Zettlekastens note taking system: First approach and review. #

How the idea of note taking was conceived #

At first, I started taking notes on paper since 2023 in an informal manner. I noticed that I became dependent on them, more so than I expected at first always searching for notes i didn’t record and learnings I must have forgotten because of my long-term retention capacity. Finally this year (2024), I decided to commit myself to have a formal approach on note taking.

As I was searching for references on my investigation, a nice reference was found of a particular devops self-thought man previously a nurse and out of passion of being a “knowledge worker” became a developer operations engineer. This man’s name is “Mischa van den Burg”. He has a zettlekasten system on his own, and I decided to follow his steps and set up my own based in some of the features he developed.

Choosing some tools #

I found myself always craving for frictionless feature, even for note taking. A frictionless feature is a tool, routine or any sort of idea that makes my life easier without putting a lot of effort on learning the habit of it. It should feel like it was always required and when you manage to do it; it should feel like it always was there.

For me, a frictionless feature at first was the white paper approach. The mental effort for recording new findings and information is non existent and is flexibility is impressive (adding color pencils feels great!). But the white paper approach really lacked in the recovering mechanism. For this same reason I manage to create a better automatized approach using Neovim fuzzy finder features + Obsidian’s graph viewer.

Neovim is a great IDE for development mostly but can be configure to search between notes and making great experience for writing code. Since I have a developer background I decided to create a “Neovim note taking system” approach based on what Mischa van den Burg suggested himself. Obsidian was a note taking system that has interesting graphical plugins and visualizations, that will provide more aesthetic note visualizations.

Removing friction for the note taking system #

Once I had figured out which tools would be useful for the system, I had to reduce as much friction as possible. Friction for me, is the antagonist of proactivity. Reducing effort contributes to creating action, by facilitating the person to not stall through tedious routines.

A easy technical solution for reducing the undesirable friction was to create a serious of small automatization around the interaction specifically of creating notes. The biggest gap I thought needed to be attended as soon as possible was the recording new findings mechanism. Opening an application is a major friction point for me as a user, so creating a shortcut for it that will create a note structure with an specific unique identifier per note is valuable.

As a solution, I manage to investigate a proper automatized small system with bash files. For this system, my previous experience had thought me that many bash files tend to entropy real quick. Given that a good solution, most be maintainable and understandable for a long time, I decided to create a personal folder for all dotfiles solution. A dotfile based on what is posted on Github dotfile topic it is:

Legend goes, that dotfiles were invented when ls used to skip files and directories starting with a . (dot). As a result, files that begin with such a character were not shown when listing using ls — i.e. it was a “hidden” file. Since dotfiles are ususually user-specific, a predestined place for them is the $HOME directory. Commonly used files are for example: .bashrc, .zshrc or .vimrc.

Defining a documentation strategy #

Taking notes is to live with intention - Mischa van den Burg

I am a forgetful person, and I am in a moment in my life were ideas are a big part of me. This quote above, resonated with how i felt for the longest time, forgetting was a painful act in itself since valuable thoughts you cherish suddenly banish and you don’t notice them when they go away. I want to record thoughts, they don’t need to have an specific structure or make much sense but I want to be the craftsman of my empire of ideas.

The PARA method: An informal idea of indexing logs #

For the PARA methods, it is a simple note taking system, that creates a couple of concepts around how files should be ordered into a limited categories of folders. This folder are the (P)rojects, (A)reas, (R)esources, (A)rchives. Each of them has a use:

• Projects: “A project is a sequence of tasks you need to accomplish in order to achieve a certain outcome - David Allan” (3 months - 12 months)

• Areas: It involves ongoing engagements. It places a particular important role in your life. Are areas particularly important to your life like health, sports, family, …

• Resources: Is a collection of information, that you expect to be useful. It can be hobbies, investigations, interests, …

• Archive: Searching for notes, old notes will appear and you make connections. This is information can be logged as “old”, but could appear on a search for a helping hand some day.

What is the origin of a log (small story) #

A log started life as a lump of wood such as you might throw on a fire. And it still is - sometimes. When sailors wanted to know how fast they were going, they would throw over the stern a log tied to a bit of string with regularly spaced knots in it. By counting the number of knots that went out in a fixed time, they would know their speed - in knots, of course. A navigator would want to have a regular record of this speed, so that he could calculate how fast the ship was travelling than thus roughly where he was. So the speed was written down, initially on a slate but later in a book, which, since it recorded the log measurements, was called the log. - By Alec Cawley

Links: [[Notes]] [[Research]]

My Neovim Zettelkasten - Mischa van den Burg

Dotfiles - Rob Muhlestein (rwxrob)

Github dotfiles

Dotfiles Webpro - Lars Kappert

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