When does a Zettelkasten become useful?

Posted on 2022-08-07

As mentioned in a previous blog post of mine, I started using a Zettelkasten about three months ago. It currently has about 240 zettel (without templates and journals). But I also wondered, even before starting the Zettelkasten, when it will actually become useful? Already on the first note? A few hundred notes in? Today I am going to try to answer it, at least for my Zettelkasten. But before listening to anything I am saying, I have to note that I don't even know whether I am doing the Zettelkasten-thing correctly and that my Zettelkasten is still in very early stages so I might not even have reached the point where it is actually useful.

Maybe before I actually begin, I should introduce the concept of a Zettelkasten first. For this let me quote Sascha, a coach about the Zettelkasten method:

> A Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing. It has hypertextual features to make a web of thought possible. The difference to other systems is that you create a web of thoughts instead of notes of arbitrary size and form, and emphasize connection, not a collection.

https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/

So basically a Zettelkasten is a collection of many notes that are interconnected via links. Its purpose is to be a second brain one can "talk to" to create/rediscover ideas/connections. Well, that is at least how I interpret the Zettelkasten method. I do not know what the general Zettelkasten community thinks about my interpretation, but what I do know is that my Zettelkasten does not really follow my interpretation.

The basic structure of in my Zettelkasten is the same as in the general Zettelkasten, but I do not think the content is. In a normal Zettelkasten, as far as I understood, one should not only gather information but also link that information with already known information to create new knowledge. I basically do the same, but the linking of the knowledge is currently within the same subject only.

Lets maybe look at an example. Consider the subject "Efficient Algorithms" that was presented to me this semester. Here, my notes are basically a structure-note for every big topic linking to structure-notes of every sub-topic linking to the actual information that sometimes links back to already learned information, but not from other subjects. The problem here is, that this is easily converted to a linear note structure, which is not really the point behind the Zettelkasten method. Maybe in future lectures I am actually able to link back to the "Efficient Algorithms" lecture if there are similar ideas.

But I also see another problem for using Zettelkasten for things like the lectures, lectures do not really need for the student to discover new ideas, they mostly want the student to be able to replicate the contents of the lecture. But here I also see a strength of my Zettelkasten method, the activity of writing things down in my own words greatly helps me to re-evaluate if I have actually understood the contents and makes it easier to remember the important things. Furthermore, easy searching also enables me to quickly look up knowledge I know I have written down but forgot the details of.

To basically summarize what I (believe) am doing differently in my Zettelkasten, I emphasize on collecting the information in a way I understand and is easy to search instead of linking the notes to create new ideas. Maybe the word "wiki" might be closer to what I am doing, but as I was starting off with the idea of creating a Zettelkasten, this word has stuck for now.

Now, to actually answer the question when a Zettelkasten (as I am doing it) becomes useful. As previously stated, writing the Zettelkasten helped me find my weak points when learning something, and also helped me remember and find knowledge. So one could argue that the Zettelkasten helped me from the first zettel I wrote, which is in my opinion certainly the case. But maybe looking back at "Efficient Algorithms", I did not actually use my Zettelkasten for exam preparation that much, as I was informed that deeper knowledge of the subject would be required compared to what I was writing. But it actually still helped me for preparing for the exam preparation as it contained a quick (about two hours to read everything) overview of the lecture content and also the basic ideas behind everything we were doing.

In summary I really think the Zettelkasten helped me, but probably not in the way it was intended for. I will definitely continue to use it, and maybe once the Zettelkasten gets more mature it may help to actually discover new knowledge.

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