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205. A Hands-On Guide To Zettelkasten Notes: Practical Advice from Expert Bob Doto

• William Wadsworth • Episode 205

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Today we’re revisiting the Zettelkasten system for capturing and organising your notes, with esteemed expert Bob Doto. Bob has effectively codified the Zettelkasten methodology, written the excellent go-to primer on the topic, and moderates the popular r/Zettelkasten subreddit community.

So few have thought more about the practical implementation of Zettelkasten than Bob. And today we’re breaking down a lean Zettelkasten workflow for anyone interested in starting the method, but with a particular interest in academic use.

From initial note-taking through to the anatomy of different note types, and with clear steps and live examples, Bob will help you see the value of making connections between your notes, thoughts and ideas.

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Find out more about today’s guest, Bob Doto:

• Discover more resources on his website: https://bobdoto.computer/

• Discover his book, System for Writing: https://geni.us/bobdoto *

• Join in the conversation on the Zettelkasten subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/

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Discover more resources from today’s episode:

• Dive further into the Zettelkasten method with Dr Sönke Ahrens, in episode 199: https://examstudyexpert.com/zettelkasten/ 

• Discover Sönke’s book on Zettelkasten, How to Take Smart Notes: https://geni.us/zettelkasten *

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More episodes you may love:

• For a complementary note-taking system, try episode 165 with Jorge Arango: https://www.buzzsprout.com/267857/episodes/15751448

• Learn how to stop procrastinating and finish your dissertation with Dr Alison Miller in episode 191: https://examstudyexpert.com/alison/

• Tune into a masterclass on faster, better, clearer writing with Dr Alix Hibble in episode 192: https://www.buzzsprout.com/267857/episodes/17261165

• If you’re working on a PhD or doctorate, check out episode 17 featuring tips from Oxbridge PhD students: https://examstudyexpert.com/how-to-survive-a-phd/

• Join a candid, relatable roundtable on PhD experiences with Dr Alix Hibble and Dr Kerri Edinburgh, in episode 124: https://examstudyexpert.com/celebrating-phds/

• For a mindset and productivity classic, join bestselling productivity author Chris Bailey in episode 29: https://examstudyexpert.com/chris-bailey/

• Or discover concentration tactics from world-renowned specialist Professor Stefan van der Stigchel in episode 60: https://examstudyexpert.com/concentration-stefan-van-der-stigchel/

• And finally, discover the motivation to study with rockstar academic Dr Erika Patall in episode 43: https://examstudyexpert.com/erika-patall/

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Podcast edited by Kerri Edinburgh.

* As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases on suggested books. 

Questions? Comments? Requests? Or just want to say "thanks" - send me a text message (I read them all!).

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Experts podcast. I'm your host, William Wadsworth, Study Psychologist, here to help you work smarter, not harder. Today's episode is a juicy and very practical one for anyone working on any kind of academic writing. That could be ranging all the way from a school essay or research project, maybe your college essay or an EPQ here in the UK, as many students take, you know, through to proper kind of big dissertations, term papers, theses, both undergraduate and postgraduate level, even research papers, even whole books. Anything you're writing, anything that contains ideas you've collated from multiple sources and perhaps combined with your own ideas, today's episode is all about a smarter system you can use to help you with that research, idea collation and writing process. So a few weeks back, we welcomed uh Dr. Zunker Arens to the show to introduce us to the fascinating Zettelgasten system for capturing and organizing your notes. Really, Zettelgaston being a kind of a whole end-to-end system for researching, brainstorming, uh, and ultimately producing great writing. If the technique captured your attention, as it did mine, you may be wondering how to get started with it, how to put it into action. Perhaps you've already experimented with it and you've taken some steps, but you have a few questions, you've got a few ideas, you've got a few kind of corners you want to tighten up uh when it comes to your implementation of the principle. And to help us with the practical implementation side of things, uh, as a follow-up to our previous episode with Zunker Arendt, uh, I'm very glad today to welcome the esteemed Bob Darso. You can listen to Zunker's episode before or after you enjoyed this one. You don't have to go back and listen to Zunker's before you take on today's episode. Uh, there's enough context at the front of this episode with Bob that you can dive straight in on this one, even if you haven't caught the previous instalment. Uh, but if you enjoy this episode and you want to find out more about Zettelkaston, uh you probably want to go back and have a look at the Zettelcaston introduction episode with Zunker as well. It's more about the principles, uh, the why, the history. Uh, and then today's episode is okay, great, we're on board, we're excited for the potential of the idea. How do we actually put it into action? How do we execute? There's probably no one better to help us with that question than today's guest, Bob Darso. Bob has been using Zettelcaston in his own writing all his life. He's been a prolific writer all his life. And more recently, he's done a huge amount to codify the methodology and start to teach it to others. Among many things, he is the author of a very popular book called A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Notemaking can help you capture your ideas, think wildly, and write consistently. The book's been really, really popular and is widely regarded as the kind of the go-to primer for the actual knots and bolts mechanics of putting Zettelkasten to work for you. So I'm excited to dive into some of his big ideas today. And he's also the moderator for the uh Zettelkasten subreddit, the largest community for Zettelkasten enthusiasts around the world and a subreddit that's frequented by tens of thousands of students and writers uh worldwide every single month. One small administrative note on this episode. Uh, in recent months, some of you may have already noticed, we've been experimenting with putting out a proper video with me and my interviewee actually on the camera uh out on YouTube. And that's been getting a good reception. So we're gonna continue that as an option for people who like uh what they're seeing and and and like to see who's talking. And uh podcast, of course, is an inherently audio-first medium, and so whether you're listening to the podcast or whether you're watching us on YouTube, it doesn't really kind of make any difference to your to your experience. We are gonna very slightly break that rule today. And at one point, Bob is gonna screen share some actual examples of the techniques he's talking about in action. I thought this was quite a powerful way to bring uh to life uh some of the ideas he's talking about so you can actually see it. I I'm not gonna make a habit of doing this as part of my podcast episodes, uh, but I did want to give us this one-off opportunity to um, you know, particularly as we're kind of relatively new on YouTube, uh, to help perhaps encourage uh a few of you to come over to the YouTube channel and check us out there as well. So I was happy to make an exception to include a little bit of visual content. Uh it's it's relatively brief. It's about one or two minutes out of the entire episode. Uh so it's not a lot, uh, but a nice little Easter egg for those of you who are actually watching the video version, or perhaps might be interested in checking us out uh over on YouTube, prompted by this episode uh in now or in future. So we'll put a link to our YouTube channel in the show notes, or you just search exam study expert in YouTube. Uh we should pop up. We are at Exam Study Experts everywhere, including on YouTube. And so with that little bit of housekeeping out of the way, let's dive right into today's conversation. And uh we're gonna kick straight off. Uh, for those of you who are still wondering, uh particularly if you didn't listen to the episode with Zunker R and as I mentioned, uh, I started by asking Bob just exactly what Zettelkasten is exactly. Here's Bob to explain. What is a Zettelcasten? What are we talking about?

SPEAKER_01:

It's actually a great question because depending on who you ask, you're going to get a variety of different granular and nuanced answers to this question. But I do believe there is a core, at least a very basic definition that we can start with. And a Zettelcastin is essentially a note-taking system comprised of a number of different kinds of notes that have different functions. It is unique in that the structure of this note-taking system is non-hierarchical. That's very key to the Zettelcastin world. And we who use a Zettelcastin are very uh proud and protective of that aspect of the of the practice. Um, and what I mean by that is that typically when you take a note or you take in information that you're going to that you want to save, you know, certainly the way I learned it is you store it in a category folder or topical folder. You know, this is a note about ecology, so I'm going to put it in my ecology folder. A Zettelcastin, as it was practiced and kind of introduced by a social scientist called Nicholas Lumen out of Germany, we don't do that. Instead, we connect ideas across topics. So this idea may come in. I write it down or type it into my note-taking platform, and uh it may have to do with ecology, but it may also have to do with economics. It may also have to do with religion. Um, it may also have to do with farming, agriculture, immigration. To whatever extent you can make a case, you would connect this idea to other ideas that inform it. And as you can see, we're already kind of like jumping into the kind of minutia of the practice, but it's important because that non-hierarchical way of understanding information or at least organizing or disorganizing information is really key. Um, but at its heart, it's a note-taking practice that allows you to do this, right? And we have, you can store it uh physically, like with physical note cards in kind of card catalog form, or you can use one of the many different digital platforms uh that allow you to link files back and forth. So that's the that's the basics. And then from there, we get into the weeds very quickly. But maybe that isn't basic enough. You tell me.

SPEAKER_00:

We will get into those weeds very shortly. I'm sure. I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01:

It's hard not to.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's what we're here to do. We love weeds. We love weeds. So you you know you you've been teaching Death Class and for a while now, Bob. I was just curious, but by way of a bit of context, you know, what's what's been your experience of using it, first of all? And then particularly uh in more recent years, you know, your kind of experience sort of teaching others. And you know, I'm particularly interested in kind of the interest you might have had from people in academia, so maybe using the strategy um for help with research projects or dissertations, that kind of thing. Yeah, how how have those sorts of use cases uh found it from you know from the kind of teaching work you've you've been doing?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. I mean, I I've been a writer since I was a kid. I started putting out my writing into the world when I was in my early teens. Uh I used to play in bands and stuff out of New Jersey, and uh there was a very popular, uh, like a very um vibrant zine culture. We call them zines. It's like handmade magazines, basically. And um, I was writing from early age, making those little magazines. My mom would photocopy them at her job, which was fascinating. I couldn't even believe you could do that, and I would staple them and send them out. And I had been writing for so decades when I came across Zettlecastin. And my system, I put it that in quotes, for writing was just something I did never really thought about. I just wrote and I figured out how to do it every time I did it, right? I almost like reinvented the wheel every time I went to write something. And when I came across Zettelcastin about six or seven years ago now, it really brought things into focus for me, brought the practice of writing into focus. On a very basic level, it gave me a place to store my ideas. So as ideas would come in for different projects, I had I now had a place to put them. Because in the past, I would just kind of think, well, I'm writing about this, I'll just type this quickly into this file, this note file, this manuscript I'm working on, or whatever the case may be. And then forget about it usually. With Zettelcastin, it allows me to forget about it, but not feel stressed about that. Um, because when I bring when you bring new ideas into the Zettelcaston, you're relating them to other ideas, so they're always findable and searchable. And it made it so that the ideas that I was coming across, either in books or in the world or just my own thoughts, um they kind of had a context, right? So when I was talking before about this like, you know, so-called hypothetical ecology note, when I would have, I would have the idea, now I knew to write it down, so to capture the idea somewhere uh in a note. And it immediately gave me an opportunity to relate this idea to something else. And as a writer, that's incredibly important, incredibly helpful, because it means you're sort of automatically generating more ideas. You're generating copy, the actual physical writing, um, but you're just starting to see your ideas come to fruition because they're starting to relate to other ideas, which is what writing is essentially, right? You're bringing ideas, sometimes disparate, sometimes complementary, into a single place and trying to work out a way to make sense of this. And a Zettelcastin really helped me do that. I I studied creative writing both in undergrad and in graduate school, so poetry mainly, but also different forms of kind of more experimental writing. And the Zettelcaston, in its like kind of nebulous, networky kind of way, really, really leans into that or can help a writer lean into that. But when I teach it, I'm not just teaching weird punk rock creative writers. You know, I'm teaching other kinds of people, academics who can also be weird punk rock creative writers, but maybe people who aren't interested in experimental writing or seeing how three very disparate ideas connect. Maybe they have a particular project they're working on there and if they're doing their PhD or in graduate school, that's almost always the case. In fact, it is the case. That's the point, right? So for them, I talk about Zettelkasten uh in a few different ways. Uh and for them, I often have to talk more about project-based writing, right? So as ideas come in, yes, you want to see how they relate in these ways you didn't expect, but you've got a project you're working on that may be a one-year project. It may be if you're younger, just to get to the end of the term, maybe a shorter paper or even exam. And if you're doing PhD work, then of course we're talking years, right? Um and so with a Zettelcastin, for them, yes, we're bringing ideas into this kind of networky space, but we're also finding ways to really build on our ideas with a very specific trajectory going forward.

SPEAKER_00:

Really, really interesting. I'm curious, what sort of feedback have you had from people using Zetelcastin in academia? How have they found it? You know, have they liked it? What has it kind of been able to unlock for them? What are some of the response you've had from people who've adopted it?

SPEAKER_01:

The response I get across the board is that it's somewhat counterintuitive. There's a bit of a learning curve or really an unlearning curve, uh, which has to do with this, you know, bottom-up. We call it bottom-up versus top-down organization, right? So the top-down, again, going back to what I've said earlier, that's this kind of category thinking. Here's an idea about this, it belongs in this category. And then we so we try to teach and emphasize this idea of bottom-up. So connecting ideas at the level of the idea, right? An idea can speak to many different topics. That's a learning curve or an unlearning curve that uh goes across academic, non-academic, poetry, whatever. Um, some understand that or take to that more quickly than others. But with academics, you know, writing, I emphasize writing because academics are almost always required to produce something in writing form. Writing is inevitably top-down. At some point, you are you have a topic, you want to write about it, you need to find ideas that fit that topic. So with Zettelcastin and with academics, I have to teach both, right? I have to introduce them to what's called the main compartment of the Zettelcastin, which is where all these single idea notes uh find themselves. It's where they're networked, is where all your kind of connections are making, regardless of the projects you're working on. But then I have to show how that works with the more top-down approach, which is here's the topic I want to explore. Here's the notes I have on that topic in this main compartment. I'm going to bring them over here into this new file or this new document or wherever you're working. And then we start talking about structuring our ideas, structuring our arguments, structuring or building concepts, etc. So with academics who have a very typically clear agenda of what they need to do, we need to work with this very unique note-taking system in a specific way that helps them, right? And that means uh focusing on outlines and development of ideas and uh structuring of ideas. They can do it. It just, you know, it takes a minute to uh get all those points across.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm curious you you use the term unlearning quite quite specifically there. So what what are some of the things that we're I mean, you hinted at it, but I was just curious. So what are some of the big things that we're trying to unlearn, like habits we're trying to break? Why do you choose that term?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, I use it and I talk about it because it's very strong, you know, with a lot of people, and it was certainly strong for me. When I first read Sankey's book, who you who you interviewed recently, um, which is kind of the gateway for many people uh with Zettel Cast and is coming to his book, How to Take Smart Notes. Uh if you look inside that book, you'll see in the margins, but where do the notes go? So there's no folders, like there's all these questions like where what's happening? What is this? You know, to his credit. I and I I have found that a lot of people, certainly at the very beginning, um, have that experience. So you're the you're kind of unlearning this idea of where do things go? You know, uh I I see this question, I so I run or moderate a uh Zettelcast and subreddit. That's something like 33,000 people at this point. It's large. And you see the same questions come up time and time again. And one of them is where do things go? You know, what where should I put this note kind of thing? What should this note connect to? And they're inevitably asking about what topic. There, they come, they say, I have this note, it speaks to so many different topics, which one should I put it under? And then we all come in, we rush into the comments and say, Don't, right? You want to let the don't put the note in a folder that's a topic, put the note in the main compartment and connect it to where you think it would inform, other ideas it would inform. And then from there you you start pulling and working with those connections to develop something more presentable, so to speak, right? Something more structured for yourself or for your readers. But yeah, that unlearning, it's it's very knee-jerk to for a lot of people to want to create a lot of folders that have a lot of topics. You know, start with you know, the academic disciplines, you know, or something like that, and and start, you know, collecting ideas and putting them in there rather than connecting them at at this more beneath level.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I wonder if we could maybe just walk through the the journey almost step by step. I know and I know the steps it's not necessarily linear and there's there's kind of backflow and feedback loops, and and I'm sure we can we can mention that. But you know, looking at uh looking at the way you you kind of set out your your excellent primer on on kind of putting Zettelcaston into action. You sort of talk about the process of sort of we might start with the fleeting notes, transfer to main notes, then ideas, high-level views, and then finally the writing. Can you maybe just give us an overview of the steps in that process, and then maybe we can start to get into some of the detail in specific steps. But maybe if we just start with that overview.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. The broad strokes may even sound similar to any other note-taking system. You have an idea, you write it down, right? You have an idea, you write it down so you don't forget it. That's the so-called fleeting note. Um, you're doing something and an idea comes to mind that you don't want to forget, you write it down somewhere. The difference between working with a Zettelcast and really any person what's called a personal knowledge management system, but Zettelcast in in particular, the difference is that we don't stop there. In the past, I would have written that down. It would have gone on the counter somewhere or in a folder, who knows where it would have gone, and then hopefully I stumbled upon it. This is, you know, if you carry a notebook around, um, which I did for years and still do to some degree. I have shelves of them. It's all just thoughts, you know. I have this thought, I have this thought, and hopefully I stumble upon it. With a Zettel casting, we say, okay, that that's not the end of that note's lifespan. We're going to take that fleeting note, take the idea in that fleeting note more so, and put it into something that's a different container, what I call a main note. Some people could just call it a Zettle. Uh this is a note that is now going to be integrated into the network of the system. That note will have often, you know, it's it's really user's choice, but but for the most part, you're going to see a title. You're going to see the body of the note, which is kind of the main idea. You'll see a link to something else, right? So it's saying, hey, check out this other note. You'll give a reason why. So you'll say, this idea relates to this for this reason. And you'll put, if you're using the digital platform, you will put the link to that other note there, that other idea there. So it's clickable. You open this note, and there's links to other notes telling you why you might want to look at them. In a physical Zettel Casin, which a lot of people are fond of, you're using, you know, note cards. I have a bunch here, but I have something balancing on them right now. Uh, but they're note cards, you know, index cards. And you would just write, so your notes at that with a physical Zettel Castin, you would have to have some sort of alphanumeric identification, and you would refer to it and say, hey, check out this other note on da da da da. So the flow is you have ideas, you take them, you write them down, and then you go back, you bring them into your main note compartment. So you make the note a little more presentable and a little more usable. And from there, you pull those notes as you need or as your interests heighten. You pull those notes into some other area to work on them, to explore the connections a little more deeply, to start your rough draft of your writing. That's one workflow. The other workflow is very similar, only it starts with media. So what's Sanke refers to as a literature note, uh what I call a reference note, but they're basically notes you take while engaging with some form of media. So, whereas before, it's just kind of an idea you have as you're walking the dog. The uh literature note or the reference note is a note you take while, for our purposes, engaging in reading, right? You're reading a book, and as you read, you say, page 21, the author talks about this. This is interesting to me for this reason. Page 24, this, page 36, this. And you're kind of creating a little personal index. Just like with the fleeting note, we don't leave it as that. We would then go back to this reference or literature note and say, you know what, these four ideas are still really interesting to me. I'm gonna turn those, each of those, into their own main note. And then we start that process. The networking, the linking. As ideas and uh connections start to get more interesting to us. So I often say they have legs they want to move or they want to be written about. Then we take them into some other document and start writing or exploring the connections more deeply.

SPEAKER_00:

That's really cool. So the first process is either capturing these, these, these fleeting notes as as we call them. So that's that might be just an idea, well, walking the dog, as you as you're saying, um, uh a thought related to to your project. And we combine that with with the reference notes or the kind of the media notes, the things that we've uh been making a note of as we're engaging with with other people's work, you know, in an academic context, especially doing reading, you know, uh books, articles, papers, etc. Uh one of the little details that I quite liked about the kind of the way the way you teach you talk about the the intray is almost like this this kind of uh staging ground between the the fleeting notes and the the the literature notes, the things that you're capturing, your ideas and and what from what you've been reading, and then you it kind of goes into the intray uh and that kind of helps you stay on top of that transfer from the the the kind of notes as you're capturing them from your your ideas and and your reading uh and and kind of bridges that gap between writing those up a little bit more formally, maybe as as the main notes. Um maybe just just talk to us a little bit about the the role of the intray and how that works.

SPEAKER_01:

So in the book I call it an inbox, which I'm assuming is the same as your intray. No, that's that's fine. Is that the term in England? Intray?

SPEAKER_00:

Um Well, we talk about an intray for I guess the reason I'd got confused in my head between the terms is uh I'd get I'd think of an inbox in my I have an inbox on my computer for my emails. Uh I have a physical intray behind me for bits of paper coming in. So I suppose if we're in a paper Zettel custom uh framework, I'd I'd kind of probably naturally just sprung to thinking of in trays rather than inboxes. But uh similar kind of idea, I'm sure. All the same thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they are they are all terms work here, it sounds like. Um yeah, intray, inbox. We're looking like what this is particular the inbox or the in tray is is particular to fleeting notes. And that's because fleeting notes are just notes. They're notes you've been taking, as I described in the book. They're the notes you've been taking your entire life before you had any interest in Zettelkast and walk the dog, turn off the lights, uh, surveillance capitalism is a problem, you know, any level of thinking, right, that you just need to capture because you want to remember it, is a considered a fleeting note. Only those fleeting notes that are ideas, useful for your thinking, useful for your writing, useful for whatever writing project you're working on, your academics, whatever the case may be. Only those make it across the threshold, so to speak, and into the Zenelcast. And an inbox is just basically a staging ground, a place or a waiting room, some people refer to it, uh, for triage. You I hear these terms now and again. Waiting room for triage, where you triage your notes. You go through your your the notes you've been capturing throughout the day or the week whenever you get to them and say, okay, what of these are useful for my Zettelcast and what of these have I were tasks maybe that I did already and don't need to be here anymore? And you kind of just make decisions, right? You make decisions on the fly where you just look at these notes and say, well, this is useful. This could be useful for this writing, or this is this reminds me of this other note I already have. And you bring them into the Zettelcastin as main notes, right? You transform them into uh something more useful. Um with a literature note, this is a little different. Literature notes live in your Zettel cast. I call them or I refer to them often as uh personal indexes of the books you read. So where your the books you read have an index in the back that's created by the publisher or the author. There's also your own index, you know, the the things that are particular to you that may be found in the index and may not be found in the index. Regardless, these are the things that were interesting to you as you were reading, reading the book. And we tend to keep those in their own compartment, a literature note or a reference note compartment. Some people call them a bibliographic note, whatever your title, it's the same thing. And you keep them there and it's a it's a reference back to what you read and what you found interesting. My reference notes uh tend to have all the ideas that I found interesting and then a link to the notes that they became. Right? So each of those ideas, as I get to them, turns into its own main note, and I put a link there so I can find it quite easily.

SPEAKER_00:

So we we've sort of explored a little bit, you know, capturing those I those ideas, the fleety notes, the the intro. You you're talking there about you know all reference notes go go straight into your zettel, Castin. Um just give us a little bit more colour, maybe. So we're going through our reading. We're going through our reading. What are the sorts of things we're capturing? What are the sorts of things we're writing down? There's a really interesting bit in your book you talk about like um you know how you might use a margin and how you might be used to kind of shotting things in margins and and how that can kind of interplay with the the new ideas in Zettlecast. And yeah, just talk us. So we we're engaging with a book. Like what are some of the nuts and bolts of of of kind of what we might be writing, how we might be writing it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. There's a few ways. I mean, people engage with books. Uh it's a very personal thing, I'll say. For me, I really like to read hard copy and I really like to write in my books. I read with a pen in hand. So I'm often creating marginalia, notes in the margins, underlining things, circling, drawing arrows, the whole bit. Um, for other people, they just go right to a literature note. They have a piece of paper or their computer open while they're reading. And as things they come across seem interesting, they'll kind of go right there. But for me, I like to start with marginalia. So I'm reading this is this is what I like talking about because there is a difference here between the academic approach or the academic context for Zettel Kasten and me, right? I get to write about kind of whatever I want at this point. I'm I'm out of school. Um, so I have a little more freedom, maybe, when it comes to reading. I'm I'm reading a book. It may be very important for a book I'm working on or an article I'm working on. But as I'm doing that, I'm also underlining lots of things, things that just strike my interest. As I do that, or or after I do that, I'll go back and say, let me let me pull this into a literature note or a reference note. So I go to page 22 and I I first I bring up my literature note, whether it's paper or digital, and I say, page 22, the author said this, this reminds me of this. And just like I said before, and I just kind of start, how would you say, like transcribing essentially? I'm transcribing my marginalia into a literature note. What that does is it allows me to have something very convenient to come back to. So when I come back to how to take smart notes, or I'm looking at books on my shelf right now, uh uh biblical literalism, you know, by John Shelby Spong. Whatever the case may be, if I have a literature note for that, I can pull it out or pull it up on my computer and just see everything that caught my attention and for what reason. Now, for someone who's kind of if you're getting your PhD, and I know a lot of people who have either had their gotten their PhD or unfortunately in the midst of Of it as they would describe it, finding it very stressful. I'm thinking of a few people off the top of my head right now. Um, you know, they're reading other stuff, but they're reading other stuff kind of as like a palate cleanser. You know, they they're kind of in the grind of their research. And when that's the case, they're really kind of project focused. They're reading lots and lots of literature for very specific reasons. But the process ultimately is the same, right? They underline, they do whatever mechanisms they've been taught or they developed on their own to highlight or make note of things in books. And if they were to use a Zettelcastin, which the people I'm thinking of don't, uh, I would instruct them to then bring that information into a literature note so it's very retrievable, right? It's you have it's high accessibility when you when you use a literature note. Um and then from there, down the down the line, just like we've been talking about, over time, bringing those notes into your main note compartment.

SPEAKER_00:

Can you give us any examples of what's a good not even a good um what a sort of main note might look like? So, you know, in terms of what kind of goes into like what it would look like when it's there. So we could have got a a bit of a picture of what the end product well not the end product, but the the kind of the the main body of your your note system might might be comprised of, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to share my screen. So can you see this note, essentially, is what it is here. Um Systems should work for you and not against you. Yeah, this is essentially a main note. Uh I mean it is a main note. It has a title, Systems Should Work for You and Not Against You. So this idea comes from, in fact, it comes from Sankey Ahrens, um, or at least it's a take on something Sankey Ahrens was writing about in his book. Um, and what you see here, you have the title at the top, you have the the main idea here, you have a couple of tags, which are useful or not useful. It really depends if you like using tags. Um, there's a quote. So where this note, what what inspired the the idea that I that I have there. And then you have um a link back to something else, and you have a link out to something else. So the link here uh refers back to another note, so a note that came before this one. Um and down here is another note that sort of takes this idea and brings it into a different context. So when I took this idea or when I came across this idea from Sankey Aaron's, I had an idea, had a thought. I related it to something that was sort of immediate, top of mind. And then I gave it another pass and thought, does this relate to something else? And there's a link here to another note that has to do with writing. So it's taking this idea from Sankey Aaron's and referring to something else, essentially.

SPEAKER_00:

How important is this element of linkage then? Because it seems like quite a key part of the whole system.

SPEAKER_01:

It is literally the system in a way. It is it is linking is a digital mechanism. Connectivity is really what we're looking for, or relationships. So Nicholas Lumen talks about the idea that the value of an idea comes not from the idea itself, but comes from its relationship to other ideas. That's where we determine the value of an idea. We we determine the value of an idea by the context we put it in. The example I always use is thou shall not kill, right? You hear this, you probably have a sense of where it comes from, but if all you had was just that statement, thou shall not kill, that's fine, right? Until you leave the house and you go to the a restaurant and you sit down to order something, and maybe you're not a vegetarian and you think, well, I'm gonna order a burger. I didn't kill it. Uh, but am I participating in that? Is that something I need to think about? Well, sort of I am, but I'm not. So where does thou shalt not kill? How does it function here, right? Almost immediately, any idea, no matter how great it is, it needs other ideas to work with. It needs context, it needs situations. And with a Zettelcast, and that's kind of the whole thing, right? We bring an idea in and we say, how does this idea, what's the value of this idea in this context? Right. So the note I showed just a few moments ago about um, you know, systems should support you, right, rather than work against you. Uh that's great. Sure, that makes sense. I understand kind of what that means, but it needs more, right? So then I relate it to another idea that's kind of in the same vein. And say, and all of a sudden that idea about systems should support you starts to build out. I start to get a better understanding of what that context or the value of that context. But it's not the only context that that idea can be used. So I link to something else and I say, this idea could also inform this whole other train of thought. And now the value shifts. Right. So that's, you know, if you never wrote a single thing, if you used a Zettel cast and but never wrote a single thing, the linking and the connections are what hold it all together. Right. It's the basis, it's the it's the whole reason why we don't what's sometimes called silo information into their topics. We want this cross-pollination.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and that's often where interesting juice and insight comes from, isn't it? That that cross-pollination effect.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

So I wonder if there's a way to maybe just give us a flavor of the the we've got we've maybe got a sense of kind of capturing these notes, capturing the the kind of inflow in the first place. Uh we've we've had a little bit of flavor of of organizing, and I'm conscious there's a whole load of detail we might get into on like organizing and linking strategy, um, which which may not make for the best podcast content in the world. I don't know, maybe there is something we should talk about, but I'm always conscious to uh to draw the uh to get the balance right uh between sort of being accessible and and and useful. Um but I'm certainly interested in hearing more about the end the end game. So when we come to set pen to paper or finger to keyboard, um, as is increasingly the case for most of us today, and we've opened up that blank word document or WordPress or your choice, how do we take what we've been working so hard to capture and organize in our Zettelkasten and use that ultimately to produce interesting writing?

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Well, one of the great things about Zettelkasten, and again, this goes for other note-taking systems as well, that kind of maybe were built off of this or have Zettelcastin in back of mind, is that you never have to start with a blank page. That if nothing else, for writers especially, that is that's all you like, that's the whole thing, right? If you can find a system where you don't start with a blank page, that is highly coveted. And Zettelcastin and other personal knowledge management systems, uh that that that's one of their major strong suits, right? So you have this cache, this network, this archive of information that's already been linking. You've been pulling in notes. Maybe you haven't even thought of the project you're working on. And all along you've been pulling in notes. Say, you know what, it reminds me of this. I'm gonna establish this connection, I'm gonna state why. And then you forget about it, you close your settle cast and go about your day. And then next day you do more and you're just sort of building it out. And at some point you say, you know what? There's I've collected a lot of notes that are kind of dealing with this one topic or this one area of study that I'm interested in. Let's see what I have. And you pull those notes out. If it's physical, you like physically pull them out, and then you'll rewrite them somewhere else, just as you would with any other paper, right? You take notes somehow, right? Everyone's taking some form of notes, whether it's just marginalia or just on note cards and not doing any linking. But at some point you gather what you have and you look and see, what do I got here? Right? What's in what do I have? What do I need? Right. And with the Zettel Caston, it's really no different. The only difference is that we've already been establishing relationships between the ideas by the time we start to write. So when I pull the ideas into a new writing document, uh, some of those relationships, those relationships are there. I just need to now get into them more explicitly. I'll give you another visual example so you can sort of see here. So this is a very short literature note, again, what I call a reference note. The book title is You Are What You Read, a Practical Guide to Reading Well. I found one idea that I wanted to really save from this book. I captured the quote here. You can see the page number. So before I describe there's a page number, there's links out. Here's the page number. It came from page 16. This is a definition that Diani gives for deconstructivism or the deconstructive criticism or deconstruction, as we call it. So there's a quote here. There's relevance. I have a column I often list as relevance or connection or something like that. Um, and it just gives me a quick sense of like, why did I even capture this? And then there's the note that it became, right? So when I hover over it, you can actually see that note. If I were to click on it, this is another main note. So very similar to what I showed before, right? You have your um title, you have your main idea, which in this case is the title. There was not nothing more I needed to say about it in this case. So I titled it the main idea it was. Here's the quote, here's a link to another note that it relates to, and I give, you could see in this white text here is context. Why am I establishing this relationship? When I have enough of these, um, I create either a I go right towards writing. I am a writer, I'm always writing, so I often jump right into the rough draft of writing, or I create something called a structure note. So a structure note looks very much or can and often does, look very much like a rough draft of an article or a rough draft of an outline for something larger. The SN here just means structure note. So it's just telling me that's what this note is. Meaning is derived from context. So I've been talking a lot about context. Context is a big part of the research. I, the, the topic that I research quite often is context and relevance, because I deal with ideas and I want to help people understand why some ideas are more relevant than others. Um, so I write and think a lot about context. So this is a con uh structure note on context. And if you if I scroll through it, you'll see these blue, this blue type here. This blue type is links to other notes in my Zettel class. And so if I clicked on this, it would take me back to the main note that I was referring to just a moment ago, or a main note. Here's another one here, there's another one here, there's another one here, here. And you can see all these blue links are just uh links to main notes. So what I've done is essentially bring these links into this document, and then I open them up. I start unpacking them. Okay, what's the idea in this note? What's the quote that made the idea, you know, gave me the idea? And I start writing about, adding copy, the connections. What's really going on here? What am I actually trying to say? Yes, these connections are interesting, but are they interesting to anyone else? Do I need to give history? Do I need to give examples that the reader would better help the reader better understand? Another example. Structure note for Luis Rosenblatt. She's a um reader response theorist. She actually is part of transactional theorist, if anyone's interested in those sort of things. She has these ideas about afferent and aesthetic reading. Structure note. There's some subheadings here, there's notes, links to notes. You can see the white text is me talking about how these ideas relate to one another. And basically, I'm just building out or establishing or deepening my understanding of the ways in which these ideas relate. Right? Over time, if I wanted to write about this, I would do that, right? I would simply start taking this copy, this text matter, and build it into something that looks a lot more like writing. Here's another structure note. Here's a structure note where I haven't done any of the sort of establishing of relationships in more detail yet, right? So this is a structure note. This is a structure note. This is a structure note that I've had an opportunity to kind of expand on the connections. This is a structure note where all I did was bring the ideas in, sort of organize them how I think they would go together, but I've done nothing else, right? So this is still in somewhat of infancy, right? Taken over here, you've seen a zillion of these, I'm sure. These are just writing drafts, right? So it doesn't look much different than a structure note, only far fewer links, right? The links are now gone. Uh the quotes are there, maybe because I want to show the direct quote or want to represent the direct quote from the author I'm writing about. And it's an article, or it's the the beginnings of an article. Another one similar, right? You can see they're sort of taking the form of, or the form of the article is built off of what the structure note looks like, right? In the structure note, I start to organize things according to subheadings, and in the final product, I do that even more so, but make it a little more clear. So if I had to really nice examples, thank you. Yeah. If I had to just describe it, the the whole flow, ideas come to mind, fleeting note, put them into main notes. Ideas while I'm reading, capture them in a reference note, translate, transfer them or transcribe them into a main note. As ideas start to connections start to build up, take those connections, bring them into a structure note, start to organize them, start to unpack them, get into it. That can take days, months, years. You know, I have structure notes in here that are years old, right? I just started and never finished them, whatever. Start working on them. And then being a writer, I'm gonna eventually turn that into writing someday. So then I start taking those links out, just leaving the copy and creating something that's like an object, right? I fully believe the writing reproduces an object. It has aesthetic qualities, this has intellectual qualities. I create the object, right? That's where the artistry comes in. And then you're done. And then rinse and repeat over and over again for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, hopefully not too many over and overs if it's a PhD feature. Oh, yeah, it's PhD. Yeah, once it's those are really nice examples. And and it it really illustrates what you were talking about earlier. You know, you're not starting with that blank page, you know, you've got some really nice foundation stones to to kind of drop into place and and then you can kind of flesh out the context and the links and the the examples, etc. Uh, in between and around that to turn it into something that's that's gonna kind of flow flow really nicely. Um Exactly. Yeah. Amazing. What is there anything that you feel would be, you know, from from all the things that people ask you over the years, like is there anything you feel would be particularly helpful to mention that we we kind of haven't covered already? I mean, I know there's a ton of detail around all of this, but is there anything that particularly sticks out in your head as being an important kind of point that you think people might benefit from hearing that we haven't touched on yet?

SPEAKER_01:

I can. And it it's more of a meta statement, which is the Zettel casting can often be presented and it can sometimes look very complicated. There's all these different notes and they go here and they go there. And there is some truth to that. But in reality, it's actually a quite simple, almost minimalist system. I'm using that term very loosely. Once you have a sense of how these notes function, you never think about that again. Or you don't have to I think about it all the time because I have to teach people. But it really becomes second nature, right? Fleeting notes. There's nothing special. They're just the same notes you've always taken. The only thing different is that we just turn them into these main notes. And when you're ready to write, or when ideas, you know, you're kind of pouring out of your brain and your ears, you're just like, I have to express this or I have to unpack these relationships. You pull from it, just as you would any other matter, you know, any other material, textual material. So for people who are watching this or people who are hearing about Zettelkasten and they're seeing, you know, pleading notes, reference notes, structure notes, hub notes, indexes, it it's not as uh complex as it sometimes comes across. It's actually quite simple and quite natural feeling. The the stages that I that I sh sort of laid out for you, they're really quite natural, right? You have an idea, you capture it, you put it somewhere, you make relationships and you write about them, right? Um, or you think and write about them. Uh no different. It just gives a a bit of form to something we're already doing, right? We're already doing that, especially if you're in academia or especially if you're a writer or someone who just loves thinking and working out problems. You're already doing this. A Zettelkasten gives it some shape.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No, it's a really nice comment. Thank you. Um, and as I as I said towards the end of we're recording this a few weeks after I had a conversation with with Zunker, you you mentioned his work a couple of times. Um, you know, for me personally, I'm I'm still really fascinated with the idea of this system. I I haven't dive I haven't dived into it uh yet, partly because my time for for research and writing has been been quite limited the last few weeks. But as I do, I'm I'm really excited to give it a well. I think I I think it should be uh I can exactly see how it works, I can see the benefits people get from it. And uh you know, I'd love to uh love to love to get started. So I'm I'm I'm keen to give it a give it a go. And and dear listener, uh I will I will report back on how I get on with it in due course. For now though.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll say I will help you. I'm giving my accountability on record. If you have questions when you're starting, I would be happy to sit with you and just go through it and get you started.

SPEAKER_00:

Very kind. Or I'll I'll pop up in the uh the subreddit and be your next question ask us. Um of those questions are like, whoa, that's a pretty pretty high level. And I like look at the kind of standard of questions people are asking and they think, oh yeah, blame me, right. I'm I'm very much a beginner here.

SPEAKER_01:

We take those two.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, look, thank you so much uh for for for today, boy. It's been such such a pleasure to chat. And I and I hope it's been been helpful to people listening. Um I'm sure many of us will have got got a lot out of it. So thank you once again. Um if we're inspired to to to learn more, kind of curious to find more, tell us where we can learn a little bit more about you, your your work, uh subreddit, maybe you know, where would we where would you signpost people to look next?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. I would suggest you look here. This is the book I wrote. It's called A System for Writing. The reason I bring that up, not just to promote it, it's that I wrote it for people who really want to know what to do. Um I s I see so many repeat questions, and for years I saw so many repeat questions with so many different answers and things that were misleading, and I really, really wanted to just give some give people a book that they can say, this is where you can start. Where you take it is completely up to you. Um so if you're interested in Zettelkasten, I I recommend the book. It's the book I wish I had when when I was starting out, in addition to Sankey's book. Um if you want to learn more about my teaching, uh I do have a website, as everyone should apparently these days. Uh it's bob dot o b-o-b-o-to- dot computer. Uh, that is my website. I am, of course, on the uh Zettelcastin subreddit, which is R slash Zettelcasten on Reddit. I am there more hours than I wish to admit on this podcast. Um full-time job. Uh and I lurk. I lurk. I love, I absolutely love this topic. I love talking about it. Um, and people can email me. You know, my my information is out there. You can contact me through the website. And if you have a question, I can point you in hopefully a useful direction.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. And yeah, I've I've really been enjoying the the book. It's really well put together, really well structured. So I'd add my endorsement to that too. Uh we'll put all those links in the show notes for people as always, so you can uh follow up as you wish. Uh and I just wanted to say once again, Bob Dodo, thank you so much once again uh for joining us today. And uh we'll look forward to catching up soon. Same. Thanks for having me. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thanks again to the brilliant Bob Dartho for breaking that down for us. And if you're going to try Zettelcaston, I would definitely recommend grabbing yourself a copy of Bob's book, as he mentioned. Uh perhaps also take a copy of Zunka Aren's How to Take Smart Notes as well. Um, both really excellent books and often recommended together. If you could only get one out of the two, then uh it would be remiss not to recommend Bob's after today's episode, particularly uh on the kind of the more practical side, uh, but many people take a copy of both, um, and and really helpful works to keep on your desk as a reference as you're getting started. And we'll put the link to both of those books down in the show notes for you today. Let me wrap up today with a little suggestion, a bit of signposting to further listening you may be interested in, particularly if you've enjoyed today's episode. Uh so my recommendations today are particularly aimed at anyone that is involved in an academic research or writing project of some form, particularly if you've only found the podcast relatively recently, uh, perhaps through Bob's or Zunker's episode. I know some members of the global saddlecastling community have found us recently through these episodes. A very warm welcome to you. It's great to have you here. Uh, if you are, as I say, involved in academic research or doing a big piece of academic writing of some kind, um, we do a lot of content on exam prep as part of the podcast, uh, but we have covered a fair bit on academic writing and research over the years as well. Uh, you might in particular like to check out uh the following episodes. I'm gonna signpost these uh now. I'll also put the links in the show notes uh for you. So um episode 165, we met uh George Arango, uh, who is talking about his book, Building Your Note Making System. Uh, George is another very well-known voice in the world of note making, uh, and he offers some uh kind of different perspectives on how to think about note making, capturing your notes, organizing your ideas. A lot of it is quite comparable and even compatible uh with some of the Zethelkasten framework too. So that could be another really interesting episode on note making. Um, episode 191, stop procrastinating and finish your dissertation slash essay uh with Dr. Alison Miller. Uh, for those of you that don't know Alison, she runs the Academic Writers Space, a really amazing community uh for academic writers of all kinds uh around the world, uh, focused around co-working sessions, an amazing, amazing community. She's not sponsoring or anything. I just think she does amazing work. Um and she gave a brilliant episode as well. Um, you know, she's really absolutely tore the force when it comes to the mindset challenges that so often accompany progressing, big bits of academic writing. Uh, a really practical episode for helping you make progress when you feel the doubt or the overwhelm or the demotivation or the procrastination setting in. Uh, really great episode that was. Um, episode 192 followed it. Um, uh that was on academic writing uh or an academic writing masterclass. So uh, you know, we got our head in the right place to engage with the work, uh, to make meaningful contact with the work, as Dr. Allison so beautifully puts it. Uh episode 192 that followed it is about the nuts and bolts of actually doing really good academic writing uh to make it uh better quality, to be able to produce it faster and to be clearer in getting your points across. And this was with Dr. Alex Hibble. And Dr. Alex is uh our very own in-house academic writing coach here at Exams for the Expert. And she offers one-on-one support uh with students who come to us wanting a little support, a little guidance with academic writing at both undergraduate and also postgraduate level. Um, I help with the exam prep. So if you want to talk about your study strategy and how to prepare for exams, how to do a lot of learning, memorization, uh, I'm the lead coach for that. I'm the only coach for that, it's it's me. Um but the writing piece is not my expertise, which is why Alex is so brilliant and she helps students with that side of things. Um sometimes people have both a bit of writing to do and an exam, in which case they might see both me and Alex. Uh, other times they might just be focused on on the writing and they'll talk to Alex. And Alex, uh her work for exam study expertise is a side gig for her. Uh this is not her day job. Her day job is actually director of studies at Oxford University, where she teaches this stuff for a living to students at one of the world's top universities. So we're very lucky to have her and her expertise on the team. If you are interested in finding out more about the service she offers and how a little bit of one-on-one help with your writing process, breaking down the question, uh, how to really kind of be bold and original in your ideas, how to sort of streamline the whole process, uh if you'd be interested in kind of a conversation with her about that, uh, the link to find out more is examstudyexpert.com forward slash writing. I'll pop that in the show notes as well. And then finally, as we've signposted a couple of times already in this episode, uh, we also spoke to Dr. Zunker Arens, a very appropriate follow-up episode for this one. Uh really, you know, Zunker's kind of regarded perhaps more than anyone else is as kind of the um person that kind of really got the word about Zettel Caston out there. Um you know, many, many people have read his book, this the seminal uh book on how to take smart notes. Um and he gave a really nice introduction to the technique uh back in episode 199, uh, the logic behind it, the history, the benefits, and so much more. So, as I said uh in the introduction, that could be a really good compliment uh to this episode. Um so we'll put all of the links to those episodes and I'll put a few more as well, uh related to kind of PhD top tips uh and a couple of other little goodies as well. So there's a nice little playlist of things that you'll find interesting, I think, if you've got value from today's episode. So check all those out in the show notes. And with that, I wanted to say thank you so much for tuning in today. Whether you're a longtime listener or whether you're relatively new to joining us, it's been such a pleasure to have your company. Uh, and I hope you found it helpful. And I will look forward to seeing you again next week when we will continue our mini-series that I'm doing at the moment, uh a trio of bite-sized tips, uh, installment number two coming up next week, uh, all about how to accelerate your study and actually get your work done faster. So three little tips over three installments, uh, installment number two on its way to you next week. Uh, and it's gonna be a good one, very useful one. I will look forward to seeing you then for that. Uh for now, wishing you every success, as always, in your studies.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that was good, wasn't it? I found myself taking notes. If you need a reminder of anything from today, head to the website for a write up of this episode as well as lots more top notch advice and resources. That's uh examstudyexpert.com. See you next time.