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-07-30-struktur.png]]][https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-07-30-struktur_graph.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-07-30-struktur_graph.png]]]

A Structure Zettel with fancy table-of-contents markup, and a graph view of the same connections and hierarchy.

[https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/20201027155152_models-overview.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/20201027155152_models-overview.png]]]

# The obstacle model. It is a general view of the need to increase energy output to transition from one state to another. One application is the phenomenon of hunger. In nature, you need to increase your energy output (hunt or gather) to move from the state of being hungry to being sated. Concentration is another use case. It could be modelled as the ability to increase and focus your mental energy output on moving from an incomplete to a complete task.

# The chemistry model. Its gestalt is a molecule that has atoms as parts. Atoms are the parts which are assumed not to be divisible into smaller chunks. A molecule is the composition of the elements. The Zettelkasten Method is a model of this application. Another application is Ido Portal’s [https://www.facebook.com/notes/ido-portal/optimal-teaching-chunking-vs-the-chemistry-model-by-ido-portal/255608244481163 teaching methods of skills].

The chemistry model is both a part of the Structure Note on general models and in the Structure Note on the Zettelkasten Method itself. Those overlaps in zettels create a semilattice structure:

[https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/20200703153325_semilattice.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/20200703153325_semilattice.png]]]

Unlike a strict tree, a semilattice can have cross-connections from one branch to another.

In reality, even the semilattice does not capture what is really going on in the Zettelkasten. The right model would be one of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterarchy heterarchy].(4) But that goes beyond the scope of this introduction.

Structure Notes are not limited to hierarchical structures like the nested list from above. Structure notes can also have sequential structures. Imagine the following line of argumentation: <code>a -&gt; b -&gt; c</code>, therefore <code>a -&gt; c</code>. A Structure Note could capture this sequence and link each step of the sequence to a Zettel which expands on it. An example, with annotations to point out each step:

<blockquote>(<code>a</code>) The stimulation of surface cold receptors is (<code>b</code>) the main driver of cold adaptation.[[202005201056]] Cold showers stimulate the surface cold receptors sufficiently.[[202005201057]] Therefore, (<code>c</code>) cold showers are a viable method of practicing cold adaptation training.[[202005201058]]

The links via <code>[[ID]]</code> refer to Zettels that are compilations of evidence for each statement. The structure of the arguments guides this Structure Note.

To recap: To create Zettels about the relationship between other Zettels, is called a Structure Note. The practice of creating Structure Note will further train your ability to deal with general patterns of knowledge. Capturing the results in your Zettelkasten so they will be available for later use.

<span id="how-to-implement-a-zettelkasten"></span>

== How to Implement a Zettelkasten? ==

<span id="choosing-software"></span>

=== Choosing Software ===

If you choose software to handle your Zettelkasten, there are some features the software should have. Below is an essential checklist for features you should look for:

# The software needs to make hypertext possible. There are two ways to accomplish this. You either use whatever linking feature the software offers – this is often more convenient for less tech-savvy people –, or you stick to the imitation of direct links through full-text search. The search-based approach is more robust over time and across apps, but perhaps a bit more awkward to get used to. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-x8MpM4yDE See our demonstration how TextMate would handle links]. Keep in mind that I didn’t modify TextMate in any way to accommodate the handling of a Zettelkasten.

# The navigation between Zettel will depend on two things: Full-text search and being able to follow links. The full-text search is an equivalent of finding entry points via the register in Luhmann’s Zettelkasten (more powerful, obviously). Links are just links as you know them. No further explanation needed. A full-text search is an advantageous option a digital Zettelkasten has, but an analogue Zettelkasten doesn’t, which results in the heavier usage of it.

# A kind of sandbox. An implicit part of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten was his desk. He could just pull out any number of Zettel and arrange them on his desk as he liked. You can’t do this so easy in the digital version. In ''The Archive'' I use Structure Notes as my desktop. The arrangement is more hierarchical and not so free like physical slips of paper. But it does the job.

<span id="the-paper-based-zettelkasten"></span>

=== The Paper-Based Zettelkasten ===

If you chose to make your Zettelkasten paper-based, just follow the approach by Luhmann as he fleshed it out in his article [https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes “Communication with slip-boxes”].

I started my Zettelkasten journey this way and experimented with it for a couple of months. Immigration to my digital solution was quite painful. There is no automation for that unless you have '''very''' legible handwriting and can use optical character recognition (OCR) on the notes or an assistant who transcribes them for you.

=== The Archive ===

One of the main concepts of ''The Archive'' is the software-agnostic philosophy and adherence to a simple plain text approach.

# Software-agnosticism is the principle that you make the opposite of what boxing-in tries to achieve. There are direct ways to box you in, for example, by storing notes in a closed-off file-format that no other software can decipher. But there are also implicit ways to make it difficult to change the software, for example by making the export process difficult, or by training the user to depend on features that are not available anywhere else. One example of how we try to avoid this is our decision to make the search function responsible for carrying out a lot of the features. Even Zettel links boil down to search. Full-text search is omnipresent on computers, and therefore you can reproduce your workflow with about any plain text editor in the world.

# The plain text approach is the paradigm of using plain text files as the primary storage. Plain text is the most versatile and durable file format.

In sum, ''The Archive'' manages a folder of plain text files. You access your files by performing a search via the Omnibar.

In ''The Archive'', an individual Zettel should look like this:

[https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-08-07_the-archive-zettel.png [[File:https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/2020-08-07_the-archive-zettel.png]]]

# The ID of the Zettel is both in the filename and in the contents of the file. The main reason is to create redundancy. A use case for this practice is to access your Zettelkasten from anywhere: back in the day, I used Dropbox to access my notes from other computers. Dropbox allowed a filename-based search only. Therefore, I needed to put the ID in the title to make it possible to follow a link via the search function of Dropbox manually.

# The ID is time-based. It never changes, so you can change the title as much as you want without breaking any links.

# If you follow a link, you perform a search for the ID inside the double square brackets. So you can follow links with any software that can perform a search. Linking in The Archive works by putting the ID in double brackets.

# The tags are hashtags. If you click on the highlighted hashtag, ''The Archive'' will perform a search for that tag. Tags are nothing but strings that group notes via a shared phrase that you can search for.

# ''The Archive'' uses [https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ Markdown] for marking up text. It is very readable by humans and at the same time widely adopted in tools that integrate plain text with publishing methods. Many text editors support Markdown, and you can use other tools to produce nice-looking PDF-files. Markdown comes in handy if you want to write an article or assemble a small presentation.

# Citations and book references are added via the extended MultiMarkdown syntax. It connects beautifully with BibTeX, which is a widely-supported format to save bibliographic data in plain text files. Our recommendation for Mac is the open-source tool [https://bibdesk.sourceforge.io/ BibDesk] and for Windows [https://jabref.org/ JabRef] to manage the bibliographical data and connect it to the Zettelkasten via the citekeys it produces.

All the screenshots here are examples of our Zettelkastens in ''The Archive''.

<span id="dokuwiki"></span>

=== DokuWiki ===

[https://www.dokuwiki.org/ DokuWiki] is one of my favourite software solutions for managing a Zettelkasten. If you use DokuWiki, you could consider not making each Zettel its own wiki page. The design of the DokuWiki user interface is more tailored towards long(er) pages. This violates the principle of atomicity to appoint. However, if you link directly to subsections and each subsection contains one thought you will be fine. Every page can be divided into sections and subsections, each with its address, making it possible to treat sections as individual Zettel.

DokuWiki allows you to use title-based IDs and keeps the links functioning if you change the title names, hence the IDs. I still recommend to additionally use time-based IDs. They would just come up in the address of each site or subsection but wouldn’t be in the way otherwise. The benefit is that you will be able to export DokuWiki to another software (especially text editors) solution much easier. Think of the time-based ID part of the code of the Zettelkasten itself which can be read by various software. If the code is complete you can use a high number of apps. If you decide against some parts of the code (conventions) transitions will be much harder.

With DokuWiki, Structure Notes are regular wiki pages. They deal with structures just like plain text files do, which I described above.

<span id="starting-now"></span>

== Starting Now ==

What can you expect if you follow the Zettelkasten Method? Expect more, way more results from your efforts. Be persistent and just do it. You will likely get stuck at some point when you cannot figure out how to implement feature X or Y with your tool of choice and get things to work. This will all eventually sort itself out when you went through the motions time and again, and when you remind yourself of the basic principles of a Zettelkasten: you need identifiers as addresses, you need links to create a hypertext, and then get confident through practice. Moving forward is the only way to become something in life. So, get to work. It needs to be done. Having a Zettelkasten makes nothing easier, but it makes anything possible.

Start to learn the Zettelkasten Method now. Download our [https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/The-Archive-Demo-Notes Demo Archive] and play with it using [https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ The Archive] (free 60 day trial) and other apps.

If you start your own Zettelkasten, share the steps of your journey with our [https://forum.zettelkasten.de/ great community in the forums]! You can also [https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1443/introduction-to-the-zettelkasten-method/ discuss this introduction] there.

Start reading about the Zettelkasten Method on the [https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/ curated overview page]

<span id="special-thanks"></span>

== Special Thanks ==

I owe eternal gratefulness to @Will who did the first round(s) of beta-reading this article. I pity him for being the first exposed to my English.