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