Keeping zetel notes: productive or counterproductive approach.

Posted by Christian Tietze
Jan 11, 2019 at 07:00 PM

Sorry for reviving this after a month! Couldn’t resist :)

(1) So in the initial post, @Dellu said that a Zettelkasten takes a lot of time because you are going to extract every usable bit of information.

I like to argue this is a misconception. It makes a difference if you scribble “argument” in the margins of the book for later reference, or actually quote the premises and conclusion in an easy-to-digest manner in a note on your computer. The latter takes more time. It does make a difference which approach you take. But you should pick a suitable approach for your project, that’s most important, I think. Your life is limited, and you cannot be expected to extract every usable bit of information from ever 1000-page tome when a cursory reading of the 20 most important pages in chapter X would have done. What for?

The underlying issue could be anything; you have to be honest with yourself :) It could be Collector’s Fallacy, i.e. mistaking the satisfactory feeling of collecting info for making tangible progress. It could be Fear of Missing Out, i.e. “who knows when I will ever get my hands on this treasure of a book, better extract everything immediately!”—it could also be a problem similar to other addictions: you want your fix, and you want it now, and cannot bear to skip all the remaining 980 pages. Who can say?

In “How to Read a Book” by Adler/van Doren, the authors put parallel reading of parts of multiple texts at the top of the hierarchy. It’s not useful for everything, but it’s the most efficient way to get an overview. Again, this depends on your aim, how far you have progressed in your research, and a myriad of other factors. (E.g., is this text super boring?)

The Zettelkasten Method focuses on how you process information. In terms of “Getting Things Done”, it’s mostly about the reference management of items in your inbox. Sascha and I discuss how to add stuff to your (virtual) inbox, i.e. how to approach reading in general, but a Zettelkasten is about the way you store and cross-reference the notes that you are taking. You decide which notes are taken, and the criteria are not immanent to the method. They are all up to you.

I’m not an expert in the U.S.-american philosophical tradition Pragmatism, but I do think that this is right up a pragmatists’ alley :) The method is good if it is useful.

(2) @Dellu asked if there would be a scientifically superior method.
(3) Also, the concern that the Zettelkasten is a time-sink without product.

This really follows from what I just mentioned: what is most useful to you?

Do you _want_ to produce texts? Then the criterion is how many articles you publish per year, for example. Or blog posts, or books, or whatever. That’s your measuring stick. Tweak and measure, then tweak again.

I don’t see how science could help get useful answers, because it makes a difference if you measure output in blog posts per year of (a) a fashion blog with affiliate links and product recommendations and reviews, (b) a sports team behind-the-scenes website, or (c) deep-sea diving research that can only be performed once a year for a couple of weeks because of the current, or whatever, only some of them making enough money to do this full-time, too. It’s just waaaay too hard to get data that is reasonably general while also being relevant to your life in particular. So I wouldn’t bet on this happening, at least not while we’re alive and maybe not for the ever-so-rapidly changing landscape of computer software.

Now that I crushed all your hopes for a better future, do not fret! Let me reiterate: there still is light! As all the others in this thread have pointed out time and again, you are going to have to find it yourself, though, and it might not shine as bright as you imagined the scientific truth to illuminate your work; but it’s going to be the best you will have, and it’ll shine brighter the more you keep working. Because by doing, you hone your skills, and thus you improve and get better: you will know better what to focus on and how to integrate it into your work, if at all.

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All that being said, I am a strong proponent for the Zettelkasten Method for my own stuff. I can take notes now and use them in drafts 5 years from now. That’s super useful. And that’s not gonna happen with all the hastily scribbled marginalia in super-interesting books I have read but never processed. Their use diminishes, and after a couple of years, I am glad if I can recognize any unique thought that goes beyond the goodreads or Wikipedia summary. When I was at University, I wanted something like this, but was content with keeping things on paper and in my head and rehashing ideas again and again to get a better grasp. That’s paradise, compared to the life of journalists, where the throughput indeed is a factor, and nobody cares about how you organize your notes, and you better find out how to excel at what you do.