Digital Zettelkasten by David Kadavy, Summary

Introduction

Digital Zettelkasten by David Kadavy teaches you a system to organize your notes in a way that adds meaning to them. You can also use your Zettelkasten to create articles, presentations, and other content that will help you share your ideas with the world. This helps you to build thought leadership.

I went searching for a book that covered Zettelkasten. I wanted to understand network note-taking and after researching the topic, the term came up. Next, I went over to Amazon and typed in the term and Digital Zettelkasten came up along with How to Take Smart Notes that I already owned.

Zettelkasten is a German word that means “note card box.”It’s a system for organizing your ideas and thoughts using cards or scraps of paper. You organize your thoughts and ideas in a way that makes them easy to find and use. Also, you can clip articles, make notes, and brainstorm ideas using this system.

By using Zettelkasten, you can develop a clear and concise thinking process that will help you come up with new ideas and solutions. Additionally, Zettelkasten can help you become more organized and efficient in your work. And You can also use your Zettelkasten to create articles, presentations, and other content that will help you share your ideas with the world.

Summary of Digital Zettelkasten by David Kadavy

The author says that Zettelkasten hijacks our short attention span to help us be more productive. With a digital Zettelkasten, you can do small things with little notes, straight from your phone. You will be consuming the most interesting information you have ever read, or the most compelling thoughts you have ever thought. Zettelkasten is about using technology to connect ideas.

What is Zettelkasten?

“In analog form, a Zettelkasten is literally a box filled with slips of paper, each slip with a note on it, as well as metadata used to organize those notes. The Zettelkasten method is a way of organizing paper in a non-hierarchical way. The purpose of a Zettelkasten is not to find an individual note, but rather to explore the connections amongst notes. 

“This can help you collect knowledge to write papers and books quickly, and find areas you may need to research further. Additionally, the act of organizing a Zettelkasten often leads to unexpected insights that spring from the process of linking notes to one another, or assigning keywords to a note.”

A Zettelkasten helps you to retain what you read as well as access the new knowledge. But it also helps you to use that knowledge to write the caliber of articles that showcase your thought leadership.

Benefits of Zettelkasten

1. Remember what you read: No more forgetting what a book was about the moment you finish reading it. The Zettelkasten method presents reading as a series of engaging rituals that repeatedly expose you to the most interesting things you've read – thus helping you retain what you read.
2. Retrieve it quickly: You no longer have to search through pages for the passage you want. If you choose, you can record your bibliographic information in your digital Zettelkasten along with the exact quote.
3. Know what to read next: Zettelkastens allow you to organize your thoughts and follow your curiosity. You can browse your Zettelkasten to see what catches your attention if you're looking for something to read. Whatever topic you choose, exploring it will help you move forward with your writing projects.
4. Develop your ideas: Rather than starting each writing project from scratch, you already have short passages that you can stitch together to create an instant first draft.
5. Have ideas: You have more mental energy for thinking about new ideas since you don't have to remember and retrieve everything you read or wrote a long time ago thanks to your Zettelkasten. Organizing your notes is just enough of a challenge to spark new ideas without wearing you out.

Things Worth Knowing About Note-Taking

Note-taking does not take the pleasure away from reading

Years ago, in one of my Facebook groups I ran a yearlong reading challenge, one participant resisted taking notes because she thought it interrupted the flow of her reading. The concern she had may or may not be accurate. But if you don’t note the important information in a book, chances are you’ll forget the information.

Reading doesn’t have to be an isolated activity, it could be part of many activities such as writing and thinking, that feed into each other.

Note-taking is not mindlessly writing everything you read

When you take notes, it’s important to paraphrase what you’re reading. Write the information in your own words. It’s not about writing everything you read. Develop the ability to distinguish between essential and nonessential information. And you note only the essential information.

“But the proper way to take notes is not to copy things word-for-word (except in the case of exact quotes). Instead, you re-write it in your own words, which is even more powerful. Second, you don't write down everything you read. You only write down the important things: Things that are interesting, relevant to your work, or that you otherwise want to retain.”

Note-taking is not boring

When you’re taking notes, you’re doing several things simultaneously, though you may not realize it. Decide if what you’re reading is essential or nonessential information. Then you have to paraphrase the essential information as you write it down. To do this, you have to be engaged with the words on the page. And it doesn’t need to be boring. Another important point is that you’re writing the notes in your own words, you’re connecting the new information to what you already know.

And when you’re taking notes the Zettelkasten way, come up with keywords and linking notes to tie your various notes together. Therefore, you’re thinking associatively.

Google is not a substitute for notes

We’re living in an instant gratification world, where we want everything right now. It’s important to make a habit of accessing your own thoughts and not those of someone else. You want to use your notes to jog your memory, instead of going to Google to search for something. You can also use your Zettelkasten to store incomplete thoughts and ideas.

Digital Notes or Paper-Based

Searchability

You can search your entire database of digital notes. There are four ways to search for specific information in paper notes: by keyword, by links from other notes, by note title, or by manually sorting through the notes.

Portability

If you have a device, you can access and edit your notes wherever you are. You must bring paper notes wherever you go.

Backup

The digital notes you create are stored on your devices and backed up in the cloud. You can easily lose or destroy paper notes.

Speed

It is easy to type, link, and search digital notes. Whether you write your notes by hand, print them, or type them, they all slow you down.

Mutability

Revisions to digital notes are easy. If you want to make changes to paper notes, you must recreate them.

Dynamism

Changes to a digital note can be reflected in all places the note is referenced. Changes to paper notes can only be made to one note at a time.

Collaboration

Collaborating on projects with colleagues around the world is possible with digital notes. Having to deal with physical notes makes collaboration difficult.

Tactility

It is easy to shuffle, stack, and arrange paper notes next to each other. Arranging digital notes side by side for comparison is more difficult.

Focus

Notes that are written on paper do not have internet access, notifications, or software updates to distract you. With digital notes, you are exposed to all the distractions that are available on your devices.

Retention

You may remember the material better if you take notes on paper. Research suggests that writing by hand increases memory. If you write digital notes, you may not be challenged to process the information you're writing, which prevents you from learning it.

Privacy

Notes written on paper are hard to access by hackers or other surveillants. When notes are stored on the cloud, they can be accessed by others.

Text Format

Saving your text as plain text is a good option. Many programs can give you a rich-text view of your Markdown files, but the raw text is easy to read, too.

Anatomy of ZettelKasten

1. Fleeting Notes: Notes you take “on the fly.”
2. Literature Notes: Condensed notes of an entire article, book, and so on. These are informal summaries you write about media you consume. Media could be a book or article you read, a podcast you listened to, a conversation with an expert. A literature note is something you can later review as a reminder of the key points. You use fleeting notes to write literature notes.
3. Permanent Notes: Notes summarizing a single idea. These are assigned keywords and linked to other notes. You use literature notes to write permanent notes. permanent notes help you to create a rough draft of an article and even a book.

You organize your Literature and Permanent Notes in separate folders in your Zettelkasten. These notes can be written anywhere, such as on scraps of paper or in an app on your phone.

1. Inbox: Fleeting notes that need processing, thoughts you wrote, notes and recommendations from others.
2. Someday/Maybe: The author shows he got this from Getting Things Done. These are interesting things you don’t plan to research. But you don’t want to forget about it.
3. Raw: Where you store exported highlights from books and articles.

How to Read to Absorb What You’re Reading

The main sources for the notes in your Zettelkasten will come from books and articles.

• Make notes as you’re reading, highlight information and write in the margins. If you’re reading an ebook, you can highlight and note the information.
• You can export your notes later. You can use Readwise. The author recommends exporting as a Markdown text format. I have a Markdown plugin for Google Docs.

Highlight Your Highlights

After exporting your highlights, review them and highlight the parts that you find most interesting. You were mostly focused on reading the book when you were reading it, not on analyzing whether a passage was useful. Separately, you will ask yourself which parts of the document are interesting enough to rewrite in your own words later.

Condense the Highlight into a Literature Note

Rewrite the interesting highlights from your highlights in your own words. Now you are creating a literature note from your fleeting notes. You don't have to summarize every point. You should only focus on information that you would most like to learn or can foresee needing in the future.

Break Literature Notes into Permanent Notes

Using only the most interesting ideas from the literature notes, create individual permanent notes for each. Each permanent note should contain a single idea.

Naming Your Files

Use names that communicate something to you. This reminds me of naming your idea that’s discussed in the book, Non-Obvious. In that book, the author Rohit Bhargava says to choose a memorable name and one that people will understand the idea without explanation.

Turning Your Notes into Completed Works

The aim of Zettelkasten is to turn your notes into a piece of completed writing. You should use tags and metadata to easily search for your notes.

Conclusion: Digital Zettelkasten by David Kadavy

In Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples by David Kadavy, you’ll learn a system to organize your thoughts. By using Zettelkasten, you can easily find information that you have previously collected and develop new ideas. This system will also help you to become more efficient in your thinking and allow you to communicate your ideas more effectively. It will also help you to become a better writer.

However, after reading Digital Zettelkasten by David Kadavy, I decided it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I understand why the author does his process the way he does. But, for me, I’m looking for the next step for senior leaders after they’ve taken my course. This process is a little too involved. I want a system that people will actually use.

Next Steps

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3. Buy and Read Digital Zettelkasten by David Kadavy

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