If you don't write, you don't think. How to take notes productively with the Zettelkasten method
Productivity / / January 06, 2021
Alexey Chernyak
Co-founder and former CEO of Groupon Russia (Darberry.ru), co-founder of ProductUniversity.ru and UnitedInvestors.ru. Blogs daily10.ru.
There was such a wildly productive German scientist - Nicholas Luhmann, he wrote 77 books and much more. He explained his incredible fertility by the Zettelkasten method (translated from German - "card index"). He did all this on ordinary cards and in handwritten notebooks, and now the same can be done using notes on the phone. Here is a brief essence of the method, as I understand it and even apply it a little.
1. Take short notes on your iPhone for all occasions. I read an interesting article - wrote my own short synopsis. Bad mood - wrote how bad life is. A funny rhyme came to mind - wrote down a quatrain. Met with friends - wrote how it went. Someone immediately dumps it on Twitter, someone just adds it to notes and does not show it to anyone.
2. It is imperative to write consistently, concisely, simply and in your own words.
Powerful thought Luhmann talks about: We only think when we formulate words.
Our main brain is not in the head, but outside - in the language and culture that we have all been creating for thousands of years. I can confirm this. In short, he who does not write is not thinks.
3. Hence a simple recipe for how to grow smarter: constantly write notes. They say that "you need to think with your hands." Yes, any worthwhile thought is created on paper or somewhere outside, in the process of its “alienation” and discussion, and not at all in the head, as everyone thinks.
4. Further, these notes need to be marked with tags and links to other notes. This can be done in the evening, for example. This creates a network of notes. Your personal Wikipedia.
5. Any new concept or note should somehow fit in with those that already exist, otherwise why is it? For example, you are studying economics and you have come across a new concept of contribution margin. What is this animal, how to remember and apply it?
How do Losers: they just cram a new concept and then forget it and cannot apply it.
As do excellent students: they weave a new concept into the network of old concepts, explain the new to themselves through the old. They ask themselves questions such as "How does this differ from the usual margin?", "What if so?", "And if that is, but in this example?" Thus, the new concept receives a couple of dozen hyperlinks to the old, already familiar, and also becomes familiar.
6. So, each note is a complete short thought with two or three tags and a couple of links to similar notes in meaning.
7. When several dozen of such notes accumulate, you can also add headings or combine them into some general topic, article, note or post. Or combine it into a book.
8. Another interesting thought from Luhmann: nothing is created from scratch.
Any article or book is tens of accumulated notes that you have collected and structured at a certain moment.
If you look at the work of Mayakovsky, many writers or scientists, you can see that they collected their works in exactly the same way, from dozens of notes and drafts, sometimes very short, banal and ordinary.
9. If a beginner tries to sit down and to write a book, a complete failure awaits him, because he is trying to come up with a complex structure "from above down ”, then by force of will to write something on each item, and this is difficult and requires incredible discipline.
At the same time, it is very easy to write using the “bottom-up” method of short notes: there is no structure, you can jump from topic to topic, write only what you are interested in here and now. But if all this is tied into a network (make a personal "Wikipedia"), then over time you can easily collect several books. So Lumen, in fact, wrote as many as 77 pieces.
10. From a useful toolkit: notes on your phone plus a free app Zotero for computer. Notion also works fine. There are also several specialized tools: Roam Research, DEVONthink.
Read also🧐
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- Why keep a diary every day and how not to leave your notes