The Zettelkasten method in Obsidian
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I just can't bring myself to go to the effort of documenting a thought and adding links/tags unless it is something I predict that I will need sometime in the future and won't just remember. Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information. If I'm linking thoughts together I'm doing it real time in my head, anything else takes me too far out of my thought process.
I can see it if you are a person working in academia or a writer where you may be generating concepts that you want to link together in the future. But as someone that does project type work, I'm following too much of a defined process to see any benefit.
I'm no expert, but looking from afar it seems to me that complex note-taking systems are an optimization on some anticipated theoretical future problem that seldom materializes in practice, and I think trying to squeeze those promised extra 10% of efficiency might possibly qualify as diminishing returns.
I also use Logseq, not Obsidian, which encourages a journal like workflow. Specifically, using templates is almost like a simple interactive prompt: /template > decide if it's work project or personal area or whatever > get a pre-filled note starter, with suggested tags (I delete the ones I don't need rather than think about the ones I have to add) .
It's just so easy.
Once you got the habit of writing down a lot of stuff, and putting them in the right bucket, a lot of things become easier, and LLMs make some of those even easier.
I've considered starting another based on the idea of getting high off knowledge. I don't see the point as an information store, but as a toy it makes sense; use it spark curiosity, make neat connections, etc.
Anyway, I don’t follow zettel.. itself, I agree broadly with you - the creator of it was a writer I think, and so your academia note holds. Adopting some its practices though have really reduced friction for me at the “where do I write this down?” and “where did I write this down?” points in my workflow.
There’s just not enough there to make into a blog post.
For me, I don't bookmark a webpage, I'm usually after a sentence or something after.
Highlighting that one sentence or webpage is a habit.
Throwing a tag or two on them isn't as hard when you can call the tags whatever you want.
After that, those topics are one click away, 5-10 years later.
Trying out Zettelkasten, or PARA, Johnny Decimal or some other system, one will work for you. It's less about perfectionism at the start and just improving.
It's also possible to have an AI just organize the folders for you little by little.
It can not be great at first to play around but the more you work at it the more it does become.
But, if I wanted to as a thought exercise, I wonder whether this is something like Claude Cowork could tackle. "Analyze these notes and attempt to map organic links between them" (obviously a real prompt would be far more nuanced and detailed). And see what it came up with. The nice thing about Obsidian is that it'd be really easy to clone your vault and let Claude play with the clone so you don't risk a mess.
That's what LLMs are best, actually. Go through all your stuff and painstakingly document, add tags, refer to other documents, etc
> Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information
LLMs can also separate what information was only useful at a specific time vs more perennially useful notes.
However, if one doesn't want (or just doesn't have time) to do the task but still want a tidy cross-referenced set of notes, one could outsource to a LLM
So, I think you need some kind of a goal, a bigger project, for Zettelkasten to become useful.
Zettelkasten facilitates publication dysentery, which is already out of hand. I have the same problem with conventional bibliography managers. I have a few thousand papers and books on my computer, woven with the beginnings of a mind-mapping system. I recoil every time I consider using software "designed" for this, which excels at cranking out papers but not at deftly flying through idea space. And idea space is an actual thing now, that "King - Man + Woman = Queen" linear algebra supporting AI. Ignore this and one is selling buggy whips.
Reifying memory is the next frontier for LLMs, with many efforts underway. That should be our defining use case for mind-mapping.
At some point, these complex systems become a form of procrastination.
I tend to just remember topics and search for them when needed. For example, I rely completely on Outlook's search to find the email from 5 years ago that I remember X person sending (and I mention Outlook specifically because surprisingly Gmail is terrible at this)
"Two professors hadn't heard of him" is a fascinating epistemological standard. Like me stating: I've also met two cardiologists who didn't know who Rudolf Virchow was. Guess he wasn't that productive either.
As for the last comment: having gone to medical school some decades ago and trained in cardiology, I’m familiar with Virchow. I would be surprised to encounter any physician who hadn’t any familiarity with him. But who knows?!
I also was more of an Foucault guy at university. So I never really got into Luhmann. Albeit I originally studied literature and my uni was quite cultural studies heavy - this is why I read quite a lot from other disciplines back in the days.
I feel Luhmann might be a great poster child for deferred gratification. But that might just be the cynic speaking.
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhalt...
Sociology prof: "uhhhh. Well, the good news is that there are a ton of YouTube videos about you."
After saving, maybe you need some organization later, but most time they are just there. Most time you search content by categories, keywords, or tags.
I think we need right tools for different requirements.
By the way, the most important thing is thinking, not the notes, but notes can help you thinking and creating better systems.
More and earlier thinking, more notes, better systems.
I hope it can help you and other people.
My practical guide on setting up a smart notes / Zettelkasten / atomic notes Vault: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-zettelkasten
Also wrote about how it fits into my overall Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
I'm the end, I think we have maybe different uses for notes. Journaling, scratchpads, to-do lists, research, etc.
Take a methodology with a grain of salt. If it doesn't fit, there's a good chance it's solving someone else's problem, but you can always inform your own approach with it.
Amid all the fanaticism that grew around zettelkasten method the past few years people have forgotten and de-emphasized the fact that for Luhmann it was not a "second brain" to be referenced on demand, it was explicitly a system to support writing. It is tailored to help researchers write papers. It shines if you actually need a system in which to keep notions coherent and organized so that ideas are clear and citations precise when you need them during the writing process. If that's not you, the overhead probably isn't worth it. Just keep a notebook.
I can see how that could be useful in contexts where the work is about mulling over concepts, trying to uncover some hidden patterns. Philosophy, sociology, psychology come to mind. But looking at my large cache of notes on well known technology, I have a hard time seeing where the value would be.
I think it's worth pointing out because ZK pops up quite often on HN, as if it's the pinnacle of note taking. In reality, a lot of people here may just be wasting much of their time.
Edit: Oh, I actually just found the comment from the author here, sounds like AI slop.
Personally, I use a "temporary -Zettelkasten" strategy in my inbox. But it's more that I just timestamp new notes.
The power of obsidian imo is that I can quickly organize those inbox notes into their respective project notes with the touch of a hotkey
And then again in the project note, the Obsidian editor features (mostly around useful hotkeys) allow me to quickly manage my notes how I see fit (no particular strategy here other than being heavily influenced by GTD)
If you can stomach not working in Markdown, emacs' ORGmode exists and has all the functionality Obsidian has, and then some, open source, with a slightly different hypertext format.
Unless you are hellbent on one particular Obsidian plugin, you should be good.
Later, if you want to publish the files as HTML, you can use MkDocs.
My Obsidian Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
All posts about Obsidian: https://bryanhogan.com/tags/obsidian
Maybe this helps?
Edit: Upon a quick scan, this looks more like what I learned as "Linking Your Thinking", which resonates way more with me than a strict Zettelkasten format where you try to arrange notes linearly to match some artificial constraint.
And I think that's a good thing, just not how Ahrens described Zettelkasten.
Actually, they thrive with raw notes and scattered documents. I hoard project information in Obsidian with deliberately very little structure: everything lives in a single directory, with optionally one category as a frontmatter value, and very light linking. I do not have to think when adding to this vault at all, it's a low-friction drop box. But an agent in this infodump can do absolute wonders using just search.
I had to force even LLM to answer properly, because it answered the same substanceless way. The only thing helped is to ask it, what distinguishes this to the web, wikis, or HATEOAS.
With AI, there's nothing stopping you from dumping a huge pile of information into a single folder and telling an AI what you want to make with it that day.
Zettlekast has other benefits for humans though. If your goal is to grasp lot of knowladge oyu need to do it in atomic way, connect mentally to what you already know and do spaced repetition to internalize. Zettlkeaste forces you do it it all as part of organizing. Basically by organizing you make it your own.
Yes AI can help today but it also means it does not stay in your head. Not sure its important if it is in your head or you can call AI at any moment instead of your own memory.