For those of us with ADHD, writing notes is more than a productivity trend, it’s a necessary tool for survival. And using a Zettelkasten turns us from note takers into value makers. But the problem is, many digital note-taking gurus have confused and overcomplicated the simplicity of Zettelkasten.
I am on a mission to demystify this life changing system and make it every ADHDer’s best friend.
First, let’s clear up confusion about the system itself. Zettelkasten is German for notebox. The term was coined by renowned 20th century German sociologist named Niklas Luhmann and involved organizing note cards by placing them in relation to other notes inside his notebox, numbering each card with a unique ID. Those ID’s would then be indexed by keywords and concepts, making them searchable and easy to locate as the notebox grows.
Sounds simple enough, right? Then how come the more you read about it online, the more confusing it gets? This was my exact experience learning it.
I spent an entire year reading forums and articles about Zettelkasten and watching countless videos about it. I knew it was valuable and helped many others with similar working memory struggles as me, but I couldn’t get it to click.
The thing I spent the most time trying to figure out was the difference between the note types and how to organize them. Why did each person use different terms to describe the different notes? What does the process itself look like, from selecting what knowledge to capture to making a complete note?
Things didn’t start to click until I stopped trying to implement a Zettelkasten digitally and started building one physically with note cards, the way Luhmann did. And what I found was that the forced constraints of the analog system almost instantly gave me the clarity of how it all works in Obsidian.
Here is what I discovered that the Obsidian gurus get wrong or miss about using a digital Zettelkasten.
Friction is your friend (sometimes).
Many of us are sold the idea that the less friction the better. This is not always true. Not only that, but sometimes what appears frictionless is adding friction. For example, the flexibility of Obsidian adds friction to your workflow because it requires more discipline and systemization to be consistent as your knowledge base scales. This is bad friction.
We think of the information capture process as needing to be as frictionless as possible, only to find that we have an overwhelming amount of unprocessed “notes” aka someone else’s copy & pasted words. This is not note making, its information collection.
Friction is your friend when it comes to knowledge capture. It forces you to be more intentional about what knowledge you bring into your system, almost acting as a spam filter.
A zettelkasten is not only a personal knowledge management system. It’s a conversation partner.
If you come across new information that relates to a note you have in your vault, do you go in and revise or add to that note? If you do, you are robbing yourself of a primary purpose of using a Zettelkasten.
Each time you edit or revise a digital note, you are erasing value from your notebox. Even if you discover that the information in that note is wrong, make a new note and engage in a dialogue with that note.
Have a debate with your former thoughts. Be a writer, not an editor. Correct previous notes with new words on new notes. A Zettelkasten thrives off imperfection which is why it works with your ADHD brain, not against it.
Why one idea per note?
You may have heard from PKM gurus that each note should contain a single idea. They’re right about that. But have you ever heard anyone explain why? It’s because with an analog system, the note card itself forces you to be brief with its physical constraints. It then naturally proceeds that at minimum the note should contain an idea that is expressed as concisely as possible.
A digital note does not impose these constraints. There’s nothing preventing a digital note from turning into an essay except for your own self discipline. While you can’t impose constraints on a digital note, you can keep track of your word count.
A 4×6 index card fits around 80-100 words, so try to keep your main notes no more than 100 words. If you can’t explain an idea in less words than that, it’s a good indicator that you need a better understanding of that idea.
Permanent notes are poorly named.
The term “permanent note” was not used by Niklaus Luhmann or anyone prior to Sonke Ahrens, author of the book “How to Take Smart Notes”, which recently popularized Zettelkasten.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across the following questions on a PKM message board:
“How do you write a permanent note?”
“When does a note become permanent?”
Let’s go back to the analog Zettelkasten example. Once you finish writing a note on a card, you then file it in the notebox. You don’t go back and edit that note. Since you gave that card a unique ID and indexed the keywords in that note, it now lives in your notebox and if it were to be removed, other notes would suddenly lose their valuable connections to it.
Permanency is referring to the note’s placement in the slip-box. The word permanent describes the state of a note, not the type of note. A permanent note can be a source note that links to one or more main notes, which are permanent by default. Once that note makes a connection in your notebox, it becomes permanent.
It’s that simple.
I hope this has helped to clear up any confusion you might have about this life changing system that transforms information into knowledge assets if leveraged properly.
As always, stay curious my friend.
-Tony