Actually Finishing

Initially after finishing this one, I was expecting to be pretty harsh.

Reading the middle third and parts of the last one was an absolute slog. I had to check where I was multiple times to make sure I wasn’t re-reading passages over and over, such was the repetitive feel of it. Constant iterations of the idea that the slip box was more than the sum of its parts, that using it was more akin to a conversation between participants than searching an encyclopaedia. Analogy after analogy of repeating the same idea, slightly differently. At one point I nearly gave up.

But then I reviewed my notes and highlights, started following the ideas a little, and began to think differently.

How To Take Smart Notes feels less like an instruction manual and more like a manifesto; a Why To rather than of a How To. It introduces you to the concept of Zettelkasten (literally “note-box” in German), which the book calls a slip box, the note-taking and personal knowledge management system used by Niklas Luhmann, a hugely influential and prolific sociologist who used it to publish 50 books and over 600 articles. What its real and oft-repeated message is, however, is to treat everything as though writing is the end goal.

The art of Zettelkasten is based around its simplicity: take fleeting (temporary) notes throughout your day, collect them in an inbox (either real or digital), then review regularly. Translate the notes that are relevant to your interests into permanent notes for your slip box, reviewing your slip box for connections to existing notes or ideas. If there are connections, you’d place your note directly behind the note it connects to and include a link on each note. Else, put the note at the back of the slip box. Similarly, when reading texts and articles, take notes as you go for a separate bibliography, and translate takeaway notes into the slip box.

The idea here is to remove responsibility for this from your brain and into a trusted system. It’s far from a unique idea; Tiago Forte has his own version in Building a Second Brain, and the book itself makes multiple references to David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. But the other aim is to do as Luhmann did - build a system of connected notes, regularly engage them with new ideas, new connections, and new questions to be answered off the back of them, and build a critical mass of notes with a view to ultimately write your own text off the back of them, fully sourced and detailed in your slip box and bibliography.

It’s at this point you might ask yourself why would this be relevant to you, especially if you’re not in the academic writing world. The author answers this in the later chapters by pointing out the headfake - it’s not a requirement to use it to become a published academic or novelist, but when writing and taking notes with the aim of creating a written work in mind, you naturally build a working network of ideas and thoughts, carefully crafted and challenged over time, developing a much more effective method of thinking and learning than, as they write, ‘hammering facts into the brain as if they were carvings on an ancient stone tablet’.

It’s perhaps fitting then that I got more out of reading my highlights and notes on the text than I did through my initial read through. Zettelkasten wasn’t a new idea to me going into it, and I think there are perhaps better resources for the method than this book (the introduction at zettelkasten.de, for example). Luhmann’s actual linking method of using numbers and letter to identifies chains and branches isn’t really explored until the appendix, for example, a choice I assume is related to their approach of trying to keep the method as system agnostic as possible. They make no recommendation or preference for whether you use pen and paper, or digital tools; letter and numbers, or markdown hyperlinks. Their goal is simply to get you taking smart notes and to give you the tools and ideas to help your own thoughts and ideas grow.

It’s definitely not a book for everyone, maybe not even everyone deeply interested in PKM. Even for a relatively short book, it wasn’t quick to get through, or consistently enjoyable. Yet I’ve gotten a lot from it, including inspiration for my own way forward, and it’s a book I’ll likely revisit in later months or years to refresh my mind and top up my notes on it. Maybe the rating will change with revisits, but for now?

6/10

So I usually have between one and three books on the go at one time, depending on my emotional and mental bandwidth, and the time of year.

Mostly I can juggle a fiction and non-fiction book either digitally or paper, reading the fiction during the day and the non-fiction in the evening. But over the past few months I’ve been able to start enjoying audiobooks again. I struggle with them over the darker months; SAD really hits my concentration during the day, ruling out listening at work, and with the darker evenings I need my concentration to be on my surroundings when walking the dog, and not whatever story I’m listening too.

At the minute, I’ve got three on the go right now:

1. What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama
2. How To Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
3. Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

Da Vinci has been a bear on my list for about eight years. I got it after listening to the Steve Jobs biography by the same author, thinking I could get on a biography kick, which turned out to be a lie. It didn’t help that it was another 17 hour read after listening to the 25 hour Jobs biography, nor the fact that while Da Vinci is an interesting topic, Jobs is both more recent and more scandalous.

Yet there it sat in my Audible library, taunting me, goading me.

I’d finally got back into audiobooks while walking the dog this Summer, mostly Warhammer 40k novels, Ciaphas Cain in particular, but thought it might be worth giving another go. I’m a few hours in so far, and it’s okay but I’m hitting a familiar road block of wanting to take notes but being stuck at the pace I’m given. I’ve started using the built-in clips function; we’ll see how that goes.

How To Take Smart Notes has been on my radar for a while now. I’m about 40% through it already on my Kindle, and it’s a real ebb-and-flow kind of book; easy to get through in parts, and then it seems I’m reading pages upon pages of the same point for 20 minutes. Zettelkasten is a system I’ve been interested in for a while, but always struggle to implement, although I’m getting the impression that’s more because of a distinct lack of filter between me and my zettel, and less to do with the system.

What you are looking for is in the library though is probably the one I’m enjoying the most. This one’s from my wife’s Did Not Finish pile; an adventurous one for her, as she’s much more into Kate Morton and books that go back and forth in a time line. It’s definitely not her style of writing; very manner of fact and almost plain, as opposed to descriptive and compelling dialogue.

To me though, it’s a book you don’t have to think about at all while reading. There’s next to no mental load, no call for you to really stretch your imagination. It’s a collection of short stories around the same theme - person is unhappy with an aspect in their life, they go to a community library, and the Librarian recommends a bunch of books including something that’s totally left field but also unlocks their answer for them. It’s sweet, it’s simple, and it’s uplifting. Perfect after a long day, or in today’s case, when I’m full of a summer cold.

If I had to put money on it, I’d say I’d finish Smart Notes and Library this month pretty comfortably, and maybe get Da Vinci done just in time for my next credit to turn up. Then I’m turning right back to 40k. I’ve forgotten how much my brain needs sci-fi, and it feels like it could use a reward.