Sönke Ahrens

This book is probably gonna change my life. My reading and note-taking life at least, but who knows where the change will stop.

It's a book about the Zettelkasten note-taking system developed by Niklas Luhmann, academic, in the Twentieth Century. If you want to google it, or him, knock yourself off; the rabbit hole is deep, fun and full of treasures.

What I am interested in pointing out here is that Ahrens (on Luhmann's footsteps, of course) turns academic writing on its head, and proposes an approach to it that contradicts nearly every single piece of instruction ever given to third degree education students, at least in my knowledge. He argues two fundamental points.

The first is that writing (an essay, a dissertation, a paper; yet, other authors explain how to use the Zettelkasten for creative writing) does not start with the white page, after reading and learning and taking notes, but with the first note you take while reading. No need to panic in front of the task, because, if you read and take notes in the right way, you have been writing all along, and learning at the same time.

The second point is that learning/writing has nothing to do with planning, and all to do with following interests and insights in a coordinated and meaningful way (the Zettelkasten system), with the interesting side-effect of taking away the anxiety and procrastination - that we all know too well - from the act of writing a piece, since you spend all your time reading, learning and taking notes, and then all you need to do is collate and review the EMERGENT writing. On a side note, Ahrens cites proof that the classic planning method creates students who generally abandon the topic as soon as they finish their assigned writing task, while following an insight-led, non-hierarchical path creates experts who keep their enthusiasm burning without the need for external pressure.

Now, this is a big simplification. I am not explaining here how Zettelkasten works; I'll just explain that, instead of organising information in an arboreal hierarchy of topics, rigid and compartmentalised, it organises it in a rhizomatic, non-hierarchical series of slips (Zetteln) identified only by serial numbers, that grow organically into a body of interconnections, that in turn becomes a veritable interlocutor for the thinker who set up the system. The thinker writes a note with an insight, gives it a serial number based on the association to a train of thought, notes in it the link to all other relevant slips/insights, puts it in the place the serial number requires, and potentially forgets everything about it until the day in which, going through the system in search of inspiration or ideas, the system surprises them with an original connection, a forgotten idea, a weird inspiration that the thinker could never have come up with at that exact moment, or maybe never at all. The entry point for every train of thought are index cards with the serial numbers of relevant slips: the rabbit hole elected to system of knowledge building. Of course, each piece of information is only as good as its connections.
This is more similar to the way our brain works - a series of interconnected nodes in constant dialogue with each other - than any hierarchical tree of knowledge in the history of humanity. It's another researcher you can communicate with, to use a definition of Luhmann himself, who became an academic late in life, invented a theory of systems and wrote hundreds of academic papers and books, mainly about sociology.

*NB: in ase you didn't follow the links, the part about rhizomatic and arboreal knowledge organisation in relation to the Zettelkasten comes from the splendid blog post by Eva Deverell (linked), and she, of course, talks in the blog entry of Deleuze and Guattari, (linked too...)

In another piece of writing about the Zettelkasten, by another author, the point is made that the method doesn't take any time nor effort from reading, writing and thinking, but it makes that time count more, towards the creation of original, organised academic thought and knowledge building,than any other system.

So: I tried writing an assignment with this system. Something simple for a pre-academic course, nothing special, but about a dry topic - litter management in my County Council - about which I didn't know a whole lot, honestly.

It works. It gloriously, unbelievably works.

I wrote the assignment without even feeling I was writing an assignment, with a couple of original insights that will probably give me a good grade; I also wrote two or three unrelated Zettels that now live in a sub-series of my thoughts about ethics; and the Zettels, literary notes and Zotero bibliography notes from which the assignment flows are there, nested in their net of connections, ready to make friends with who knows which train of thoughts in which future, fertile with possibilities. No anxiety, no attempts at memorising. I can happily forget about them until the system proposes them to me in another dialogue.

It is also true that it didn't take me much less to actually write the whole thing than with any other system, or even with no systematic approach at all; but boy, was it a breeze to complete...

Next, I am going to do something unprecedented and crazy. I'm going to erase my monstrous to-read shelf and start again with the books that emerged from the note-taking. EDIT: I may have been a bit overenthusiastic here. I can't make myself delete most of the books in that shelf. Call it a remnant of my past hoarder self. I need to meditate on this.

I am in. Let's see what the rabbit hole goes.… (más)

This book is focused on something called a slip box, which is a literal box where you keep all your notes from researching a specific topic. There are many examples of how to use it, but it assumes you already know the topic you want to research and write about. It is not particularly helpful for learning how to take notes while reading things for exploration and for figuring out what topic you might want to research or write about in the future.

The two big takeaways: read with a pen in your hand, and add your own thoughts as to why you felt a particular passage was worth copying or highlighting.

Could be very helpful for people learning how to study a known specific topic, but not as helpful for just building general knowledge.… (más)

Shorter would be even better

The idea at the centre of this book it brilliantly simple, and simply brilliant. Which might be its shortfall.

My reason for not giving it 5 stars is a tendency for repetition. Reading between the lines, I sense Ahrens' possible frustration that fellow academics just don't "get it" (because Zettelkasten is too simple) so it must be said multiple times. Perhaps he's trying to make it more complicated?

Overall, the central thesis - and practice - is something I wish I'd discovered a long time ago. And will recommend it to anyone seeking to improve their thinking.
… (más)

Interesting read! This book is almost required reading for anyone interested in PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) right now, and I can see why. It makes good points, but it's very very theoretical. If you actually want to make practical use of the ideas in this book, you're still left with heaps of questions, especially on how to actually connect notes.

Still, inspiring and motivating and a very good starting point for some literature notes you can then turn into permanent notes etcetera. Even if you don't intend to actually write there's a lot here. I might actually reread this in a year or so, I think it's very different whether you're just starting out or dealing with a mature Zettelkasten.… (más)