Forget Forgetting. Build a Zettelkasten.

Author: Adam Keesling (Superorganizers) URL: https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/forget-forgetting-build-a-zettelkasten One-line: Active reading isn’t enough — a Zettelkasten (notes on cards, reviewed, then linked) turns your library into a living network that talks to your past and future self, and its best application is writing.

Highlights #Reading

• After experiencing the joy of learning for the first time — when I learned something on my own — I got addicted to knowledge. I read a bunch of books. Everything I could get my hands on. After several weeks and several books, I looked back on the first one I read. What was it about again? I couldn’t remember anything other than the title and one or two central ideas. #Reading
• Active Reading allows you to engage with the material you’re consuming at a higher level. A few common techniques:
  • Annotate in the margin to summarize points or raise questions
  • Highlight or underline important passages
  • Compare what the author is saying to other ideas
• This is great! But I want to challenge you: could your note-taking system be even better? If you’re anything like me, Notion and Evernote leave something to be desired. They aren’t ineffective, but they don’t feel magical either. #Note-taking
• The Zettelkasten method is a better way to take notes. The basic idea is this: take notes on cards, review them, then link them together. That’s it. It’s not a complicated system, but it is powerful.
• Creating a Zettelkasten is like creating an intellectual time machine. You enter in your current mental state and the machine carries you across time to talk to yourself in the past and future.
• There are two sections to a Zettelkasten: Inbox and Notes Archive.
  • The Inbox is a section for cards that are written out, but still need to be sorted. This is where you are going to put your notecards when you first create them.
  • The Notes Archive is the heart of the system, the intertwined network of your past thoughts.
• There are a lot of ways to use your Zettelkasten, but I think the best application is writing. It helps with a bunch of things:
  • Creativity: connecting far-reaching notes that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own.
  • Clear writing: Writing notes in your own words helps you clarify your thoughts.
  • Outlining: having trouble organizing your thoughts? Pick a path through the linked notes and use that as an outline.

Connections

• Zettelkasten — the card-based, link-everything note system this piece advocates; the same method How To Take Smart Notes systematizes from Niklas Luhmann.
• Writing — Keesling’s claim that the Zettelkasten’s killer app is writing dovetails with the “writing is thinking” thesis.
• Reading — active reading as the input layer the system captures.
• How to Never Lose Another Memory Again / Surgical Reading - How to Read 12 Books at Once — the other Superorganizers reading/memory pieces Kyle read the same day.