How many people actually find utility from a Zettelkasten system?
I just can't bring myself to go to the effort of documenting a thought and adding links/tags unless it is something I predict that I will need sometime in the future and won't just remember. Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information. If I'm linking thoughts together I'm doing it real time in my head, anything else takes me too far out of my thought process.
I can see it if you are a person working in academia or a writer where you may be generating concepts that you want to link together in the future. But as someone that does project type work, I'm following too much of a defined process to see any benefit.
I developed one for a specific personal research topic. Once I answered my question, the initiative petered out.
I've considered starting another based on the idea of getting high off knowledge. I don't see the point as an information store, but as a toy it makes sense; use it spark curiosity, make neat connections, etc.
Definitely not. I really like Obsidian, but organize everything like a book, which gives just enough structure to know where everything goes without thinking about it, and no more.
There’s just not enough there to make into a blog post.
That's what LLMs are best, actually. Go through all your stuff and painstakingly document, add tags, refer to other documents, etc
> Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information
LLMs can also separate what information was only useful at a specific time vs more perennially useful notes.
The system also feels to me like it would be busywork for most people. I just make notes in a very unorganized way and do some cross-linking. I rely on search for actually finding things, though I feel like I can improve search by using sentence/text embeddings and some vector search.
At the least, Zettelkasten like habit can be helpful.
For me, I don't bookmark a webpage, I'm usually after a sentence or something after.
Highlighting that one sentence or webpage is a habit.
Throwing a tag or two on them isn't as hard when you can call the tags whatever you want.
After that, those topics are one click away, 5-10 years later.
Trying out Zettelkasten, or PARA, Johnny Decimal or some other system, one will work for you. It's less about perfectionism at the start and just improving.
It's also possible to have an AI just organize the folders for you little by little.
It can not be great at first to play around but the more you work at it the more it does become.
Luhmann left behind 70,000 index cards, published over 70 books and ~400 papers, and his systems theory is still actively applied in sociology, legal theory, and organizational studies. He's required reading at German universities. Your sample size of n=2 is methodologically a little thin – which Luhmann himself would have appreciated, given that he had a particular fondness for pointing out systemic blind spots.
"Two professors hadn't heard of him" is a fascinating epistemological standard. Like me stating: I've also met two cardiologists who didn't know who Rudolf Virchow was. Guess he wasn't that productive either.
Fair enough, I missed the mark that I was intending. Possibly he remains better recognized in Germany than in North America; and it’s admittedly not my field. At the same time, more than once when I’ve posed the question about the utility of ZK, I’ve been pointed only to Luhmann. His academic productivity isn’t in dispute. And seemingly, for him, it was aided by the methodology that is promoted by ZK followers now. But it’s also an n=1 data point. I wonder if the ZK community has identified other productive and impactful academics who are devotees.
As for the last comment: having gone to medical school some decades ago and trained in cardiology, I’m familiar with Virchow. I would be surprised to encounter any physician who hadn’t any familiarity with him. But who knows?!
I remember doing some research on this topic, and, when I looked for usage patterns for my type of job specifically, I realized that most people were just posting about their workflows learning about... taking notes.
It is too complicated. We just get, save or write something, maybe with some categories, keywords, or tags.
After saving, maybe you need some organization later, but most time they are just there. Most time you search content by categories, keywords, or tags.
I think we need right tools for different requirements.
I built the AS Notes extension for VS Code (https://asnotes.io) partly because I wanted to be able to write my notes with the support of other VS Code extensions, and because of the agent harness options in VS Code (copilot etc). The key thing for easy zettlekasten management is really good wikilink support in markdown. AS Notes supports nested wikilinking and automatic updating in the index on rename etc.
The credit goes to Luhmann. Ahrens wrote a book about Luhmann's system, but Ahrens' book was more about the practical side of study habits and the nature of knowledge as much as it was about the practical side of actually using a zettelkasten.
I bought Ahrens's book to learn how to take smart notes. It should've been called Why to Take Smart Notes. The book was more about how good and lifechanging it is to use Zettelkasten, which was a bummer because I was already interested enough in the idea to buy a book about it. I was looking for more of a how-to.
Edit: Upon a quick scan, this looks more like what I learned as "Linking Your Thinking", which resonates way more with me than a strict Zettelkasten format where you try to arrange notes linearly to match some artificial constraint.
And I think that's a good thing, just not how Ahrens described Zettelkasten.
Yes that is fair, I adjusted and simplified the system for my usage. I didn't include any of the note "phases" / transitions, so e.g. no fleeting notes.
Systems like these made sense in the pre-AI era, where things needed to be organized at the outset to be useful later.
With AI, there's nothing stopping you from dumping a huge pile of information into a single folder and telling an AI what you want to make with it that day.
Except that note-taking systems are meant to help you organize your own mind and understand the world better. Offloading tasks to AI won't help you with that.
Most people set up a Zettelkasten Obsidian system, but abandon it by month three. The method itself works. The problem is that most guides stop at day one and don’t address what comes after.
We’ll focus on both: how to set it up, and how to keep it running over time with the right habits and AI support.
What the Zettelkasten method actually is (and what it isn’t)
The Zettelkasten method (German for “slip box”) was popularized by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Over roughly 40 years, he created around 90,000 handwritten notes and used them to produce some 600 publications, including about 60 books.
He referred to his Zettelkasten as his “second memory” and credited it as a key part of his output.
Originally, the method was built for researchers drowning in information. People who needed to read, process, and connect vast amounts of source material.
Today, AI has created a new kind of knowledge problem.
Large language models can’t do much with raw notes or scattered documents. LLMs work better with structured, clearly defined pieces of information that can be referenced and combined.
The Zettelkasten format maps almost perfectly onto how AI knowledge bases need to be organized:
One idea per unit
Clearly titled
Richly connected
But before you set one up, you need to understand what Zettelkasten actually is. Because most people get it wrong from the start.
How many people actually find utility from a Zettelkasten system?
I just can't bring myself to go to the effort of documenting a thought and adding links/tags unless it is something I predict that I will need sometime in the future and won't just remember. Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information. If I'm linking thoughts together I'm doing it real time in my head, anything else takes me too far out of my thought process.
I can see it if you are a person working in academia or a writer where you may be generating concepts that you want to link together in the future. But as someone that does project type work, I'm following too much of a defined process to see any benefit.
I developed one for a specific personal research topic. Once I answered my question, the initiative petered out.
I've considered starting another based on the idea of getting high off knowledge. I don't see the point as an information store, but as a toy it makes sense; use it spark curiosity, make neat connections, etc.
Definitely not. I really like Obsidian, but organize everything like a book, which gives just enough structure to know where everything goes without thinking about it, and no more.
There’s just not enough there to make into a blog post.
> I just can't bring myself to go to the effort
That's what LLMs are best, actually. Go through all your stuff and painstakingly document, add tags, refer to other documents, etc
> Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information
LLMs can also separate what information was only useful at a specific time vs more perennially useful notes.
The system also feels to me like it would be busywork for most people. I just make notes in a very unorganized way and do some cross-linking. I rely on search for actually finding things, though I feel like I can improve search by using sentence/text embeddings and some vector search.
At the least, Zettelkasten like habit can be helpful.
For me, I don't bookmark a webpage, I'm usually after a sentence or something after.
Highlighting that one sentence or webpage is a habit.
Throwing a tag or two on them isn't as hard when you can call the tags whatever you want.
After that, those topics are one click away, 5-10 years later.
Trying out Zettelkasten, or PARA, Johnny Decimal or some other system, one will work for you. It's less about perfectionism at the start and just improving.
It's also possible to have an AI just organize the folders for you little by little.
It can not be great at first to play around but the more you work at it the more it does become.
It does feel very cultish, with a lot of hand-waving and very little that seems useful. No one has ever answered your question when I've asked it.
They point to Luhmann and his hundreds of academic papers. But I’ve asked two sociology professors about Luhmann and they had never heard of him.
Luhmann left behind 70,000 index cards, published over 70 books and ~400 papers, and his systems theory is still actively applied in sociology, legal theory, and organizational studies. He's required reading at German universities. Your sample size of n=2 is methodologically a little thin – which Luhmann himself would have appreciated, given that he had a particular fondness for pointing out systemic blind spots.
"Two professors hadn't heard of him" is a fascinating epistemological standard. Like me stating: I've also met two cardiologists who didn't know who Rudolf Virchow was. Guess he wasn't that productive either.
Fair enough, I missed the mark that I was intending. Possibly he remains better recognized in Germany than in North America; and it’s admittedly not my field. At the same time, more than once when I’ve posed the question about the utility of ZK, I’ve been pointed only to Luhmann. His academic productivity isn’t in dispute. And seemingly, for him, it was aided by the methodology that is promoted by ZK followers now. But it’s also an n=1 data point. I wonder if the ZK community has identified other productive and impactful academics who are devotees.
As for the last comment: having gone to medical school some decades ago and trained in cardiology, I’m familiar with Virchow. I would be surprised to encounter any physician who hadn’t any familiarity with him. But who knows?!
Do you always write long passive aggressive screeds when you get upset at a point someone else made?
I don't think there's anything passive here - it's a very constructive and valid argument. Are we not here to have a discussion?
I remember doing some research on this topic, and, when I looked for usage patterns for my type of job specifically, I realized that most people were just posting about their workflows learning about... taking notes.
It is too complicated. We just get, save or write something, maybe with some categories, keywords, or tags.
After saving, maybe you need some organization later, but most time they are just there. Most time you search content by categories, keywords, or tags.
I think we need right tools for different requirements.
Yep. I agree. This and other systems like it are for people who obsess over planning on doing work rather than actually doing any.
I have written something similar! Used and improved my Obsidian setup through years of use.
My practical guide on setting up a smart notes / Zettelkasten / atomic notes Vault: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-zettelkasten
Also wrote about how it fits into my overall Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
I built the AS Notes extension for VS Code (https://asnotes.io) partly because I wanted to be able to write my notes with the support of other VS Code extensions, and because of the agent harness options in VS Code (copilot etc). The key thing for easy zettlekasten management is really good wikilink support in markdown. AS Notes supports nested wikilinking and automatic updating in the index on rename etc.
I'm doing a similar system that works through a telegram bot and a self hosted instance
https://github.com/skiwithuge/brainstack
On a different note, the website feels a bit quickly AI generated just made to promote this desktopcommander app?
Edit: Oh, I actually just found the comment from the author here, sounds like AI slop.
Please credit Sönke Ahrens and his 2017 book _How to Take Smart Notes_ for this system.
The credit goes to Luhmann. Ahrens wrote a book about Luhmann's system, but Ahrens' book was more about the practical side of study habits and the nature of knowledge as much as it was about the practical side of actually using a zettelkasten.
I bought Ahrens's book to learn how to take smart notes. It should've been called Why to Take Smart Notes. The book was more about how good and lifechanging it is to use Zettelkasten, which was a bummer because I was already interested enough in the idea to buy a book about it. I was looking for more of a how-to.
I wrote a bit about using Obsidian with bottom-up / smart notes.
My Obsidian Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
All posts about Obsidian: https://bryanhogan.com/tags/obsidian
Maybe this helps?
I'll check it out, thanks!
Edit: Upon a quick scan, this looks more like what I learned as "Linking Your Thinking", which resonates way more with me than a strict Zettelkasten format where you try to arrange notes linearly to match some artificial constraint.
And I think that's a good thing, just not how Ahrens described Zettelkasten.
Yes that is fair, I adjusted and simplified the system for my usage. I didn't include any of the note "phases" / transitions, so e.g. no fleeting notes.
A few chapters in, this is a great how-to book: A System for Writing (Bob Doto)
https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten/
Systems like these made sense in the pre-AI era, where things needed to be organized at the outset to be useful later.
With AI, there's nothing stopping you from dumping a huge pile of information into a single folder and telling an AI what you want to make with it that day.
AI will also just run some query or grep commands against it for the most part and has no magical way of finding connections that a human can’t.
Except that note-taking systems are meant to help you organize your own mind and understand the world better. Offloading tasks to AI won't help you with that.
Most people set up a Zettelkasten Obsidian system, but abandon it by month three. The method itself works. The problem is that most guides stop at day one and don’t address what comes after.
We’ll focus on both: how to set it up, and how to keep it running over time with the right habits and AI support. What the Zettelkasten method actually is (and what it isn’t) The Zettelkasten method (German for “slip box”) was popularized by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Over roughly 40 years, he created around 90,000 handwritten notes and used them to produce some 600 publications, including about 60 books. He referred to his Zettelkasten as his “second memory” and credited it as a key part of his output. Originally, the method was built for researchers drowning in information. People who needed to read, process, and connect vast amounts of source material.
Today, AI has created a new kind of knowledge problem. Large language models can’t do much with raw notes or scattered documents. LLMs work better with structured, clearly defined pieces of information that can be referenced and combined. The Zettelkasten format maps almost perfectly onto how AI knowledge bases need to be organized:
One idea per unit Clearly titled Richly connected
But before you set one up, you need to understand what Zettelkasten actually is. Because most people get it wrong from the start.