Keeping zetel notes: productive or counterproductive approach.

Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 4, 2018 at 08:53 PM

Thanks to Dellu for starting this thread.

I am in the middle of reconsidering my way of notetaking. Beck’s videos and the discussions on Sascha’s and Christian’s website made me reread Sönke Ahrens book (Beck mentioned the book in the first video). I haven’t made up my mind, yet, whether it’s the way to go for me. The Devonthink/Omnioutliner solution Scott Loghleed described seems more fitting for my needs, though I will probably use NotebooksApp instead of Omnioutliner.

For years I found extensive note-taking a waste of effort and time. But after forgetting one brilliant idea or two, I started to take more and longer notes pondering over some projects - till I lost interest in them because I had been chewing on them for too long. What I found, however, when following ideas using Gabrielle Rico’s clustering method (combined with notes), was that by digressing now and then I came up with interesting ideas that were a little off the straight road. Most of them were nice but not worth pursuing. But some of them did lead to a great leap forward.

So, what I strive for now is a mix between structure and discipline (zettelkasten) and random findings.