Chronological notetaking with problems

 The easiest way to make notes is to append new information at the end. There is no need to use a ring binder or note cards but a normal notebook works fine. A possible entry would be “date: March 10, headline, body of text”. The note is written down on paper and can be read again forever.

There is a large problem available with such a note taking technique. Chronological notetaking will mess up the notes on the long run. Notes about mathematics will follow notes about history and language. The only sorting order available is the date. This makes it hard to read the notes again. Let me give an example.

Suppose the user has written down over a horizon of 2 weeks multiple notes from different subjects. Now he likes to retrieve all the notes about math. The problem is, that the math notes are distributed over different sections in the notebook. Some math notes are written down on march 10, while other are from march 16 and the notes in between have nothing to do with prime numbers but are from different subjects.

Even if the notes are technically well written its impossible to retrieve them because they aren't sorted by topic but only by date. To sort notes by topic, there is need to use a different principle than only adding notes at the end. Some sort of ring binder or Zettelkasten is needed. With such a tool its possible to add new math notes after the old math notes.

The main advantage is, that its much easier to read the notes again. All the math notes are collected together. The user doesn't has to read the entire notebook, but only the math section. This makes it likely that the notes are consulted multiple times. The disadvantage of ring binders and card catalogs is, that its more demanding to create the notes. Before new notes can be added to the system the correct position has to be located. Which slows down the writing process.

Creating a Luhmann style Zettelkasten with the Lyx software

One of the key problems with the Luhmann style note taking method is that it is very complicated to explain and it differs in many points from note taking in the past. The problem with manual note taking on index cards is, that it has much in common with an art project in which somebody has invented his own handwriting style and his own structure which is difficult to explain to others. In contrast, the problem with digital only note taking software is, that the programs are never working the same and endless amount of features are available. So the question is, what is Luhmann style note taking from a birds eye perspective?

A good starting point is to use an existing word processing software like Lyx and creating notes in this software. Advantage is, that not a certain note taking software is needed and the user is not asked to learn a certain software. What is working in an existing word like program can be transfered to other programs easily. In contrast to dedicated outline editors, the Lyx program has some disadvantages for example the full text search is poor, the hyperlinks are difficult to navigate and inserting images makes trouble. Nevertheless i have decided to take the software as an example to explain how to create notes.

Let us start the workflow from scratch with an empty document. The side pane in the left shows the sections of the document.

The main idea is to store the notes without folders but store the notes in a sorted list. This idea can be realized in Lyx with the paragraph style. Each paragraph name is shown in the left outline pane.

To make the note taking process more realistic, some information are added for each note which includes the creation date, keypoints and of course the sources. Until now the situation looks not very exciting, because the document contains of only some notes.

For implementing a typical luhmann style zettelkasten two additional elements are needed: a luhmann ID and a maximum length of a note.

The luhmann id defines the position of each node in the sorted list. It is defined once durcing the creation of the node and never changed. For adding a new node at a certain position the node-id is selected in a certain way. The screenshot shows an example for adding a new node between two older nodes.

The typical question of a newbie is why should somebody add new information between other nodes wouldn't it be more common to add new notes at the end? The idea of a Luhmann Zettelkasten is to group notes by it's similarity to existing nodes. It's a clustering mechanism which allows to recall the information later. This is maybe the most obvious difference to note taking in the past. In a luhmann zettelkasten it is a bit complicated to add something. Because the correct position has to identified first and then the appropriate luhmann id has to be created.

Adding more random notes to the existing structure will result into a longer outline list in the lyx editor. The idea is that each note has a maximum size of 700 Byte which is equal to write an A6 index card. The list will become longer and longer. There are no tags, groups or subsections but the node's hierarchy is defined only by the Luhmann id.

Sometimes the Luhmann Zettelkasten gets improved with further elements for example a dedicated bibliography, the ability to insert images and hyperlinks. Hyperlinks means that a link from one node is created to another node. But these improvement are only minor details which can be ignored in the first step. The basic principle is to make sure that each node has a maximum size of 700 bytes and that a Luhmann id is available.

The main strength of the method is, that it scales up to larger amount of content. The screenshot is showing only 9 nodes but technically it is possible to create 100, 200 and even 2000 nodes with the strategy easily. At the end the user has in the left outline pane a long list of nodes and will see in the main window the content for each node. Thanks to the Luhmann id, similar nodes are located nearby. The document is a linear list which can be scrolled from top to bottom. It is some sort of sorted chaos. At the one hand it looks very messy because of the huge amount of small nodes, on the other hand it is very well structured because every knowledge fits into the same sorted list.

A Luhmann Zettelkasten and a mindmap

 

Even for experts in personal knowledge management it is hard to explain in a single sentence how to create a Luhmann style note card system. One of the best papers about the subject was written by Schmidt [1] but it was written for an academic audience. In contrast the picture shown on top of this blogpost summarizes the idea in a very compact format.

A luhmann note taking system is basically a mindmap. In the mindmap a hierarchical structure is available what is common for all mindmaps. A node can have subnodes which are linked with arrows. Mind maps are a well known creativity technique but the system can't scale up to larger needs. Writing down 20 nodes on a single sheet of paper is maybe possible but writing down 100 and more contradicts the idea of a mindmap.

The Luhmann notetaking system takes a mind map as starting point and projects the nodes on a 1d array which is the notebox. the 1d array is a storage container for a hierarchical mindmap. This mapping allows to create larger mind maps which have unlimited amount of entries. in theory it is possible to onvert a Luhmann note box back into a mindmap and print it out but the graph would become too large. What a user is prefering instead is to work only with the 1d array. Instead of creating new entries in the original mindmap the topics are created in the card box.

 

Larger mindmaps

... can be mapped also to a 1d array. The figure looks a bit messy but from a technical perspective all the arraws to mapped to a single target location. The idea is that the same semantic network is rendered either as a mindmap or as a 1d array. The 1d array allows to store the information more compact and it is easy to use paper based index cards for physical storage.

The unfolded card box is a normal mindmap. And if the amount of cards is higher it will become a very huge mindmap It would be equal to draw a mindmap on an entire wall. And if the wall #1 is running out of space the next wall is added. The interesting situation is that the entire system remains always a mindmap. So the shoebox of Luhmann which was in the reality a huge cabinet is holding a mindmap. And the mindmap is the second brain.

The example mindmap in the figure consists of only 15 nodes. After adding additional 15 nodes, a normal A4 sheet of paper will run out of space. This might explain, why only smaller mindmaps are drawn in the reality which makes it not practical for complex topics. It is not possible to write down 100 kb of notes into a mind.

At least this is the hypothesis if the luhmann numbering system is unknown. After mapping the mindmap to a 1d array it is pretty easy to add additional nodes and there is no upper limit. So the Luhmann method is a super-mindmap.

 References

[1] Schmidt, Johannes FK. "Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine." Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe. Brill, 2016. 287-311.

What is a Zettelkasten?

At foremost an index card is something which has become obsolete since the advent of computers. Index cards were used until the 1960s and where later replaced by electronic databases and word processing software. It is some sort of outdated non electronic medium which can't compete with the Internet.

So it is a bit surprising to recognize that since a while the index card has become a famous technology. Similar to the analog vinyl record there is a huge interest available for this medium. This interest can be seen in sold books about the topic at amazon. The book an position #1 at the bestseller list is about index cards and the underlying Zettelkasten method.

Before we can judge about the topic we have to explain shortly what an index card notetaking system is about. The main principles are that the amount of text for each card is limited to around 500 byte and that the cards are numbered in a complicated system. This elements are visible for electronic and analog Zettelkasten systems as well so we can assume that they are the blueprint for the system.

The main contrast between analog and electronic storage systems, is that analog media are limited in the amount of space. The US-letter format has a size of 8.5x11 inches while an index card has a size of 3x5 inches. This limitation is not available for electronic media. A HTML page doesn't know a border but the width depends on the webbrowser. A window can have a width of 800 pixels, or only 200 pixels on a smartphone. The direct result of a fixed size for example of an index card is, that the amount of bytes which can be stored is limited. Writing an index card by hand results into a size of approximately 500 byte but not more.

Let me give a concrete example to explain why this is important. Suppose a writer likes to a make notes. So he will create a text file, writes the content in the file and after storing the file on the hard drive he will recognize that the file is 300 kb in size.

In contrast, if the same author is using index card to make notes he will recognize quickly that after writing down the first sentence, the index card runs out of space. That means, it is not possible to squeeze 300 kb in a single index card. The logical consequence is to use a second and third card to write the text.

From a writing process this limitation has a huge impact and allows to create a different sort of text. If many index cards are used to store information some sort of sorting mechanism is needed which is mostly a numbering system. The combination of a size limit of 500 byte, plus a numbering system to overcome the bottleneck results into the well known Zettelkasten method.

There are some attempts available to simulate index cards on a computer. In the easiest case, the MS-Word software is used and a table holds the index cards. The table has three columns for the id, title and text and then the user can write the content he likes. If he takes care that each entry has a limit of 500 byte, it is a simulated Zettelkasten.

The open question is how to use such a table to make notes? In the past this problem was never asked, since the advent of the PC there is no such thing like a size limit of 500 bytes. That means in a normal word file it is possible to write down unlimited amount of words or bytes. A carefully formatted table or a physical zettelkasten is a step backward before the advent of the computer. This is what the Zettelkasten community is talking about. They want to explore how note taking was done with a size limit for an index card.

Outliner software

State of the art programs to make notes on a computer are outliner programs. On the first look they have much in common with a Zettelkasten but a closer look will show that the principle works different. In an outliner there are hierarchical sections available, also no space limit is there for a single section. Let me give an example. In a typical outliner the user creates some sections like:

section 1

____section B

section 2

____section 4

____section 5

And then he can write down in each section a text or a table. The principle has much in common with creating files in a folder but an outliner provides the features under single GUI. So it is a very comfortable way in writing. The interesting situation is, that writing with index cards is the opposite of an outliner. Because index cards have limitations while an outliner not.

Or let me formulate it differently. In an outliner there is no need to use a Zettelkasten method or learn how to use index cards.

Sorting cards in a box

Suppose somebody has written text onto a handful of index cars. The next step is to archive the cards in a box. But how? There are at least two competing ways in doing so. One easy to understand option is to give every index card a title and then sort the cards alphabetically.

A more complex approach is to number the cards and then use the number for sorting them. The Zettelkasten method is preferring the second approach. The reason why is a bit complicated to explain. A numbering system is mostly equal to a topic based category system. For example index cards about sport are starting with 1, index cards about music with 2 and so on. The number is used short for a category tree. in case of the Zettelkasten method a more complex system is used in which the numbers are determined on the fly without defining the category tree first. The idea is that a number can't changed later and that the position of the card in the sequential list is important.

The Zettelkasten elite

From the self understanding, the Zettelkasten community has much in common with owners of a fixed gear bicycle. A fixie bike is working different to normal bike. It has no breaks so a certain balancing technique is needed called skidding to stop the bike. A same approach is used in case of a Zettelkasten. If the amount of stored information gets larger a workaround is needed to get in control of the information.

A non zettelkasten user would ask why not simple use a computer to store the notes and use full text search to find something in the database. This is not an option for the community. They are using index cards because they want to manage the disadvantages. Similar to fixed gear bicycles there is a certain sort of social control to handle the situation For example it is not allowed to uses these bicycles on a normal road, and it is strictly forbidden to use a physical zettelkasten to write a book or paper. This rule is so obvious that there is no need to formulate it but everybody knows that Zettelkasten and bicycles without brakes are not wanted anymore. The result is the advent of a subculture which has defined rules in opposite to the mainstream understanding.

Public roads are not the right place for fixed gear bicycles, and libraries are the wrong starting point to make notes on a 3x5 index card. What is used instead to manage information is a modern laptop in combination with an outliner or a citation manager. This is what all the students are using.

There is an easy way to identify which tools are used in mainstream and which not. In so called library prank videos the idea is to create a funny unusual scene and record the reactions of the audience. If a student enters with a physical typewriter a library the other users will smile about it because a typewriter is recognized as an outdated technology. If the same student is using index cards he is using another unusual technology.

The reason why index cards were abandoned from libraries is simple. They have too many disadvantages over notebooks. A single notebook can store more information and is easier to use than a slip card box. Especially the combination of a pen plus index cards is a very costly way in storing information.

Modern information technology

A mainstream compatibly technology to store and retrieve information are laptops. These devices have a huge disc space. They can store easily one gigabyte and more of information. The software allows to search full text in the information so it is a great approach handle high demand. Especially students are using laptops to create bibliographic databases and write down texts.

From a laptop perspective there is no need for index cards. Current programs like outliner and word processing software are more than capable for academic writing. The uprraising of the Zettelkasten method has to be interpreted as some sort of anti-movement which is questioning if full text databases are needed and which alternative information storage options are available.

Footnotes with index cards

There is a youtube video available which explains how to create footnotes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNH2Nubcfh4 The Note Card System for Research The idea is to store the footnotes of an acadmic text on index cards. The index card is sometimes called a note card which is short for “footnote card”. And if the paper was written the cards gets archived in a box. This is the basic principle in academic writing.