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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
https://github.com/skiwithuge/brainstack
My Obsidian Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
All posts about Obsidian: https://bryanhogan.com/tags/obsidian
Maybe this helps?
Edit: Oh, I actually just found the comment from the author here, sounds like AI slop.
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.