Keeping zetel notes: productive or counterproductive approach.

Posted by Hugh
Dec 3, 2018 at 02:42 PM

Paul Korm wrote:

>
>Anyway, responsive to @Dellu’s thoughtful post, I’d say: just as there’s
>no set of objective rules about developing one’s personal body of
>knowledge, there’s no prescriptive approach to zettelkasten.

I agree. As a journalist - and therefore a note-taker - writing long-form articles and preparing documentary and current affairs TV programmes for more than 30 years, I sometimes approached subjects in a discursive and digressive fashion, surveying the territory, seeking to discover what questions should be asked and what the range of answers might be. Sometimes I tackled them in a much more directed and purposive way, seeking to support or disprove arguments. Frequently, I employed both approaches at different times for research on single subjects, depending on what seemed to me to be needed.

I wasn’t aware of Zettelkasten techniques then. Their author appears to have intended them to be used for the more single-minded of the two approaches. But from what I’ve learnt of them, I think I could have fruitfully employed them for both.