A Beginner’s Guide to the Zettelkasten Method
A Beginner’s Guide to the Zettelkasten Method
What’s the problem with note-taking?
Sadly, most of the time, those ideas and information get forgotten and lost. Without proper organizational structure, your data can quickly become a pile of chaos and due to the overwhelming amount, regularly sorting and organizing your notes is the only way to keep them usable.
What is the Zettelkasten method?
We need to understand how our minds work so we can work our minds better.
— Jim Kwik, mind coach and author of Mindvalley’s Superbrain Program
What is a knowledge management system?
Knowledge management is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing knowledge and information. The main objective is to make the best use of existing knowledge.
Definition of Zettelkasten
Who is Niklas Luhmann?
Zettelkasten method explained
How does the Zettelkasten method work?
Zettelkasten method comprises of three main types of notes:
- Literature Notes
- Reference Notes
- Permanent Notes
Types of Notes
Literature Notes
Literature Notes Oftentimes when working or reading for leisure, there’s a particular text we either wish to highlight or jot down for future reference. Literature Notes are the notes you make as comments to the text you have selected or marked down.
Tip: It’s best to write down more information than later necessary.
Reference Notes
The technique of grouping information, organizing ideas into categories, and creating tags to help you find grouped information at a later stage is the art of
Permanent Notes
Permanent Notes are stand-alone ideas that can be made without any direct context to other sourced information such as books, videos, or other available data.
Permanent notes can be made as a recap or summary of the information just researched or learned, but can also be thoughts that popped into your brain while thinking over a myriad of information or while analysing any given context.
The aim of permanent notes is to process the notes you have made and analyze how they affect your interests, thinking, and research. You then cherry pick the notes that add value to your existing ideas and connect the new information to what you already know and have saved in your database.
Fleeting Notes
Fleeting Notes are unstructured and unorganized notes. They serve as temporary holders of information for later use that you will need to organize into your system. In short, fleeting notes are temporary reminders of ideas.
Using the Zettelkasten method to take smart notes
The Zettelkasten method is about optimizing your workflow of learning and producing knowledge.