No. 032 • 04/10/2026

Dear readers,

Very little in the way of interesting zettelkasten discourse this week, although this caught my eye:

"My zk is basically only a compendium of facts with no original thoughts in it. So I started reevaluating if ZK is really adequate for what I'm trying to do. What do you think about it? Do you think ZK can be adapted to be more of a "knowledge acquisition" tool? How so? If not, what methods would you suggest?"

We've encountered questions about facts in a zettelkasten before, and whether it's ok or not to have them. This issue seems to stem from a fallacious principle stating: Everything in your zettelkasten should be your own ideas.

For anyone who's wondering about whether they have too many ideas from other people populating their zettelkasten, I'd say this: I wouldn’t worry too much about what’s an original thought or not. You're goal is to be in conversation with information and the thinking of others. It's not about how many original thoughts you have. It's about processing and synthesizing.

So, the question is: Are you doing that? Are you engaging with the material you're encountering, and articulating the thoughts you have about the encounter? If not, start by finding two notes containing information that relates to one another. Link them and state why you’ve done so after the link. Something like:

See [note title link] which provides an interesting way to understand xyz…

This “stating why” is the beginning of the thinking process. It only needs to be a sentence or two. Clearly articulate the relationship. Do this for a few different combinations. If you find any of these combinations speak to each other, you can open up a new note and expand on the reasoning you’ve been giving for the relationships. Bring in the links to the notes, as well as your “stating why” text. If any new ideas come to mind during the process, those can be made into their own notes.

Do this for a while. Bring informational units into individual main notes, engage with the information itself (in relation to other information in your zettelkasten and/or in relation to something else you've come across), connect the notes if the relationship feels worthwhile, stating why you’ve done so. The more you do this, the more you'll have to say, the more notes you'll create, and the more you’ll network will grow—magically filled with more of your own thoughts.

And, that's the best of the week! See ya next week.

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