A practical tip for writing a note in a Zettelkasten is to write phrase the first sentence as a quick summary. Every article on Wikipedia starts like that this, so it’s very easy to get a quick grasp of what is the article about. Later more background information can be detailed.
2020.02.05.
Reusing my blog to be my Zettelkasten can be beneficial because I’m always planning to publish longer blog posts, but at the end, I just don’t do it. I don’t enjoy the process of writing long-form articles, because it forces me to think about the content from the reader’s point of view. It makes me nervous since it’s a very different state of mind, other than just writing for myself.
I write a lot of things every day and one of those things is my Zettelkasten. It contains short notes (Zettels) which I captured, processed, and organized. It has interesting content – for me at least – and I like the process of writing in it.
The idea to merge the essence of blogging with the process of keeping a Zettelkasten is very interesting, which should be explored more deeply. A WordPress blog as a tool for keeping a Zettelkasten fits very well because of the following reasons:
- Zettelkasten should be searchable, this blog is searchable as well.
- Zettels should be linked together. Since a blog is just a website, it’s made for making links.
- I can easily tag my notes on a blog.
- Each Zettel has a unique ID in the form of a public link, I don’t have to generate IDs manually.
- Keeping a public Zettelkasten can be a concern, but I can mark some Zettels as private.
Related
- Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive
- Using Zettelkasten and Tinderbox to Document a Literature Review
Source
Today, I constantly remind myself before publishing any article that I am publishing this on my blog (which means that I can publish anything I want), and that it doesn’t matter if people read it or not. I’ll just keep doing my thing, because I enjoy doing it.
2020.01.03.
Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive
Maybe this is the best article yet about using the Zettelkästen method. Use it as an entry point for the system, then head over to zettelkasten.de to learn about the details of each step in the process.
2019.05.13.
Using Zettelkasten and Tinderbox to Document a Literature Review
This is very similar approach to my workflow for solving problems with DEVONthink and MindNode:
- I like to take walks when I have to think about something. I capture rough ideas with Drafts by writing down bullet points on my iPhone.
- Later, when I sit down and process these notes, I try to edit and rephrase a draft into a full-blown zettel, which is added to DEVONthink.
- I keep these ideas in DEVONthink for a couple of days to let my subconscious mind make connections and may came up with better solutions. I always add multiple follow-up zettels linked to the original one.
- Since these zettels and all the related reference material kept in the same group in DEVONthink, I can use Shortcuts on iOS to create a mindmap from it. The generated mindmap links back to each original zettel, so this makes a visualized version of my notes. It helps me to use the mindmap to create a plan and may came up with concrete next actions, that’ll be moved into OmniFocus at the end.