Zettelkasten method

Zettelkasten (wooden box in Germany) method

This is the writing and thinking tool invented by Niklas Luhman. He is a German sociologist who written more 70 books and 400 articles. His great productiviy coming from this Zettelkasten method. When he have a new idea, or thought, he capture it in the notes written in A6 paper and stored in the wooden drawler.

Zettelkasten components

3 types of note in Zettelksten method

• Fleeting notes: new idea you want to capture. The note should be quick just to remind us about the idea.
• Literature notes: the note taken when consume the information (blog, course, youtube video). One side is the reference or sources, other side is the content written by our own words.
• Permanent notes: At the end of the day, we review all the fleeting notes and literature notes to create permanent notes. Each permanent note contains only 1 idea and is ready for publication at any time. The permanent note should be linked to at least one other note.

ID system in Zettelkasten method

Luhmann lived in 20th century (1927 - 1998). At that time, we don’t have the tool or technology to store and quick retrieve the information. All of his notes were stored in the wooden drawler. So to search the information quickly, he invented the special ID system.

Luhmann used number and character to label for his notes. Each note will have the unique ID, the ID system will works like below

The first note will have the ID: 1. For the next note,

• If it’s related to the previous note, it will have the ID of 1a.
• If is’s not related, it will have the ID of 2

Then we can apply the same principle for all the other notes

Start with note with ID 1, if the new note related to it, the its ID will be 1a. The next note, if related will have id 1a1, next related note will be 1a1a. Then we have another note, it related to 1a1 note but not rellated to 1a1a note, so its ID will be 1a1b. The 1a1a and 1a1b notes are the two chain of thought starting from 1a1

With this method, Luhmann wrote more than 90000 notes throught his life. And he could easily find the information and other notes related to it.