The Internet has surprisingly twisted the picture of Zettelkasten: while many authors boast about self-writing articles and self-commencing research, adepts of this method somehow fail a few times too often.
One may find a lot of information on how to build a Zettelkasten, but would not find many decent articles or non-fiction books produced with the method. One may try to look for a universal formula to start a ‘slip-box’, but would likely get stuck in a repeating loop of self-description—i.e., Zettelkasten is primarily used to gather information and describe Zettelkasten, which is a bit… pointless, to say the least.
An individual approach and work philosophy of one man—German researcher Niklas Luhmann—became a global idea with an aura of an academic panacea, and this is probably the key issue in properly grasping and understanding the gist of it.
If you don’t yet know what exactly this method is, in short, it is a new-ish approach to collecting information that promises to produce writing without much hassle. Many great thinkers have utilised a similar approach to storing knowledge with success. Among my favourites would obviously be Luhmann and probably Roland Barthes with his card notes.
To avoid repeating many other writers, I suggest you take a slight detour to the introduction to the method at zettelkasten.de. This will give a good picture of what we are about to discuss here.
Let us now review the options available for a person eager to learn the method, what resources can we use in our learning:
- Original writings by Niklas Luhmann and later analyses of his archives;
- How to Take Smart Notes by Söhnke Ahrens (the most popular book that initially started the wave of Zettelkasten);
- Antinet Zettelkasten by Scott Scheper (which proposes ditching digital systems completely and instead using an analogue slip-box like Luhmann had);
- A System for Writing by Bob Doto (which we will discuss in detail further).
While Ahrens, with his Smart Notes, certainly made the approach to writing more popular and accessible to the public, it doesn’t quite click for many after reading the book. This can be deduced from the many questions that appear on forums regarding basic Zettelkasten terms—such as fleeting or literature notes—what they stand for, how to distinguish between them, etc.
The second question, of course, is the whole digital/analogue issue. Ahrens doesn’t quite point to an exact methodology for using different software or applying the theory. So, there’s obviously a debate for a new adept. Someone striving to master this approach has to deal with several questions before even beginning the actual research:
- What software to choose?
- What approach to choose?
- Do you use tags, bidirectional links, frontmatter, etc. or keep it simple?
- What do you lose in case you choose to keep it simple?
And all these questions go without addressing the first one aloud—what is it that we are actually researching? Many seem to forget this important point, which leads to obvious existential confusion.
That is to say, Ahrens’ book is a decent modern primer on Zettelkasten from the standpoint of its public appearance and the many readers it has encouraged to at least try the method. However, to this day, it is a bit dated. For me, taking smart notes actually involved answering a lot of dumb questions, and the book didn’t give me a concise picture—rather, left me perplexed.
Scheper’s book on the so-called antinet (physical archives) is just rather aggressive, very repetitive, and in many cases disjointed. It is indeed written using so-called atomic notes (Zettels), but in such a manner that it seems like a mere collection of them, not a book. So, this one doesn’t stand up to recommendation, in my opinion.
Taking this into account, let us proceed to the best primer on Zettelkasten—Doto’s System for Writing—and why exactly I think this is the most eloquent book on the method.
Not A Mandatory Approach
Doto invites the reader to choose the medium for maintaining a Zettelkasten themselves. While Ahrens seems a bit wobbly on this matter and doesn’t provide a universal solution, Doto somehow manages to find one. He doesn’t tell the reader to go analogue or completely digital but proposes a system that will work regardless of whether you use pen and paper, plain .txt format, or sophisticated templates in Obsidian, Notion, or Logseq.
”It’s In The Way That You Use It”
Just as in Clapton’s classic song, a lot depends on how one approaches the matter.
Reading A System actually allows to understand that Zettelkasten might have been interpreted wrongly. While many have focused on the connections part of Zettelkasten, the notion of how those connections are actually made was missed.
It is most curious because many Zettelkasten users advocate the use of IDs for digital Zettelkasten. For example, the programme The Archive uses this as a default, and Obsidian has this option in its core settings, but it’s not quite clear why we should include unique IDs. Everyone says that this is done to build unique notes and avoid getting lost amidst a growing collection of Zettels. In reality, however, modern computer software already produces unique notes that wouldn’t get mixed up. Not to mention the fact that having two notes with identical titles is a rare occurrence…
And this is where Doto’s book stands out most, in my opinion. The author provides a short and sweet explanation of the alphanumeric approach that makes Zettelkasten click, as it explains both the connections between notes and a convenient way to store them, be it digital or analogue. Let us compare three titles to see the difference:
- Simple title: Penguins live in Antarctica
- Title with a date (or Zettelkasten ID): 202507031356 Penguins live in Antarctica
- Title with alphanumeric approach: 2a3c Penguins live in Antarctica
The first one is generally great but doesn’t show any connection to other notes. I have to enter the note’s content to see links. The second one, although ‘unique’, is just messy, and I still don’t see any connections. The third one, however, allows me to see that this exact note about penguins is connected to the previous one, 2a3 (which, I know, connects to 2a). This way, I can build a ‘train’ of my thoughts and display them. Since I know they are connected, I can summarise them and use them as an actual scheme for my writing. It is that simple.
This scheme shows how alphanumeric system already generates a future pattern for writing. Blue colour here shows the train of thought about Antarctica and penguins. The first note 2a continues with the thought 2a3 which is continued by 2a3c. If executed properly, these notes will allow to build a whole article, I just have to lay them out and fill in the gaps.
Eufriction
Another interesting point here is the introduction of eufriction, that is, intentional stops in one’s work.
Often, in an attempt to collect many notes as quickly as possible, the researcher might act in need for speed, so to speak, rather than focusing on quality. Entering the alphanumeric number, however, and actually stopping to think for a minute about the relation of this note to others in the collection, makes much more sense and helps to regularly recall older notes.
This also provides better categorisation. Instead of using familiar topics and artificially imposed tags like #biology, #resources, etc., the writer sees organic categories that emerge naturally. For example, our illustrative note about penguins may have emerged from a note about Antarctica, or birds, or the fauna of Antarctica, or any other related topic. It doesn’t actually matter. What matters is the connection between notes and the fact that it didn’t give the author a headache to figure out. In other words, a small stop here and now proves more effective and saves time in the future.
Neutral
The mild tone of the book is also worth noting, as Doto doesn’t pressure the reader into using one medium or another, instead focusing on understanding the universal ‘Zettelkasten truth’ that allows working with any note-taking approach.
Probably the biggest advantage of Doto’s book is that it is relatively simple to grasp compared to alternatives and doesn’t imply absolutes. Notably, it is clear that the slip-box approach was used in the creation of the book—and with definite success (probably a bonus from the good use of the alphanumeric system). It is a positive example of using the system, whereas the negative would be Scheper’s book mentioned earlier.
Afterword
Doto’s System for Writing is probably the best primer on Zettelkasten. It is the most mature in the sense that it takes into account the chaos that has surrounded the notion of Zettelkasten in recent years. The proposed methods will allow any researcher or knowledge amateur to expand their understanding on any matter and explore the depth of the method in a way that can generate new ideas.
Doto manages to capture the original spirit of Luhmann’s approach and lays it out in an understandable manner. The book is written quite well, explains tough concepts concisely, and doesn’t pressure the reader. If one wanted to achieve the same understanding of the whole slip-box system, the only other comparable way would be to read Luhmann’s original works and analyse his archives to reproduce the approach and thinking process—which would obviously take much more time than reading a bit more than a 200-page work…
AUTHORDmitry Tarasov
Analyst, Associate Editor
The Arctic Century