Zettelkasten Note Taking System

Zettelkasten System Use and Principles

Source: Why Use Zettelkasten system

1. Atomicity - one note, one idea
2. Autonomy - each note is self contained
3. Always link notes to other notes (hyper text)
4. Explain connection between notes when you are linking them
5. Use your own words, avoid copy and paste
6. Keep references - to remember where you got the ideas
7. Add your own thoughts to the note
8. Don’t worry about structure, it will develop organically
9. Create connection notes - notes that link other notes and explain their relationship
10. Add outline notes - as notes come to themes, create outline notes that contain links to other notes (e.g. Wikipedia categories). Order notes into a story, narrative, argument
11. Never delete old notes - instead link to new notes / explain why not reference old ones
12. Add notes without fear

Minimums for your personal Zettelkasten (communication with slip notes) are:

Anatomy of a Zettel (“slip notes”) / a note:

1. A unique identifier
2. A body
3. References for source of knowledge

A note about note relationships is a structure note.

Implementation

• Index notes (e.g. numbers, unique IDs/names). Use index to reference notes - my implementation is GitHub folder with unique markdown file names
• Tag notes then create a note with all the tags you’ve used and list of index notes that match the given tag - my implementation is nested tags extension and tagging

See Also

Resources

• Concept of notes system