3 Sentence Summary

This book describes the Zettelkasten method for better note-taking (i.e. the "slip box") where you take good notes so that you can easily pull from those ideas later for a better writing experience.

The inefficient way of note-taking is absentmindedly putting notes into folders where you will never see them again. The efficient way is giving the note context and linking it to other notes as you make it, so that you can better remember it.

The whole writing process (brainstorming, choosing a hypothesis, writing, and editing) is easier and more creative if you take notes on things that spark your interest IN THE MOMENT, because you then have a repository of networked ideas to browse through when you need it.

Would I Read it Again?

Only the first part about Zettelkastan. The rest of the book is obvious, common sense info.

Notes

Zettelkasten

• Niklas Luhmann came up with the Zettelkasten method. He was extremely productive and successful in his career (published 58 books and tons of articles), BUT he didn't wear himself out. He said, “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” His secret was that each time he read or heard something interesting, he wrote it on an index card and filed it in a box with all of his other ideas. He regularly mentioned this "slip-box" method was the source of his productivity.
• This helped because it front-loaded all of the work, and when it came time to write, he only had to organize the notecards. With Zettelkasten, you take 2 kinds of notes while reading. Step 1 is a quick note ("Fleeting Note") jotted down immediately so you can remember it. Step 2 is a "Permanent Note" expanding on the original, with more context, thoughtfulness, and considering how it is relevant to other permanent notes or interests.
• The idea is not just to collect, but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions.

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The Mind Relies on External Scaffolding

• One idea that really resonated with me was the idea that the mind only knows everything with context. Philosophers, neuroscientists, educators and psychologists disagree in many ways on how the brain works, but they do agree that our brains need external scaffolding." "You need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding." If you have a good structure, you can trust it, and it will relieve you from feeling like you have to remember everything at every moment. It's easier to remember things we understand. Understand things better by connecting the idea through meaningful connections like rules, theories, narratives, or explanations.
• Accompany notes with questions like "How does this fact fit into my idea of …? How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory? Are these two ideas contradictory or do they complement each other? Isn’t this argument similar to that one? Haven’t I heard this before?"
• Write down things to free up brain space.  The Zeigarnik effect: Open tasks tend to occupy our short-term memory–until they are done. If we write things down, that convinces our brains we can get it out of the way.

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Be selective

• Write only 1 idea on each index card, and be concise.
• Be selective with writing, too. It's hard to delete parts of your writing, aka "kill your darlings," but just move the parts you're unsure of to another document and tell yourself you'll use them later.

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Save Time and Effort on Writing By Frontloading

• A smooth writing process depends more on what you've done AHEAD of time (aka notes and research), than the writing you actually do when it comes time to write a paper. This means that it's much easier to write if you already have a lot of ideas written down that you can just browse and pull from. With the Zettelkasten method, you already have everything you need right in front of you: the ideas, the arguments, the quotes, long developed passages, complete with bibliography and references.
• No one actually starts from scratch: "In order to develop a good question to write about or find the best angle for an assignment, one must already have put some thought into a topic. To be able to decide on a topic, one must already have read quite a bit and certainly not just about one topic."

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Only Save Notes that Actually Interest You

• Don't "brainstorm". Instead, collect notes that you're interested little by little, and the material will cluster around the topics you return to most. By focusing on what you're interested in, good writing will follow.
• Feedback loops happen when you take more notes, find more things you're interested in, and find writing more enjoyable.

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Create a Network of Ideas

• It's beneficial to connect notes to each other in a network, instead of categorizing them. Don't put the notes in folders. Instead organize them by idea, and other ideas that relate to that one. Each time you come across something that resonates with you, make a note.
• "The more we know, the more information(hooks) we have to connect new information to, the easier we can form long-term memories."

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Choose Keywords Carefully

• References between notes are important. Don't be an archivist who thinks 'what keyword is most fitting?', be a writer who asks 'How will I stumble upon this note again?'
• Consider what kind of cues should trigger the retrieval of a memory.
• There are 2 different kinds of retrieval. One is associations: "These can be associations like the scent of a sweet, as the madeleine triggered childhood memories for Proust." Another is environmental cues: "It is, for example, easier to remember something we have learned in school if we are tested for it in the same room with the same noise in the background."

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Every Note Builds on the Next

• "Since writing is nothing more than the revision of a rough draft, which is nothing more than turning a series of notes into a continuous text, which are written on a day-to-day basis, connected and indexed in the slip-box, there is no need to worry about finding a topic to write about. Just look into your slip-box and see where clusters have been built up."