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Zettelkasten

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The Zettelkasten Method is an amplifier of your endeavors in the realm of knowledge management. It is highly effective, and many people report they have more fun, one even comparing it to the addictive nature of games like [[World of Warcraft]], and have an easier time doing knowledge work overall. But this only comes as a result of putting in a high level of consistent effort.

A Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing. It has hypertextual features to make a web of thought possible. The difference to other systems is that you create a web of thoughts instead of notes of arbitrary size and form, and emphasize connection, not a collection.

Let us begin with the most important traits of a Zettelkasten:

1. It’s hyper-textual.
2. It adheres to the Principle of Atomicity.
3. It is personal.

First, it is some kind of hypertext, not a single text or just a collection of texts, but texts that refer to each other, explain, expand and use each other’s information. The difference between regular note-taking systems and a Zettelkasten is the emphasis on forming relationships. A Zettelkasten makes connecting and not collecting a priority. The difference between just a text and hypertext is that the former is linear and the later is organic.

To become a hypertext, a Zettelkasten requires multiple texts, or notes, that you can connect via hyperlinks. We call an individual note a Zettel. Zettel is the German word for “paper slip”. They are the smallest building blocks of the Zettelkasten.

Each Zettel needs a unique address by which we can refer to it, to make connections between Zettels. Then there can be hypertext and the note-taking system can qualify as a Zettelkasten.

Second, a Zettelkasten needs to adhere to the Principle of Atomicity. That means that each Zettel only contains one unit of knowledge and one only. These units are the atoms to which the principle of atomicity refers. To figure out what the atoms are, it helps when we ask ourselves what we want the molecules that we create from our note atoms to look like. What are the units that have their own address? The answer is: One thought. Let us explore some examples that do not use thought as their atoms.

Books, for example, have addresses and cross-references. They have chapters, sections and pages. All have unique numbers that can be referred to. However, you cannot refer to a thought, an idea or any content. Chapters, Sections and Pages are more like coordinates. A thought might spread over the whole book! You cannot refer to it directly with just one reference. A book is not a web of thought.

Wikipedia, also, is not a web of thoughts, because you can only link to articles and sections within them, but not to individual thoughts inside the text. None of the addresses matches with any thought. Wikipedia is not meant to be such a thing. Rather, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with each article containing information on a topic. Wikipedia is not a thinking tool but a tool for information retrieval.

In contrast, referring to an atomic note is unambiguous: when you reference it, you will know what the ‘thought’ is. There should be no room for guesswork. That is what the rule of atomicity means: Make sure that the layer of content and the boundaries between notes match and are well defined. Then and only then can it be a reference to an address identical to referencing a thought.

The Zettelkasten is a tool for thought, thus it needs to treat individual thoughts as its base unit. In order to connect individual thoughts, give each thought an address to refer to. In the words of us “Zettlers”: Create one Zettel per thought.

Third, there is one Zettelkasten per person, and one person per Zettelkasten. Thinking is a different process from communicating with another person. You want your Zettelkasten to be a personal thinking tool.

That does not mean that it is never useful to create a shared, project-specific hypertext. But that is not what we are talking about when we talk about a Zettelkasten.