No. 114 The ZIS 002: Dead-End Metrics for Measuring Creative Thinking, and More
No. 002 • 09/05/2025 (ZIS)
No. 114 • 09/05/2025 (THP)
Dear readers,
Welcome to the second of five free installments of my new, writing venture—The ZIS—where I breakdown the most important discussions on zettelkasten and zettelkasten-adjacent topics from the previous week.
Over the next three emails, I'll discuss how to sign up and receive a "core-readers discount." I'll also hip you to why this weekly digest might be some of the best Inbox candy this side of the digital Mississip.
Until then, here's what came up over the past seven days!
How do you value your zettelkasten practice?
Last week, u/ManStan93 asked the r/zettelkasten subreddit four questions:
- What do you use your ZK for?
- What’s your favorite part of the whole ZK experience?
- What have you created with the help of your ZK?
- What are you most proud of, either in your ZK itself or in something it helped you learn or make?
Here's what we learned.
The majority of commenters listed research and learning as their primary zettelkasten use case. Makes sense. Answers to what was their "favorite part" included: recall, the act of making notes, messing around and writing with pressure, enjoying the rhizomatic nature of connections, and something about "flow and depth" (not sure what that's referring to, exactly). Spicy. Output was linked almost entirely to writing (articles, books, and blog posts). Not surprising. People were most proud of all the things: producing a single piece of writing, sticking with the practice, having read my book (so kind!), increased memory, better understanding theory.
So, what does this tiny lil survey tell us?
People value their zettelkasten as much for what it helps them produce as for the experiences they have producing it. This output can be somewhat grandiose and long-form (i.e., publishing books, running businesses, or preparing for exams), as well as smaller scale and immediate (i.e., short-form writing, experiences of "flow," linking ideas, or simply maintaining the practice).
It's a mixed bag out there. Would-be teachers and writers, "coaches," and commenters would do well to remember that.
Using technical metrics to measure creative thinking can be fun, but is ultimately a farce
The zettelkasten.de forum produced a good ol' fashion debate in the comments of Sascha's post "The Principle of Atomicity – On the Difference Between a Principle and Its Implementation". In reality, the whole thing started between Sascha and I in the subreddit a few weeks prior. You can read our own exchange on this matter here.
After twenty-plus years of more or less daily online discussions, complete with all the rabid trolls you can count and at least two death threats (that I know of), I've done my time. These days, I tend to take a casual approach to online debates, digging in only when it feels fun and potentially useful for the popcorn eaters. So, it was nice to see andang76 pick up the baton on the .de forum (here), where they began with this reasonable quip:
"The way it comes across is that one way of doing Zettelkasten is 'better' than the other. I would have simply written: 'There are two ways,' pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of both. I also wouldn’t have referred to Bob Doto’s work in that way, to be honest. Presented like this, it suggests that the Prompt-Based Zettelkasten is inherently limited, and I disagree with that."
At which point, it got wild style.
Like all online debates, the conversation meanders, routed by parallel micro-debates and various points of contention (again, all par for the online debate course). However, within the fray there were two questions that interested me most:
- Is "powerful" a valid metric for assessing another person's creative thinking practice?
- Can an assessment of another person's creative thinking practice be measured in isolation of the person using it?
Both of these were framed through one-half of a false dichotomy invented by Sascha we could call "prompt-based zettelkasten systems," a term he uses to describe my, Cal Newport, Ryan Holiday, and Niklas Luhmann's notes-into-writing practice.
I made a little chart to help you parse out the differences of opinion, starting with how each defined a zettelkasten in relation to its user:
| Aspect | andang76 | Sascha |
|---|---|---|
| Definition of Zettelkasten | User + slip box working together. System design can’t be separated from the user. | Slip box/system should be evaluated apart from the user to see its real capabilities. |
| Prompt-based systems | Valid, not inherently weaker. Can be powerful if mastered and suited to goals. | Valid, but less powerful for complex, long-term development. |
| Value of “power” as a metric | Contextual: a Ferrari may be stronger, but useless if it doesn’t fit the driver or terrain. | Essentialist: Ferrari has more power, even if you don’t need or can’t use it. |
| Role of the user | Central. Mastery of one’s chosen method matters more than which method it is. | Important, but separate. You must isolate system from user to evaluate methods clearly. |
You can read through the comments and make your own assessment of the arguments here.
My very brief take (I actually wrote like two thousand other words on this, but shelved them for another time. Teaching moment: learn to be ok cutting your stuff)....
Attempting to assess a person's creative thinking / writing practice according to its "power" is, pardon the expression, silly af. More importantly, it mistakes what these practices are. Not engines measured by output, but creative enterprises, the value of which lay in the insights and connections they generate, and the meaning those insights and connections have for the user and those that read the user's output. Neither value nor efficacy can be reduced to universal metrics.
The difference between wanting and wanting to want
Last week's email touched on the phenomenon of "perennial literature note questions" (most of which by people who haven't yet read my book, A System for Writing, wink wink). This week highlights another aspect of the quest to better understand these seemingly elusive notes: Taking Literature notes while still enjoying the book.
Were you only to encounter the quote below, the post reads like a perfectly reasonable conundrum:
"I struggle with finding a system that allows for in-depth note taking while prioritising the enjoyment of the content - something important to me. The way I see it, if I’m only thinking about taking notes when learning and taking in information, I won’t properly process anything and will be left - ultimately - with a pile of unfinished notes whether they’re proceed and ‘atomic’ or not."
To be expected, when people respond to the OP's post, the above is most often the kind of thing they'll consider, offering well-intentioned suggestions on how better to tweak their approach or streamline the process. All nice things. What they won't respond to, because of how hard it can be to notice, is the "tell" appearing just before the passage above:
"Now that I’m starting to use this system day by day I’m running into the problem of wanting to take notes but not having the time or the energy."
Now, that's the real issue: They don't feel as if they have the time or the energy.
This post speaks to something you will no doubt encounter in this digest time and time again: the difference between wanting to do something and wanting to want to do something.
Straight up (and no shade intended): There's a million reasons why a creative person might not be able to do this or that thing. But, you know what's not on the list of reasons? Time. Not because everyone has the same amount of time. But, because everyone has the ability to make use of the time they have if they really want to. You know what else isn't on the list? Energy. Not because everyone has the same amount of energy in the tank. But, because everyone has the ability to make use of the energy they have if they really want to.
So, whenever you find yourself not doing the thing you think you really wanna do, ask yourself why you don't wanna do it.
ADHD and the zettelkasten
Speaking of reading with a zettelkasten....
"I typically take dozens of notes from a single book. My most completely worked through book to date has nearly 200. It takes me several weeks of work, all day long (I don't have a life, so I literally can spend all my time doing this), to read a book by this method. Which is a sickening waste of time.... So, basically, what I'm asking is... how the hell am I supposed to read a book without going insane??"
Read the full post here.
Like in the previous section, this post contains an issue many note takers encounter: being so stoked on a new piece of material that it becomes hard to know what to capture if not everything. But, that's not the whole story.
"For clarity, btw, I have ADHD (diagnosed), and possibly also autism (undiagnosed), which has an effect on my thinking processes. My executive functioning in general is shit. I am not exaggerating when I say that prioritization is not a skill I have, or have ever had - my brain naturally interprets all unfamiliar stimuli as equally important, and bombards me with them all at once, and it takes painstaking conscious effort to figure out, through rational verbal thought, what matters and what doesn't." (emphasis added)
Many people in the PKM, zettelkasten, and knowledge work scene live with varying levels of ADHD. Which is awesome, because it means people have access to a slew of insight from others with similar experiences. Which is why I made this recommendation in the comments:
"My suggestion...is to hone in on what others with ADHD and (as you say, possibly) autism have found helpful, be it in the form of tips, protocols, practices, ways to mentally frame things, etc. And, I say that, because people with good intentions, but who don't experience what you do, are gonna wanna throw a bunch of stuff at you in the form of 'Here's what you should do' without having any sense whatsoever of your experience or the experience of others with ADHD/autism. Which is not to say that stuff can't be helpful. But, I'd hate to see you tack on even more 'to-dos,' even more so uninformed to-dos. So, finding people who can relate on that deep, visceral level, and who have made this note-taking stuff work is gonna be really good."
For another, recent musing on zettelkasten and ADHD, see this post: Did Luhmann have ADHD?
A brief pause to look at "context theory"
The above got me thinking about Alessandro Duranti's take on context, which he defines as:
"a frame that surrounds the event being examined and provides resources for its appropriate interpretation." Rethinking Context
Duranti goes further stating that context involves "a fundamental juxtaposition of two entities: (1) a focal event; and (2) a field of action within which that event is embedded."
Seen through Duranti's contextual lens, ADHD and autism can be read as a "field of action" within which the zettelkasten practice (the focal event) takes place. Read in this way, you can not understand the OP's zettelkasten practice without understanding how they experience ADHD/autism. Which is why I recommended the OP seek out others who have a similar experience. Which is also why I say you can't accurately evaluate a person's creative practice when you remove the human element (see above).
Zettelkasten at the bottom of the content barrel
I promised I'd only send along what I thought was worthy of attention. So, this needs to be framed as kinda "meta." If ever you wanna feel like you've accidentally slipped into the dark web, just apply the filter “This Week” when searching zettelkasten videos on YouTube.
The video above, which I'm not linking, because it has exactly zero views, and I wanna keep it that way, is clearly the result of AI scraping the internet for word-forms that kinda sorta make sense together. Also, that ain't a real person.
Takeaway: Not all content is created equal.
ZK Adjacent
The incorporation of rebellion into convention
Nice convo clip of David Bowie and Thomas Vinterberg (of Dogme 95 fame, and the great film The Celebration) discussing cooptation, recuperation and the defanging of rebellious art movements.
Takeaway: Consider an idea you hold dear (or have found fundamental to your thinking) in light of rebellion and convention. In what way does it remain insurrectionary (either to your self, ego, society) vs how has it become complicit. Put another way: In what way has it challenged your thinking vs confirmed it?
Complete books-to-Bases workflow from a true PKM mensch
As you can probably tell, zettelkasten and PKM is obsessed with reading, which makes for a lot of content on how they all meet. Cue uber-PKM nerdo (whom I love), Mike Schmitz of Practical PKM, who just released a complete walkthrough of his "entire reading workflow" detailing how he creates book notes using Obsidian Bases.
Definitely some interesting (albeit brief) bits on reading paper books over digital, his ridic minimal iPhone interface (love it), and how he mind maps what he's read. I can't speak to the Obsidian "Bases" portion, cuz I don't know anything about it, but for those who love book-PKM-porn, this is some great nsfw stuff.
PS: If you wanna here he and his co-host wax poetic on A System for Writing, click here.
How are those NFTs doing?
This is, admittedly, so far adjacent to be non-relevant. But, as someone who only pays attention to crypto and crypto-coded enterprises from very much afar, and only does so when the writing and insights are top notch, I perk up when I get an email from Zeneca.
Their current take on NFTs:
"Basically I think that most people think of NFTs as memecoins with pictures. They think of monkey jpegs, cheap art, ponzinomics, rug pulls, and all of the rest of it. They are either dismissive and don’t care to own or trade in them at all, or they are dismissive and flip them like shitcoins.
A select few can look past this and think of NFTs as a part of “projects” that are building ecosystems of value in a symbiotic relationship with their holders. I am bullish on some of these projects: Pudgy Penguins being the prime example."
Full disclosure: Zeneca is one of the inspos.
Letter 77: Let's Talk About NFTs - Letters from a Zeneca
How I think about NFTs + Sharing how my NFT portfolio is allocated
And, that's that! See ya next week.
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