An introduction to the Zettelkasten as a garden for growing knowledge
Introduction to Zettelkasten theory and practice
Regret is the most common feeling people have after some time using a Zettelkasten.
These people have been accumulating knowledge for a while, often years, hopeful to grow it and share it with others. They write notes in their notebooks, on looseleaf paper, in Google Docs, or other ways they have seen work decently well.
Often they will see a graph of my notes and become curious about what I am doing.
They ask about what software I use, and I tell them about it. “The software I use is called Obsidian, but really the important thing is that I am maintaining a Zettelkasten.”
I guide them through some of the main ideas of the system, and they try it out excitedly. Some time later, they lament their time not growing a Zettelkasten.
This essay, the first of a few to come, will help you get started growing knowledge with a Zettelkasten. The focus will not be on specific software or paper, though I do highly recommend Obsidian.
Growing Knowledge
Firstly, it is important to clarify what I mean by ‘growing knowledge.’ There are essentially three parts to growing knowledge. And since growing is, to me, most clear in plants, I will use them in analogy: growing knowledge is like growing plants, from 1) getting seeds, 2) letting the seeds develop into plants, and 3) sharing the seeds you create.
Thus, in terms of knowledge, growth involves 1) picking up interesting information, 2) guiding the information to develop into new insights, and 3) sharing your insights with the world.
In this sense, the growth is not just personal, but also interpersonal. Often, by growing knowledge for yourself, you help others grow knowledge too.
And since you might have a garden to keep your various plants, you also have a space to keep and grow your knowledge. Many students take their notes in notebooks, in Google documents, in Apple notes, in Notion, or in Obsidian. When people stop being students, they often halt their note-taking completely. This is a shame, I think. I do not believe that a thirst for knowledge is lost upon donning a graduation cap.
In any case, there are various tools which can serve as places to keep your knowledge. But more important than the brand of notebook or software is the structure of the knowledge. Also, the most important consideration is whether you will actually use whatever you decide to use. I prefer some apps to others, but it would not matter if I did not use either!
Zettelkasten
The knowledge structure that I strongly recommend to everybody is the Zettelkasten. The term, in German, refers to boxes of paper slips, but what I take it to refer to is a specific structure. This structure involves every slip of paper, each with an individual piece of knowledge, standing on their own. In this way, each slip is a peer with every other slip. As every slip of paper, every note in Obsidian and Apple Notes, ideally contains an individual piece of knowledge, I will refer to the pieces of knowledge themselves being peers in the structure.
The note in the image is such an example:
From reading How to Take Smart Notes a bit over a year ago, I extracted this insight.1 Creating a Zettelkasten is just as easy; you just need to create notes that stand as peers in a structure like this.
But if every piece of knowledge is a peer with others, it would be difficult to find that specific fact from among thousands of others. Imagine having to find a specific dot on the graph image from earlier.
Other approaches resolve this problem by categorizing notes into different folders or boxes, embedding some within others. Categories might be like “Philosophy” where all the notes on philosophy would go, and “Mathematics” where all the notes on mathematics would go, and so on.
The Zettelkasten has a very different solution: linking. Notes refer to each-other, allowing you to connect notes not by shared topics but by specific, meaningful connections.
The specificity of connections is important here: I have quite a lot of notes on Zettelkasten, but I am able to access specific ideas related to a note by navigating its links.
So, when writing your notes, make sure to link to and from any individual note.
But what is the point of this? Linking enables you to maintain the various notes without strict hierarchy. Everything is simply a ‘piece of knowledge,’ ready to make connections and insights.
It is in this way that working with a Zettelkasten helps grow knowledge.
In fact, it also mirrors the aspects of growing knowledge mentioned earlier:
The knowledge you get from others become pieces of knowledge in the Zettelkasten, like my “systems with feedback are more likely to be engaged” note.
When you have insights, those insights are captured in the Zettelkasten as well, like “Zettelkasten allow for ambient productivity”.
And when you would like to share your knowledge with others, you have the Zettelkasten to turn to.
For that last bit, see for example this list of links from this essay’s note:
Pieces of Knowledge
Among the many elements of the Zettelkasten, the treatment of knowledge as individual pieces is crucial.
See, when I read books and find interesting information, I capture it in my Zettelkasten. I do the same with lectures and with conversations. I might end up with a very long file after some time taking notes. But what I do afterward is something quite unique to the Zettelkasten: I break up the longer notes into their individual pieces of knowledge, with the aim of having each note contain exactly one idea or concept.
This practice is key to the success of the structure, and it works because breaking up the context of ideas invites further creation. Without doing so, by keeping your notes in notebooks, for example, your notes on a lecture may be associated across a few pages, bundled together. How will the ideas from that lecture spread throughout the network of your understanding as a whole?
If you used index cards instead, you could split up your understanding of the lecture into various self-contained and cross-referencing cards. You would be able to arrange them in new ways, and with other index cards, gaining insights from the new arrangements.
The Zettelkasten structure, by keeping knowledge in these smaller pieces, makes cross-category growth of knowledge possible. That much, I hope, is clear. But it also lets knowledge from quite different points in time interact.
Every few days I encounter a piece of knowledge I had a few years a go. Recalling that past insight, I am able to create new connections between the current ideas in my mind and the wealth of knowledge from my past.
Such re-surfacing of ideas is often an afterthought of other systems. If you do not extract your notes from your notebooks, the best you can do is deciding to re-read old notebooks on a whim.
And this is why people are often so regretful of not starting sooner: maintaining a Zettelkasten is investing the current knowledge you have for exponential returns in the future. If you are interested in growing your knowledge, seriously think about starting a Zettelkasten. The best time to do so was yesterday, and the second best is now.
Further Resources
For a great example of Zettelkasten and insight into its inner workings, I recommend browsing and taking notes on Andy Matuschak’s working notes.
I often recommend this video by Odysseas to people who ask about the Obsidian software. I think it can help you get started, but keep in mind that the organization and methodology is very personal: I work quite differently from how he sets up his system. Alternatively, you might prefer this video where he goes through the process of his workflow.
A wealth of knowledge can be gained from the Zettelkasten.de site, both the blog posts and forum.
The book A System for Writing is a very accessible and practical guide to getting set up with a Zettelkasten.
With all these resources listed, you might be tempted to dive into each of them. But keep in mind that it is more important to get started and experiment than to carefully analyze how to ‘best’ get going.
Quite honestly, I do not recommend this text if you are interested primarily in getting a Zettelkasten set up. However, it involves a lot of interesting motivation and theory.
Lots of ideas in this Essay. I liked the review and arranging of your notes that a Zettelkasten methodology can force you to do.
Very clear! And tempting to start to force us to slow down so we can memorize more.