Sönke AhrensReseñas

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life changing

This book reads a bit like a little red book written by a zealot who thinks he has discovered the best thing since slice bread and that people who do not adopt the system used by his mentor is a jackass. There are a few good things to say about this book and a lot of negative.
On the positive side the book wraps up quite nicely the note-taking system of Niklaas Luhmann and describes in detail how it works and why it supposedly works so fine. It is also a good effort at trying to promote it and demonstrating the benefit for research and for learning.

However quoting dozens of papers is not enough. A lot in there is unconvincing, starting by the failure to account for the most basic logic: the author argues that Luhmann’s career and volume of academic production is a proof of the effectiveness of his system, however the history of science is made of hundreds of individuals who have produced more than Luhmann, either in quantity or in quality terms. Let’s face it, this Luhmann is a nobody and I would prefer to write one great paper in my career than 200 mediocre ones. Another criticism also pertains to the lack of logical rigour of the author: even if Luhmann’s system has some good ideas in it, does it necessarily mean that it should be strictly replicated? Do all people of a given career track have to have exactly the same productivity system?

There is a lot more (of negative) that can be said about this book but I prefer to cut it there. If you want to get some inspiration for a note-taking system aiming at academic research, there are a few ideas to pick there, even if a 1000 signs article from the internet will likely get you almost as far. The poor writing and fanatical standpoint are a bit of a turn-off nevertheless.

Strong points
1. Good presentation of the Zettelkasten
2. Developed arguments to support it
3. Grounded in research

Weak points
1. Work of a zealot
2. Claims for scientific rigour but does not obey elementary logic
3. Poor writing and scornful regarding alternative approaches. Just get laid, man.½

recommended by Cal Newport

available thru Marina print version only

About the 'slip box' method. Basically, you take single-idea notes on notecards (or the digital equivalent) and make sure there's a system that links them together. Despite the title, it's not so simple (otherwise the book wouldn't be as long as it is), but it has some really good points in it.

It's convinced me to take hyperlinked notes in general, since otherwise my notes will end up in an notebook (real or virtual) that has almost zero chance of being revisited.

Note also that this book is about taking notes with the end goal of writing a research paper, academic book or the like.

I don't know if it would work as well for just collecting your own errant thoughts/musings/story ideas/etc, or if there's anything out there focused on that

This book explains the slip-box or Zettelkasten method, which is a note-taking and personal knowledge management system. It's a good overview of the method (with several genetic concepts being repeated over and over), but there are relatively few details or concrete examples. You'll learn:
• What are slip-boxes, and how you can use it to capture and organize your notes, facilitate a writing project, accelerate your learning, and manage/grow your knowledge. Specifically, you’ll learn about the different types of notes, how to file/cross-reference them, and how to connect and expand your ideas and insights.
• What are common mistakes/hurdles in note-taking, learning and writing, and how the slip-box or Zettelkasten method can help to overcome them.
• What are the 4 principles for smart note-taking, and the 4 tools you can use to start transforming your workflow.
Book summary at: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-how-to-take-smart-notes/

A five star non-fiction book has ideas that link to existing knowledge but expand, interpret, and connect in new ways. The author does that with smart notes. Although there is "technique" in this book, the most valuable writing is the linkage to prior research and thought on how we learn and work.

One of those books I wished I have read 10 years ago.

I will highly recommend this book to learner who are avid reader, who want to use note-taking as a tool for thinking critically and learn better. Although book is written with publish-or-perish academics as main audience, but it really applies to learner in all walk of life.

The book debunks the following myths for me:

- Writing starts with staring at a blank page
- Highlighting, underlining passage, copying quote is effective learning
- Sorting knowledge into modules and topics is the best way to teach
- One should take note relentlessly, and never throw them away
- One should file notes by topics
- Brainstorming works
- Top-down approach to writing a research paper does not have biases
- Writing paper has to suck

And in return, the author provides you a simple antidote to the above, the Zettlekasten, what he calls "the shipping container of the academic world". It was invented by Niklas Luhmann, an extremely prolific German scholar, who started an academic career as a mere reader of literature that he was interested in. He ended up publishing 58 books and hundreds of articles in his life, including the revolutionary "The Society of Society". According to Luhmann, with his Zettlekasten, he never feel that pouring out high quality research output is hard:

I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.

If you read, and took a lot of notes, but feel that your existing process has friction, or your notes never seem to pay dividend after the ink is dried, read this book now.

The Zettelkasten (aka slip-box) note-taking method, developed by the brilliant, prolific Niklas Luhmann, has recently garnered much popularity online. As a note-taking, information preserving, memory fearing individual myself, I couldn’t help but be curious. It's a simple and effective idea: form connections between your atomic notes to create a specialized and personal knowledge-graph from which you can gain further insight into chosen topics. Simple to grok, but not to put to practical use. I suspect it took the advent of the computerized world to popularize the method - I can't imagine many people would succumb to the tedium of cataloging physical note cards, maintaining the links between them, and storing them carefully in boxes, as Luhmann famously did.

This book seems to be the definitive explanation of the method and a little more. Ahrens does a great job of explaining the intricacies of the method, providing numerous psychological and literature-supported arguments why it works - although, at times, he divulges in topics that didn't quite convince me in their relevancy to the method. In these occasions, they came across as padding, conjured up no doubt from the depths of Ahrens' own Zettelksaten. The bit of advice that I took the most away from was on the habit of 'active reading' - having a notebook at your side while you read, jotting down whatever key ideas you take away, in your own words - ostensibly to transplant later into your zettelkasten.

Ahrens makes it clear from the get-go that this method particularly works its magic for those who aim to write academically or non-fiction, and offers much advice regarding this. This is disappointing; not all of us necessarily want to write non-fiction or produce anything out of the notes, but rather just want to hold the information well and in an organized fashion. I wanted to use it to store whatever interesting ideas I came across while traversing the vast info spheres of the internet, and also the light non-fiction reading I do sparingly. In this case, the advice seems slightly misplaced, so I'll have to experiment a bit with the method and make it my own. For now, I'm using the FOSS desktop app Zettlr, a simple and functional markdown based editor, though for a premium, the web-app Roam Research is a great option as well and is what Ahrens himself currently uses. The method definitely requires patience and discipline, and it might not be for everyone, but, regardless, I'm convinced: the Zettelkasten is the absolute best note-taking method.

What a long title for such a short book! A short book – but not an easy one. Ahrens is clearly an academic and this heavily footnoted book, full of citations and references, actually tells a simple story.

It’s the story of Niklas Luhmann, a German academic who was known for being incredibly prolific. He published 58 books and hundreds of articles during his 30-year academic career — and his work is considered to be serious intellectual work at the highest level. How did he do it? Luhmann used a system known as the “slip-box” — basically a lot of short notes that referenced one another.

That system has become the flavour of the month among personal productivity geeks who are ready to move on beyond “getting things done (GTD)”, the “seven habits”, “eat the frog” and the others. To give it its proper, German name — making the system sound more exotic and geeky — Luhmann’s system is called “zettelkasten” and there are web pages galore that give a more concise explanation than this book.

This book teaches you how to become a more rigorous reader, writer, thinker, idea-generator, and researcher via a note-taking methodology that is slowly emerging out of German academia (where it has enjoyed legendary status but in obscurity) and now into the popular consciousness. It has come to the attention of the rest of the world primarily because of this book. That model of note-taking and knowledge-management is called Zettelkasten, or the slip-box method. Even if you don't adopt this methodology, this book is an excellent discussion of these themes and will give you lots of ideas for how you can incorporate better techniques of reading, note-taking, and introspection.

The target audience is academia, but this really is a tremendous resource for all learners. It is an exploration of how we learn and remember and how we can do better. How we can reduce the amount of knowledge, comprehension, and ideas that evaporate from our brains over time. But where this book really shines is as a how-to guide for the Zettelkasten methodology so you can better interrogate what you have learned over time combined with your current thinking and new ideas. It can help you follow paths of introspection and guide you to new ones.

This book is tremendous. It will make you better.

...

Criticisms:
The author at times uses unclear labeling (namely because you think he is labeling when he is, in fact, describing). You know this is an issue when review after review about and tutorial after tutorial associated to this book misdescribe the methodologies in the same way. I figured this out by deep note-taking (since this was a note-taking book) and using this book as a model to implement the techniques he described. If he ever re-edits this book, I would love to see him clear up some of the ambiguity. The description of how notes in the Bibliographical Slip Box are developed, written technically, and organized would be particularly helpful. He is especially vague there (you have to pick it out from several places in the books).

Also, the spine text is flipped, as is traditional in Eastern Europe. But the book I am reviewing is the English translation. The author or publisher should have also adjusted the cover to match the English-speaking world's expectations. Most annoying. Like really really annoying.

Still . . . a five-star book. Excellent.

I am giving this book 5 stars not because I liked it, but because it has significantly improved my scholarship --- at least, in the last few days since I started reading it. We'll see if it continues!

The crux of the book is "write down insights you have, as you're having them, and then regularly reconcile these into a single place, and track insights you have while writing THOSE down. Rinse and repeat." It's been a very helpful framework for thinking about big thoughts; rather than trying to keep it all jumbled up in your head, or rather than trying to serialize it into a coherent piece of prose, just write down the idea. You can shape it later. It's an excellent tool for decomposing hard problems that require lots of moving machinery to get your mind around. When you're actively searching for, and reveling in insights, learning becomes fun, and spending time doing scholarship becomes the norm. Life pro tip.

The only other good thing I'll say about this book is that it's short. I got through it in two sittings. Really and truly, the only content here is that thing I said above. Have ideas and write them down. The rest of this book is a bunch of bad pop-sci that is sorta tangentially related. I get the impression that Ahrens was Taking Smart Notes on all of the bad pop-sci books he read, and couldn't help but write about them here as filler. The useful part of this book could be a blog post, but you can't sell a blog post!

Unrelatedly, I feel like I've read all the same bad pop-sci books as Ahrens. I'm not sure if this a failure on his part, or on mine :(

I'll begrudgingly recommend this as an excellent book I've read this year, if just for its information content, and not for the book itself. Feel free to skip any paragraph whose first sentence doesn't mention a slip-box; you won't miss much.

Most "productivity literature" is fluff, with ten pages of insights buried in 300 pages of anecdotes. "How to Take Smart Notes" isn't anything like that.

It's an argument for maintaining a curated personal knowledge database of your notes (a "zettelkasten") and using that to drive your writing, letting clusters and topics emerge organically from it. It's also full of useful and practical tactics for reading better, taking more useful notes, and actually using those notes to compile and write better articles.

Could have been much much shorted. Very much felt like a book that was artificially extended for a publisher's benefit.

A core of really good ideas here, though I think even this short book could have been a quarter of the length and not lost much. Essentially:

1. When taking notes, don't organize them in top-down categories—instead, link them to each other and allow structure to emerge organically.
2. Rephrase research material in your own words to test your understanding, soon after reading it.
3. Use the act of note taking and your archive of linked notes as an external brain—not for remembering facts, but for making connections between existing ideas and generating new ones.

Mostly pitched at students and academics, but I can see the approach here working for many classes of knowledge workers. I'll certainly be trying it out for a bit.

This is a book that delivers even more than it promises. It is about learning, thinking, organizing, coming up with new ideas, and using tools to help us do these things. It is not as simple to understand as the title sugests, but it is worth some effort to understand the few but subtle concepts about taking, storing, and using notes.

Ahrens first describes Zettelkasten, a paper, pen, and card file method developed by the sociologist Niklas Luhmann in the last century, before digital tools. Luhmann used this method throughout his career, and produced a large body of important work.
Ahrens also describes ways to combine various current-day digital tools to replicate Luhmann's system.
It's not always clear, without careful reading, which system he is discussing or which digital terms refer to which of Luhmann's descriptions.

In a Zettelkasten, which is German for card box, a series of short notes go into one file system, organized in three ways, by the equivalents of trees, tags, and links. Its goal is to help find connections and ways to generate output that is not apparent from the input. The method is much like the Feynman journal method, but described in more detail.

The system grows the way our thoughts grow, it is individual for each person, and acts as a way for us to remember and reconsider, and present those thoughts. The method is bound to become more popular when more applicable digital tools are developed.

The book also includes much up-to-date information on how to best read, study, learn, and write. It is valuable even without using a Zettelkasten method itself.