There's a difference 🤯

I hadn't considered how taking notes in notebooks, margins, or digital documents 📑 promotes linear thinking (this, then this).

Linear thinking limits how often you revisit your knowledge, engage in lateral thinking , or combine old and new knowledge in engaging ways (this, to this).

I just learned and tried a  Zettelkasten 🗂️ (or "note box"), designed to support knowledge building over note-taking.

Popularized by German sociologist and prolific researcher Niklas Luhmann, a Zettelkasten involves putting away the notebook in favor of index cards 🗂️, which allows you to cross-pollinate your ideas systematically.

Here's what the analog version of my Zettlekasten looked like ⬆️

The method involves taking three types of notes:

  1. fleeting - random ideas,
  2. literature - notes from what you read or heard and
  3. permanent - a synthesized idea or insight.

The key is to write each of these notes in your own words and ensure they are independent (not needing other resources or context) and concise (3-5 sentences).

Knowledge management systems

Eventually, I decided to go digital. This was how I structured a digital Zettlekasten in Craft.

Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team
Notion

But the database functionality in Notion was too incredible to pass up. So, here is where my Zettlekasten lives.

💬
What do you think? Would you take (or have you taken) notes this way?

Next: The efficacy of a message 📤

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