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Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

My takeaway from the recent trend in articles talking about how great the Zettelkasten method is:

Document what you do, as if you were describing your work and/or learning to a stranger. That stranger is you, in 6 months to 5 years time.

Maintaining that enthusiasm and finding the time to document is difficult, but the results are very valuable because you are building a "second brain". That extra brain can be indexed, searched, tagged, analyzed, and edited using many powerful tools.

Don't waste energy chasing fancy tools and methodologies without already having a simple workflow in place. In other words, don't go all out learning Emacs+org-mode+org-roam when you already have a directory of text file notes. Once you have a good idea of what works for you, then introduce tools designed to make your life easier. (I say this as someone who uses Emacs+org-mode+org-roam every day)

Oh and read "The Checklist Manifesto" and "How to take Smart Notes".

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> How to take Smart Notes

I have read over 100 pages of the book but to be honest, I am disappointed with it. I learn best by examples, the book is failing short of examples on how to use Zettelkasten. My expectation was the book was going to walk me through the process of implementing Zettelkasten like a tutorial, but instead it keeps going back in circles, talking about why I should use Zettelkasten. I am about to finish the book but I still have a lot of questions.

OP here

Yeah, that book was pretty light on practical advice. I didn't find much in there that I hadn't already discovered by reading blog posts about it

One thing that was unique though, was a set of questions to ask yourself while reading to get extract the most insights out of the material.

I posted them here if you're interested:

https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1195038683461611521

Genuine curiosity: why do you take the extra effort to choose and then add an emoji at the end of most of the sentences in these tweets?

It doesn't take much effort. Win + '.' opens up the emoji selector, and just start typing a word to search the emojis.

Why bother? Sometimes they help to convey emotion that would otherwise be missing. Other times it helps to break up dryer blocks of text.

That, plus it's fun :)

Weird suggestion that might help:

My second reading of Test Driven Development, I literally did the entire book along with the author, front to back.

That's when it clicked. The actual manual mechanical kinesthetic activity somehow made it work for me.

"That stranger is you, in 6 months to 5 years time."

Seemingly, one of those lessons that must be experienced to be learned.

30 years ago, I added full comments to (my source of) a text editor during a rewrite. Back when we still debated such things, before Code Complete 1st ed.

Thereafter, all maintenance was a breeze, even years later. Like a gift from my prior self.

When I write (code, notes, journals), my headspace is kind of a hybrid of rubber ducking (thinking out loud, like during usability testing) and telling future me a story of me.

OP here

100% agreed on the "don't chase fancy tools" mindset.

When I was taking the Building a Second Brain course, the instructor Tiago Forte had offered us three tools to use for organizing our notes:

- Evernote - Roam - Notion

He personally used Evernote, but he had an interview each with someone to show us how hey used Roam or Notion.

Since all the examples he would show us during the class would be in Evernote, I decided to not bother trying to apply PARA to the other two systems and stick with Evernote until I learned the basics. I could always switch over later, once I grasped the fundamentals better.

I haven't switched over yet, because frankly, Evernote is still good enough for me. The potential switching costs aren't worth it.

> Document what you do, as if you were describing your work and/or learning to a stranger.

I picture it as "doing engineering the way a coroner conducts an autopsy." (Maybe only a helpful framing if you've watched enough CSI, but IMHO a pretty powerful mental lever if you have.)

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