 |
| Card Catalog, via Unsplash |
Zettlekasten is a way of organizing information to make them more retrievable for your research. It's related to a LOT of similar concepts, such as GTD, Building a Second Brain, and so on. Yet it predates most of these modern concepts.
There are many people who want to sell you classes and workshops and so on, but I think they are playing up the complexity of the system too much. Instead, I'll just show you what I have taken Zettlekasten to be... a multi-layer approach. I don't have fancy acronyms or backronyms. I'll just tell you the levels.
Level 1: Acquire and file information (of various types) into the Slip-box (which is what Zettlekasten means). This has 2 parts:
1A: Do GTD's "brain dump"... Get all the stuff out of your brain to be processed later. These are call "fleeting notes" in ZK, as they are ideas, not information. They are topics or directions you should explore (see level 3), but are not information per se.
1B: you also need to take literature / media notes, which points out interesting concepts, thoughts, quotes, and so on (with full bibliographical refs) as you consume all that info.
If you have extra thoughts, well, make them fleeting notes and attach them to the lit notes you made in 1B. But they are SEPARATE notes. Keep information (immutable) separate from ideas (mutable).
Periodically (nightly? Weekly?) perform level 2 action below.
Level 2: Associate / Link the filed information to make them retrievable.
Initially you would not have much information to free associate, which is why you need to do this consistently over a long period to build up a large amount of information. It is essentially building a second brain to help you think.
In level 2, there are also a few parts
2A: Convert fleeting notes into permanent notes, by adding cross ref (if available) to relevant topics, or leave them on top as potential "todo" items if you want to look into them in the future
2B: Examine the new permanent notes and try to associate them with existing permanent notes, by adding forward links, backlinks, and index links.
Most people simply stop here, as they think this is enough, but that's missing a final step:
Level 3: Explore the OTHER dimensions of association / linking.
In level 3: we need to explore the "compass of zettlekasten". Most people, when they associate, they think of similarities. However, this doesn't address all the potential topics that one card can possibly related to.
Here's what the cardinal directions refer to:
West: similar topics, usually related anecdotes, quotes, studies, that support this hypothesis
East: opposite topics, anecdotes, quotes, studies, that directly oppose this hypothesis
North: explore potential duality / theme in a new direction, where X come front? If we take it up 10000 ft, what topic would it cover?
South: what does all these lead to? If we go down 10000 ft, what topic would it cover? What does X contribute to? What does X grow into?
In Vicky Zhao's ZK example, she was reading "Range by David Epstein" subtitled "Why generalist triumph in a specialized world", can be summarized as "breadth is better than depth", and "Sampling Hypothesis", about child athletes should be allowed to experiment with many sports before they settle down to specialize in one thing.
So "west" here would be a bunch of anecdotes and examples pointing out that a lot of the best experts, like Roger Federe in Tennis, Yo-yo Ma on music, are actually generalists before they became specialists.
East then would be the opposite viewpoint, such as the "10000 hours to become expert", or perhaps, the Matthew Principle (how those who have initial advantage tend to keep that advantage, or "how the rich got richer")
North then would have topics such as "why can't someone be BOTH a generalist AND a specialist?" "What about the late bloomers, like Van Gogh, or Colonel Sanders?"
South where does all these lead? Example given is "paradox of personal monopoly". Personal Monopoly is the idea of "nicheing". The Internet, esp. Youtube, rewards nicheing, where you build your own personal brand/monopoly that nobody can copy because you are uniquely you. People can imitate you, but they cannot BE you. Yet to develop a personal monopoly, you need to try a variety of things before finding your niche.
Oh, but wait, there's more!
Level 4: Synthesize new content
By this time, you may have enough information to create your end-goal: an article, a study, a research paper, a Youtube video... And you already have all the material at hand, so it's just a matter of putting it all together, no further research is needed.
Level 5: Getting feedback from audience and fellow creators / collabs so cycle can be repeated (optional)
This should be quite obvious...
No comments:
Post a Comment