The Zettelkästen method

I only recently heard about the Zettlekasten Method (by recently I mean a few months ago but it’s taken me this long to work out how to write about it so) and have been using it as a way of taking my notes for my thesis writing. I’m taking a more project based approach rather than a general Zettelkasten so my advice will be primarily geared towards that side of things.

So, what is it?

It’s a method of note taking! You have flash cards (or some online equivalent) with the things you learn on each one. One note = one idea/ theme. Each note has it’s own unique ID and this can be used to link notes together.

The name literally means “box of notes” and that’s what it is! The Zettelkasten is your collection of notes that you can search and use to inspire new ideas or have support for older ones.

It essentially becomes a store of all of your knowledge. If you use it right then you can sort of ‘converse’ with it to come u with new ideas. It’s similar to a Memory Palace but you’re externalising it.

How do you make one then?

I personally use Evernote because it’s online and I can access the information I’ve saved on it anywhere which is necessary for me. I don’t always have my physical notes with me but I almost always have my phone. If you don’t want to use software like that then you can use good old pen and paper; get a flashcard/ notecards and a box to store them in.

Each new “thing” goes on a new bit of paper (or new note). You want it down to essentially one thought per note. This is how I’m using mine, each note is a new point or piece of evidence for my thesis, however, I have expanded it a little bit so it’s more theme based since I work best that way. Every note is a different theme with all of the supporting evidence and my commentary, since I don’t like taking notes and then looking back on them wondering why I made a note oEf that particular quote or idea.

Each one of these notes then has a home. I use tags and the custom IDs I’ve been creating (more on how to do this a little bit later in the post). You don’t want to do it by topic because then you get the issue of some notes being relevant to more than one area, e.g – “guinea pig- experiment or pet?”.

I’ve also made a reference sheet to go with this where I list the topic and all of the IDs relating to that. This cuts down on time spent cross referencing and makes it far easier to find and link between notes.

Using one for University

I did things a little differently to Luhmann, the creator of this method, and instead of collecting any pieces of information I found, I only collect those with relation to my thesis.

You could do it class by class and then have a system of cross referencing between these or having a tag that applies throughout different “boxes of notes”. So if you have three classes that semester; “Shakespeare”, “Renaissance Literature” and “Medieval Literature”, you’re going to expect some sort of cross over between all of these at some points. I would make three separate notebooks in Evernote and then with my tagging system develop tags that relate to whatever notes you’re taking (and also have cross-class tags! – “Shakes-Ren, Medieval-Ren, Shakes-Medieval” or something like that).

For these it’s especially important to have proper citations. I use green for citations, blue for personal comments, and black for the actual notes. This keeps it really clear what’s what on each note.

General tips

1. A really easy way to create your IDs is to put the date and time of creation as well as a short title that sums up that note. For example:

[ &201907280821 Zettelkasten summary] 
In this example I've used the "&" symbol to act as a start to the ID name, then put the date with YYYY/MM/DD with HOUR:MINUTES.  Each one of these will give you a really good unique ID and is easier than trying to number them by "1...2...3... etc". 

1. Put your references in! If you have information for citations then for the love of everything put that information onto the note cards. You don’t want to be rushing about at the end trying to make your bibliography and not knowing where anything came from.

2. Make a note of what’s paraphrased and what’s actually a quotation. I use square brackets for paraphrasing just to keep it clear and simple

3. Try to make it as easy as possible to both record and extract information. You don’t want to have a battle for each of these. Make sure your notes are easy to read, properly tagged and named.

4. Try different pieces of software and apps if you’re wanting to have an online version. I would recommend Notion, Evernote and OneNote as they all have the ability to have organised notebooks (or workspaces) and link between notes easily.

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Hey! Tara here and thanks for checking out my blog. I update every Tuesday with posts about studying tips, advice and talk about productivity and organisation too. If you want to keep up to date with my latest blog posts I’d love it if you subscribed to this blog.

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