Zettelkasten is Extremely Underrated

[Ayham]

Have you ever felt like you aren't getting the full value of your insights? or of your notes? or your commonplace book?

This is where the Zettelkasten system comes in, this system is not difficult, just takes time to get into, I will simplify it a lot.

First you take fleeting notes, or basically jotting down thoughts, ideas, and insights, you can do this in a physical notebook or digitally

You take literature notes, which is just a fancy word for summaries, whether that's a book summary, a video summary, an article summary, etc.

Finally you take atomic notes, each note here contains a single idea only! you will read through your literature notes, and your fleeting notes, then make atomic notes on the ideas you find useful, or insightful, you will write a mini essay on this idea, and put back links to which notes it came from, then you will connect other atomic notes to this one, and you might get a new idea and make a new atomic note from it, then link it back, and whenever this same idea gets in your mind from another source, you will stumble upon this note (if you have a good system) and link it to a new reference.

This might sound complicated, you will need a good robust software, this is where obsidian comes in, it's a free software that is future-proof, based on markdown, aesthetically pleasing, and has all the features you can want.

So why are you doing this? three reasons

1. Writing is thinking! it is a form of contemplation, writing mini essays on your notes will help you clarify, understand, and develop your ideas a lot, and not to mention, actually train your writing ability.
2. We Need to Consciously Shift Our Attention From Facts to Relations and Connections, this is key, the ability to link and form connections you wouldn't have ever formed on your own between your ideas is massive.
3. Each atomic note is a building block you can reuse whenever you want, you have this mini essay you can use whenever you want to contribute something, and it will only grow better the more you revisit it, change it or reference it more.

This is probably one of my favorite videos on the Zettelkasten system:

There is a lot of resources, don't make my mistake and get lost in studying the system and trying to perfectly implement it rather than starting.

[Whitney Edwards]

This sounds a bit unnecessarily stretched and complicated. 

[Butters]

Reading this got me thinking: how would I take audio notes as thoughts enter my mind and then have an AI recap my entire week or month worth of thoughts to work with? Hmm 

[Ayham]

@Buck Edwards I think it is useful for some people.
for me it has totally transformed the value i get from any consumption activity.

@Butters taking notes on thoughts, is something that can be done in any way, as long as it is easy, like: phone notes app, physical notebook, voice recorder, etc.
Using AI is genius with this method, it can certainly make the summarizing be done immediately, and then you just make the small atomic notes on your own, because that needs your own thinking and linking, thats where the value is at
the app itself has multiple ai plugins, but i find plugins usually unnecessary because it gets complicated, you might want to look into them though!