It's hard to feel the effects of a Zettelkasten. So even while using one, you start to wonder whether you're doing it right. That's why I want to offer some criteria for saying, "If it looks like this, you're doing fine."
1. Literature Notes: You Can Find the Reference
When we recall an idea or thought we read a while ago, we remember the idea itself, not where it came from. Unless we read it recently or it really moved us. What I mean is, when an idea comes to mind, we forget which book or video it came from. This becomes a problem when you have to cite sources in a book or paper, or when you want to go back and understand that idea in depth.
But if you've written your literature notes properly and linked them to your permanent notes, you can tell where a given thought came from. That helps when you need to cite a source, and it also tells you what to consult when you want to look into an idea in detail again.
2. Literature Notes: You Can Connect Outside Knowledge to Your Mental Models
If you connect the outside knowledge you pick up from reading to your own mental models, you're making good use of literature notes. Connecting literature notes to mental models makes learning easier. After all, you're linking knowledge to your own context. This is also called elaboration: connecting new information to an existing schema.
Let me give an example to show the power of connection. Arteries, which carry blood out of the heart, are thicker and more elastic. Veins, on the other hand, are thinner but have valves. Trying to simply memorize these facts would be hard.
But arteries receive blood pumped out by the heart, so they have to withstand higher pressure. Veins, where the pressure has dropped as the blood flows along, only need to withstand lower pressure, but since they have to prevent backflow at that low pressure, they have valves.
This fits two mental models we already hold: the greater the force something receives, the more material it needs to support that force and all movement meets resistance, and its force fades. Once it's connected to mental models like these, the characteristics of arteries and veins become easy to memorize.
In the same way, connecting the content of a literature note to your existing mental models or permanent notes makes it easier to memorize. The literature note above says that when hiring developers, years of experience isn't the important factor; asking about a piece of the work they would actually do matters more. If I had just read this, it would be hard to recall later. Would it even come to mind in a real developer interview?
But it connected to a permanent note I already had, A good test is one that's close to the real situation, so I could memorize it easily. That permanent note rests on my mental model that it's best to practice as if it were the real thing, and that's why I was able to remember the book's content.
3. Permanent Notes: You Can Keep Your Thinking Going
To think deeply about an idea or thought, writing it down somewhere is essential. Otherwise your thinking gets fragmented. When thinking is fragmented, you end up thinking the same thoughts again, or you don't know what to think about next. Then you can't think deeply and are left with only shallow thoughts. This lines up with the case for a second brain, not just for a Zettelkasten.
A Zettelkasten solves the problem of fragmented thinking. A Zettelkasten that works helps you keep your thinking going. It helps you form your own thoughts from literature notes, and lets you extend your thinking from one permanent note to another. And structure notes tell you what to think about next.
I think this connection of thoughts is the key factor that separates a Zettelkasten that works from one that doesn't. Beginners branch out shallowly from one note to many, because they're used to top-down thinking. Experienced users, on the other hand, end up with notes that reach out deeply from a single note. And those long chains of notes connect with each other.
Below is my permanent notes as seen in Obsidian's graph view. You can see no pattern, just notes densely and extensively connected to one another. In other words, they're closely related to each other. 1
A visible pattern like the one below may be pretty, but it's probably not a Zettelkasten that works. Once notes are connected to one another over long distances, the pattern disappears. A Zettelkasten that doesn't work looks like this: thoughts radiate out from one note, and those thoughts don't connect to each other.
4. Permanent Notes: You Can Use Them to Produce Output
The Zettelkasten became famous because of Niklas Luhmann's prolific output. In the end, I think a Zettelkasten pays off only when it's used for production. If you don't use it to produce output, there's no reward for going to the trouble of writing literature notes and permanent notes. However you use it, if you ultimately use it to produce output, isn't that a Zettelkasten that works?
Finally, Let Me Clear Up a Few Misconceptions About the Zettelkasten
- You don't need 1,000 notes to feel the effects
There's a narrative that to feel the effects of a Zettelkasten, notes have to pile up, and you need 1,000 of them. It seems to have started with the book How to Take Smart Notes. I think what matters for a Zettelkasten's effect is the density of the notes, not the total count. Even just 100 notes on a single topic and line of thought are enough to produce plenty of online content. (The point isn't that 100 is the magic number; I'm stressing that you don't need that many notes.) A single piece of content will draw on about 5-10 notes. And even with 1,000 notes, if the topics are all scattered and the notes aren't properly connected, you won't feel any effect. The content produced that way won't be especially distinctive either.
- A Zettelkasten won't improve your writing skill
And because the Zettelkasten is a tool for writing, you might expect it to sharpen your prose. If you're using a Zettelkasten to build writing skill, I think you're heading in the wrong direction. A Zettelkasten deepens what your writing says; it isn't a tool that makes your writing sparkle. For one thing, even I can't say with confidence that I write well.
Of course, if you write a lot, your prose may improve to some extent. But to really improve it, I believe you need deliberate practice with feedback. There is no deliberate practice in the Zettelkasten workflow.
Footnotes
-
Actually, it's only that no pattern is visible to the eye; there is a pattern. It's called a Small World Networks, and... ↩