Mastering Effective Note-Taking: A Comprehensive Exploration

The human brain is great at having ideas, but it is terrible at remembering them.

However, our busy life depends on us memorizing information (like names, numbers, facts, …) and knowledge (concepts, methods, systems, …). To tackle this issue there exist many different approaches to taking notes.

But notes are more than pure information storage. They can serve as true treasure troves of your wisdom - with ideas long forgotten to your conscious self.

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

A great approach in how to organize your notes is the Zettelkasten, initially developed by Professor Niklas Luhmann and the one tool that led him to become one of the most renowned scientists in his field.

In this article, I’ll briefly summarize the essentials of the Zettelkasten and list my core learnings. After reading this article, you will …

• understand what a Zettelkasten is.
• know how to use it to manage your notes.
• improve your notetaking by applying some guiding principles.

A Brief History of the Zettelkasten

The man behind the Zettelkasten is Professor Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist. During his academic career, he published around 60 influential books and many more scientific papers - he was very productive at publishing.

His astounding output of research - with him merging different theories in a very creative - way was often dismissed for him being a genius. He was indeed extraordinary, but he had support in unlocking his productivity: the Zettelkasten.

Professor Luhmann never made a secret of his method - on the contrary, there are many quotes from him thanking his method for his success.

But what is a Zettelkasten?

It is the German word for “slip box” - basically, it is a box with lots of drawers and folders (like the title image of this article).

But it is not that physical thing - it is about how notes are structured within the drawers and folders. It’s also perfectly fine to create a fully digital version of the Zettelkasten.

How to create your own Zettelkasten

Professor Luhmann’s Zettelkasten was an analog one. He used a slip box. Actually, he used two slip boxes: (i) one for longer bibliographical notes and (ii) one for ideas and thoughts.

The core idea

The core idea of the Zettelkasten can be summarized by the following principles:

• Each atomic note (or “Zettel”) is limited to just one idea. If there are more ideas, there are also multiple notes.
• If an idea is directly related to an existing idea, a follow-up note (”Folgezettel”) is created.
• Each note has a unique identifier. Usually, the identifiers are an alternating combination of numbers and letters: The note 23a4 is the follow-up for 23a3.
• Linking notes together: each note contains links to related notes.

Luhmann worked with pen and paper and therefore had to physically position one idea behind another. If an existing note had the number 21, then the new note was numbered 22. If the number 22 already existed, but he still wanted to place the new note behind 21, it was given the number 21a. By alternating numbers and letters, he was able to continue “branches” indefinitely and always had a clear overview of sequences and sub-sequences.

This is much easier with the software tools of the modern world: you can create multiple links much easier.

Create your personal Zettelkasten

In today’s digital age using an analog slip box seems somewhat outdated - it’s not portable and linking related notes can become cumbersome, but there exists different software supporting you to set up your own Zettelkasten. Some examples are:

• ZKN3: a free software trying to be a digital replica of Luhmann’s original method.
• The educational scientist and author of the book, “How to Take Smart Notes”, Sönke Ahrens recommends Zettlr and The Achive which are more modern approaches to the Zettelkasten.
• Alternatively, you can rebuild the method in the common notetaking applications (Notion, OneNote, Obsidian, …) or use personal wikis (TiddlyWiki, Confluence, …).

Whatever software solution you choose, the core idea is always the same: atomic notes with unique identifiers linked together smartly.

The Zettelkasten becomes your personal knowledge base, or as some might call it: Second Brain.

7 Guiding principles for working with your Zettelkasten

1. Simplicity

Simplicity wins. Just as the shipping container has established itself (because of its standardization and simplicity), a note system should also be simple. There are basically three types of notes:

• Fleeting notes: These are short-term notes to remember something. Usually, they are deleted once the information is moved on to other, permanent notes.
• Permanent notes: They can arise from fleeting notes and should contain enough information to reflect the facts (even after a longer period).
• Project notes: These are notes that only belong to one topic and can be archived after a project has been completed.

2. Don’t start from Scratch

When writing, you never really start with a blank piece of paper or a white screen. Even if you don’t have any notes, you gather the information from your brain.

But notes help immensely. Especially if they are well organized.

Professor Luhmann always had many ideas to write about, and this showed in his papers. Unlike some scientific authors who reuse one idea in different publications (sometimes even cannibalizing their older work), Luhmann’s papers were full of unique thoughts and brimming with insights. In an interview, Luhmann mentioned that he would like to have more time to write about all his ideas.

3. Find closure

Our short-term memory only has room for 7+/- 2 units. Some studies even assume that there are only 4 spaces - and open thoughts can quickly fill up this memory.

Therefore, don’t wait too long to write down your thoughts!

Try to not over-engineer your first notes - they are most likely just fleeting notes, needing some processing later on anyway. If you spend too much time on your initial notes, your brain will learn, that writing notes is cumbersome, which will lead to a mental barrier to writing notes long-term.

The goal is: don’t lose the thought, idea, or fact - capture it and write it down to offload your mind.

4. Read with a pen in your hand

To write a good article, all you have to do is review a draft. To write a draft, all you have to do is string notes together.

So, writing essentially starts with notes.

It’s not about how much information we can write down in a short time, but how the information we read affects us and what it means in the context of our current topics.

5. Selectivity

Selectivity is the key to smart notetaking. If you are taking too many notes their value is rather small: you are most likely just paraphrasing the input anyway. It is much better to make as few notes as possible: only the new ideas and those facts you definitely need to remember should be written down.

Furthermore, you should always engage with critical (“opposing”) points of view. There is nothing more boring than reading an article with only one point of view. Or even worse: reading a series of articles elaborating just on this one thought over and over again.

6. Intelligent connections

In the Zettelkasten, the most common form of linking is note-to-note linking (”Folgezettel”). However, you can link multiple notes together and reference some really important notes directly from the index. These are your most important notes as they serve as an entry point into the Zettelkasten. Don’t use them too frequently.

Make use of the network effect: the value of a network grows by the elements squared. This is why a well-linked notetaking system is multiple times more valuable than a simple folder structure.

The art of crafting a great system is finding the right balance in creating links: too few links and you won’t benefit much from the network effect, but too many links and it gets confusing and hinders you from finding what you are really looking for.

7. Engage with your Zettelkasten

Notes are not just for storage. If you engage with your notes, they can become a great productivity tool - just as was the case for Professor Luhmann.

When he wanted to do research he wouldn’t brainstorm on a blank page. Instead, he would brainstorm with his Zettelkasten, starting at the index.

Start by asking yourself:

• What did I read recently about?
• Which ideas have come up?
• What do I want to write about?

Starting from the Zettelkasten index, you can systematically delve deeper, uncovering novel ideas and connections that may have eluded your conscious mind.

This is the power of thinking externally!

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Thank you for reading all the way through! If you are interested, in the past month, I’ve written some articles on how you can improve your notetaking. Here is a short list:

• The “Getting Things Done” method is another great technique - I’ve written a brief summary of the essentials.
• A personal story of how I found my personal productivity system.
• TORP - a guide on how you can apply my personal productivity system.
• Why you need to engage with your notes to truly utilize them.
• Progressive summaries can leverage your notes to the next level.