No. 113 New Feature! The ZIS: Zettelkasten Information Superhighway
No. 001 • 08/29/2025 (ZIS)
No. 113 • 08/29/2025 (THP)
Welcome to a new feature—The ZIS: Zettelkasten Information Superhighway—where I discuss the past week's zettelkasten and zettelkasten-adjacent brain fodder. Why am I doing this?
Since I'm a certified "super-consumer" of these worlds, and since people love to know about them, but don't necessarily love sloshing through the muck, I got to thinking: I should do for you what I'm already doing to myself—consuming and regurgitating what's important in the world of rhizomatic, bottom-up thinking, so you don't have to. Me = Cud.
Put another way.... This newsletter brings you a two- to four-times-a-month digest of the week's zettelkasten and zettelkasten-adjacent discourse with insights as to why the material is important and how is can be applied to your life today. This way you can spend less time figuring out what to do, and more time exploring what to write.
Tell me what you think! (Seriously, I'm curious what you think).
"A dumping ground for ideas"
Ever wonder how I use a zettelkasten to start writing books? The gist can be found in this aptly titled new article, How I Start a Book Project Using a Zettelkasten. A taste:
"The first thing I do when starting a long-form writing project is create a "Notes" file. This "one long file" acts as a sandbox, a place where information, thoughts, title suggestions, rough TOCs, epigrams, good ideas, bad ideas, quotes, concepts, questions, and notes-to-self live together in playful symbiosis. Calling it "a dumping ground for ideas" wouldn't be off-base. It's an active, dynamic file with lots of additions and lots of things moving around. This files tends to get pretty big."
Keep in mind, writing with a zettelkasten is a back-and-forth process. You start with having already thought about both the ideas contained in your zettelkasten and the connections you've made between them. Then, you bring relevant ideas and connections into a writing document. As you do more research (read more, etc) you bring those ideas into your writing document, but also into your zettelkasten. Zettelkasten informing writing. Writing informing zettelkasten. A nice, happy, sexy, symbiotic relationship.
Action you can take: Create a “Notes” file for your next big project. Use it as a dumping ground for ideas, titles, quotes, questions, etc.
The zettelkasten helps writers sorta kinda meet their deadlines
Got a sweet message in my inbox last week. Le excerpt:
"I reached my publishing deadline milestone a couple weeks ago. (By 'reached' I mean I turned in something, I wouldn’t say I met my deadline…but that’s a different topic altogether). In reflecting on the process, I’ve returned to your book. I just wanted to reach out to say a) thank you for writing your book and contributing to the conversation about writing and knowledge management; and b) I appreciate how well-written your book is. In other words, for a book about writing, it’s one hell of a well-written book."
Why am I sharing this (that is aside from patting myself on the back)? The zettelkasten isn't a magic bullet. Writing is a wily beast. It's a process. And, your zettelkasten will be a part of that process. But, there's also a lot that goes into long-form writing that doesn't concern your zettelkasten (i.e., editing, rewrites, beta readers, new research, new copy, etc.). What the zettelkasten does is give you something to work from, to work in, to come back to, to leverage, to dig into when you hit a creative wall. As Luhmann said: It's a communication partner. It ain't your daddy.
Action you can take: If, when feeling stuck, you've already got all the most relevant zettelkasten notes in front of you, go back to the zettelkasten and examine adjacent and seemingly unrelated ideas. See if these upend the stasis. If they don't, set the zettelkasten aside, and read something new on your topic.
Have we finally moved beyond "What's a literature note, and what's it used for?"
I'm psyched to report that the question, "What's a literature note?," along with the usual barrage of ridiculous answers, is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Personally, I've answered the question something like a hundred-plus times, and devoted an entire chapter in my book to help resolve the confusion. I can't even imagine how many other times and ways the question has been answered before I came on the scene. So, it makes me giddy to see people answering "What should I do with my lit notes when I'm finished with them" in such nuanced ways:
nagytimi85 writes:
"My literature notes contain everything I save, copy, highlight, add to the reading, plus the full bibliography. I leave them as they are in my reference folder, and I point back to them from my permanent notes. This way they are also the landing page for backlinks, connecting everything I pulled from them." comment
448899again gives another good one:
"Reference notes contain the bibliographic information needed to cite them as sources, should you need to do that. As u/nagytimi85 suggests, I back link to them from the individual notes. Reference notes also contain links to my daily notes, such as the dates I started and finished reading the source. This can serve for additional context much later, as it allows me to go back in time and see what else I was reading at the time, or find other links to possibly related dated material. comment
Andy76b writes:
I keep them. They could be useful, one day, if I want to revisit the context and the moment in which I developed the ideas. Or useful if I take a second read of a source, comparing the results of two different readings. I add, I don't write literature notes a simple list of pages. They tend to be full of comments, reflections and half digested pieces of the source. comment
Why are these "good" answers?
- They don't mention "summary," as in "A literature note is a summary of the book." I have no idea where this fallacy came from, and I'm stoked to not see it.
- They accept that sometimes you want to revisit your initial responses to the book in question, hinting at the lit note's inherent "personal index" qualities.
- There's a diversity of approaches while maintaining the intention behind the practice. This is the happy medium we're looking for.
All good stuff.
PS: In case you don't believe how often questions come up about literature notes, here's two posts in the same subreddit, in the same week, both asking literature note questions:
- When do I turn literature notes to permanent notes?
- Making Literature Notes for Information-Dense Texts
Action you can take: Educate yourself on what a literature note is (what I call a "reference note"), and why a reader/writer might use this note type. This short, free article gives the basics. Chapter 2 in A System for Writing goes way deeper. Then, play with the form. Add sections containing different kinds of information (i.e., quotes, comments, links, etc.). Keep what works. Abandon what doesn't. Don't overload the document with non-useful bits, "just cuz."
"Should I use a zettelkasten in school?"
The question, "Should I start using a zettelkasten in school?" is a regular of the zettelkasten subreddit, answers to which usually ping-pong between, "Wait 'til you've graduated" and "Wait 'til you've graduated." So, basically, wait 'til you've graduated. Responses in this thread give this line of thinking some much needed context:
- I give my typical "Here's how we got to the answers you're about to get, and here's where we might go if we unpack them" response.
- FastSascha ("It depends on your time horizon."), Barrycenter0 ("The main reason is time."), and Andy76b ("I think that a student has an important constraint to front. Time.") give good insight on...you guessed it...time.
- BillOfTheWebPeople suggests capturing notes in a zettelkasten after class might be a good idea. I second this, though never in a gazillion years would have done so myself.
In short, the zettelkasten practice is a unique and, for many people, counterintuitive / unfamiliar approach to working with ideas. It takes time to develop. If you're in the middle of a semester, getting ready for an exam, or just about to start a term paper, save the zettelkasten for after you've completed your course work. Or....
Action you can take: Start a zettelkasten today as a parallel / complimentary practice to your current note-taking system.
"May I have s'more 'atomicity,' sir?"
Zettelkasten.de's Sascha Fast—aka The Person With Whom I Disagree the Most and the Most Frequently and About Most Everything (and yet for whom I still have a soft spot)—is asking for help "compiling a research plan for a wider perspective on atomicity." The comments are sizing up to be full-on mind-grape porn, which I'm very much here for. Way too much to sum up, so if you'd like to join the hot, steamy, brain-on-brain action, slide into those comments.
But, before you do, permit me to say a couple things regarding the term "atomicity," and our modern-human proclivity for clinging to terms like "atomicity."
First, let's look at the obvious. It's been twelve years since the term "atomicity" was introduced into the zettelkasten lexicon through Christian Tietze's article, "Create Zettel from Reading Notes According to the Principle of Atomicity,". In that decade-plus we've ended up with 10% of note takers having a decent idea what atomicity means, and the remaining 90% asking questions like, "Should a note about bananas only contain the word 'banana,' since 'banana' is the most atomic unit of the idea?" Twelve years, and this is where we're at. Something about this doesn't track.
So I'm thinking.... Maybe the concept of atomicity—as important as it was back in the day—just ain't that great a concept anymore. Maybe we're holding onto this term out of convenience, or because it's nice and succinct, or because there's some sort of egoic proprietary-ness to it. And, maybe in order to save this term from the garbage heap we're feeling the need to heavily unpack and redefine it, without concern that we may do so to the point it means anything and nothing at all. Again, maybe.
So, while I absolutely LOVE a deep dive into the granularity of any topic, I'm wondering if Fast's plunge will yield more or less clarity. (Believe me, I'm shooting for more clarity. At least for those other people. I am, after all, part of the 10%). But, if the comments on last week's attempt to clear up confusion in The Deepest Dive Into Atomicity Since the Dawn of the Internet are any barometer...
- "Hmmmm.....scratching my head a bit on this post and your article - I'm puzzled."
- "I can't understand the information in that article."
- "I honestly feel like atomicity was dead on arrival as a prescription."
...it may be a while before we get there.
And, just so you know I'm not nit-picking, here's two recent posts expressing difficulty and (salty) frustration with the concept of "atomicity":
- Some experts really have a gift for turning Zettelkasten into rocket science (46 ups / 64 comments)
- Difficulty with atomic notes (12 ups / 14 comments)
Action you can take: Don't worry (admittedly, not really an action) about whether a note is appropriately "atomic." Instead, when pondering a new note's adequacy, ask yourself:
- Is what I've captured sufficient enough to be have meaning?
- Is the idea pared down enough so as to easily connect with others if given the opportunity?
New folgezettel plugin coming to Obsidian?
Discord user, ladle, has been "harnessing their hyperfocus" playing around with ChatGPT to make a folgezettel plugin (it seems mostly for fun). Join the # zettelkasten thread in the Obsidian Members Group (OMG) on Discord to check in on the updates, or if you "actually know how to code" (their words).
Action you can take: Join the Discord thread.
Zettelkasten and commonplace book mash-up
YouTuber, Robyn Rose Lark, demos their paper-based commonplace book + zettelkasten workflow with some clear-quality, top-down cam footage. Posi-core vibes to remind you that PKM can be fun and life-affirming.
Question for you: Do you like to store quotes in one system and zettels in another? Personally, I put 'em all in one.
Action you can take: Answer the above question.
Watch Stephanie's hands write out note cards in total silence
There's an audience for this, and it ain't me. But, I like knowing people in the web-i-verse vibe with silent hands writing indecipherable notes on index cards.
Action you can take: Introduce more silence in your life.
ZK Adjacent
Do city metaphors work for ideas?
In "Back to the Information City?," Richard Griffiths (an inspiring zettler in their own right) considers Mark Bernstein’s re-considering of "the city as a visual metaphor for information in the era of hypertext." Griffiths isn't totally sold on the city-as-information metaphor, and offers a forest metaphor in its place:
The metaphor [for information in the era of hypertext] that works for me is of an immense and unknown forest, the deep forest of accumulated knowledge. Though travelers may have no sense of the ultimate extent of the forest, and even if there is no thread, they can make one as they explore. They may still provide a report, like a travel journal:
"Here is the route I took, and here are the landmarks I discovered on the way.".
This deep subjectivity allows for a limited form of objectivity:
"with my report in hand you too can follow this path through the trees.".
Back to the Information City? How knowledge visualisation shapes the journey | Writing Slowly
I was intrigued by Mark Bernstein’s1 co-authored …
A guide for setting up Obsidian for academic work that doesn't read like every other guide for setting up Obsidian for academic work
"An Opinionated Guide to Obsidian for Studying & Research" came out in May, but I only caught wind of it this week. A deep-dive into setting up Obsidian for academic work by someone who's been at it for not-two-weeks (four years to be quasi-precise).
"This guide aims to not just offer some ways of doing things and presenting them as the one way to do it. Instead, it aims to explain & justify its recommendations, and to generally offer ways of thinking about how to use Obsidian. In this way, it hopefully helps you build a vault that fits the way you think."
Of course, this sounds like every other "Here's how I set up my Obsidian vault" article on the web. But, out of the many I've come across, this one seems to be the most actionable, and the most devoid of silly marketing acronyms.
Note: The setup presented in the article has nothing to do with how I've set things up in Obsidian or what my workflow looks like. But, someone reading this will benefit from the article, and so I offer it to you.
https://obsidian-guide.neocities.org/guideIs Thymer just Obsidian in a different package?
Thymer is a new, fancy-looking text editor that reads like Obsidian on MDMA after a code-friendly candy flip. Local files, databases, and designed for speeeeeeed (their words). Don't expect me to share every new app that comes out. I'm a creature of habit, and mostly stick with what I've started. But, I had to share cuz of this:
"We fixed notes.txt for busy makers and teams. Thymer is a smart new editor (IDE) designed to write, plan or share big ideas at the speed of thought."
Sooooo.... "At the speed of thought" is something Nick Milo likes to say, right? Which makes Thymer's use of the phrase feel kinda...convenient? After all, PKM is a very small town. Then again, Nick Milo (like all of us in the PKM-i-verse) also likes to borrow language from others ("MOCs" Lion Kimbro, "architect vs gardener" George RR Martin, etc.), so it's really anyone's guess who rocked "at the speed of thought" in a PKM context first.
But, I do know who rocked it first in a rhymes context: Ultramagnetic MCs (c. 1987).
Of course, there's also Bill Gates' use of the term for his co-authored book, Business @ the Speed of Thought, back in 1999. I guess that's cool, too?
And, that's that! See ya next week.
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