This is an extension from the discussion in https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/8482/0/zettelkasten-tinderbox-for-literature-review

I am putting this as a separate discussion because I am afraid the ideas on the zetel notes will be buried.

I recent years, there is a lot of discussion on the value of zetel notes. There have been a lot of blog posts on zetel (slip box) notes. There is also a book mentioned in Beck's video that argues for zetel notes.

I recently skimmed through the book (you can read my annotations here by the way, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m06Jjruv5kC-1gjG47D0241DRC1dyvtf67xs3VW1XE8/edit?usp=sharing

Here are my main takes on what are zetel notes, and how they differ from other types of notes (would like to hear if I misunderstood the idea).

Luhmann had two slip-boxes: a bibliographical one, which contained the references and brief notes on the content of the literature, and the main one in which he collected and generated his ideas, mainly in response to what he read. The notes were written on index cards and stored in wooden boxes.

- the bibliography note: this is a reading note, or a comment on the reading material.
- the slip box proper (zettel proper): reader's reflection on the reading.

In the video linked above, Beck attempts to show to use Tinderbox for managing zettels (slip boxes).

- zettels are supposed to be permanent notes
- they are different from regular reading notes because they are supposed to function outside the context of the reading material (book or article). Zettels stand by themselves. You can link them. But, they are independent ideas that don’t necessarily rely on the chains of arguments presented in the reading material.
- they are short; and each of them are supposed to contain just “one idea”.
- they are independent of a specific project. A zettel can be an input to a project. But, using a zettel in a specific project doesn’t lead to the removal or archival of the zettel (in contrast to project notes). I personally find the distinction between zettels and project notes very difficult.
- We can write zettels after we finish reading the book or the article.
- the gist or abstract of the article can be one of the zettel notes (literature review).


I find the idea of zettel interesting. I am also very worried that it can be a productivity killer because collecting zettels might take a huge part of our research (reading). I do my reading with a specific purpose in mind. A specific project is often the purpose. If I remove that purpose from my mind, I will be engulfed for every by every book I picked up because there are many interesting ideas that I can collect, and think about forever.
I want to write a paper on XXX, I read articles and books that are relevant to XXX. Now, zettel notes are not part of the project. Every attractive idea becomes a zettel. This is dangerous because most materials are full of interesting ideas: and barely anything that cannot be useful for our future selves. We will end up collecting everything on any reading material. This is counter projective because we will be collecting notes that we don’t have a specific function in mind because they might be useful in the future. I am afraid I will be just a junk of thousands of notes with little actual output.
The idea of keeping an interesting idea of ours is great. But, my experience is that what I thought a great idea at some point sounds trivial after some time. MY ideas evolve so fast that I am not sure if I need to permanently record them.

Note that, I am full advocate of "thinking on paper", or a scratchpad, or a reading note. But, zettels are different because they are supposed to be permanent, a single idea, and linked be independent of the reading material or a project.

Another question is how are zettels better than any good database of pdf articles and books, (ideally with semantic search)?

- I have also a feeling that a modern advanced searching algorism (with a good database of pdf books and articles) can really replace most of what zettels are supposed to do.

What do you guys think?
Do you think zetels would make us more projective?

I generally have an aversion to the modern preoccupation with "productivity" or "workflow", which seems to be a recurrent topic in many forums. Coming from a manufacturing and service company background, "productivity" is something we do to improve machine or workforce throughput and output, not ourselves. So, in my mind, the highest purpose of note taking is learning and enrichment. The learning might be in service of a short term goal ("get data to complete project xyx"), but that I don't think of zettelkasten in that context.

I prefer to think of zettlekasten (in whatever guise -- and there are many ways to do this) as note-taking with long-term learning and enrichment in mind. In that sense, the main features of the "practice" of zettelkasten-making are persistence, consistent method, and cross-zettel referencing. Persistence in the sense that one keeps up a regular zettelkasten practice, at whatever frequency makes sense. Consistent method can mean handwritten notes (as in the original slipbox concept), or Tinderbox, or some other electronic or hybrid physical / electronic method. What matters is deciding the method that works for oneself, and sticking to it -- with adaptation over time if needed. And, finally, cross-zettel referencing means a method to point one zettel at another as a way of building up the links between notes (semantic or otherwise) that help build up a record of a personal body of knowledge.

A personal journal, by the way, can also fit into this concept.

More than anything, the best think is to enjoy what one is doing with these non-goal-oriented notes. A slavish compulsion to take a note about whatever comes to mind is foolish and the best way to encourage one to abandon the note taking practice. On the other hand, recognition that some (or maybe a majority) of the notes will age-out and be irrelevant over time. That's fine. Part of the joy of discovery is to read ones notes months or years later and wonder "well, why did I do that?"

Anyway, responsive to @Dellu's thoughtful post, I'd say: just as there's no set of objective rules about developing one's personal body of knowledge, there's no prescriptive approach to zettelkasten. (Some bloggers love to be prescriptive -- they usually are the ones who have an untoward interest in "personal productivity".) With regard to Beck's approach -- I think she has a very long term perspective for her note taking, well beyond the current goals of the comprehensive exam. That's terrific.

Paul Korm wrote:

Anyway, responsive to @Dellu's thoughtful post, I'd say: just as there's
no set of objective rules about developing one's personal body of
knowledge, there's no prescriptive approach to zettelkasten.

I agree. As a journalist - and therefore a note-taker - writing long-form articles and preparing documentary and current affairs TV programmes for more than 30 years, I sometimes approached subjects in a discursive and digressive fashion, surveying the territory, seeking to discover what questions should be asked and what the range of answers might be. Sometimes I tackled them in a much more directed and purposive way, seeking to support or disprove arguments. Frequently, I employed both approaches at different times for research on single subjects, depending on what seemed to me to be needed.

I wasn't aware of Zettelkasten techniques then. Their author appears to have intended them to be used for the more single-minded of the two approaches. But from what I've learnt of them, I think I could have fruitfully employed them for both.

I started to reply several times to the zettelkasten thread. I'm intrigued by any method of organization and I'm still seeking the true zen of tagging. There are subtleties. The epistemology and taxonomy of CRIMPing is of critical importance.

The Brain is a beautiful thing, but I fell off The Brain wagon a long time ago. It's great, but I seek symmetry in access technique.

The Brain has a vertical parent-child structure, the hierarchical tree, and it has a horizontal hierarchical tree, the jump thought references. Both can contain multiple parent and circular references.

That's not quite enough, though, so it supports tagging, too.

Devonthink features multiple hierarchies, the group hierarchy and as many tag trees as you want. I tend to think of tagging as not too different from The Brain's jump thoughts, but I'm not sure that's an optimal model.

Paul Korm wrote:

What matters is deciding the method that works for
oneself, and sticking to it -- with adaptation over time if needed.
And, finally, cross-zettel referencing means a method to point one
zettel at another as a way of building up the links between notes
(semantic or otherwise) that help build up a record of a personal body
of knowledge.

just as there's
no set of objective rules about developing one's personal body of
knowledge, there's no prescriptive approach to zettelkasten. (Some
bloggers love to be prescriptive -- they usually are the ones who have
an untoward interest in "personal productivity".) With regard to
Beck's approach -- I think she has a very long term perspective for her
note taking, well beyond the current goals of the comprehensive exam.
That's terrific.

I agree with the sticking part. Yes, changing methods is as a problem as having no good method.
but, is it impossible to objectively, scientifically show that some methods are superior to others?
The book I linked in the first post strongly argues that using slip box makes one more productive; and presents a lot of "evidence" from the psychology literature.

I agree with you that some people's way of prescribing is just from their opinions. But, if there is an objective reason to show that some methods improve performance, I am the first to leave "my preference" and follow the effective method.

Assume you like to write in blue ink, and Hugh likes to write in black ink. You have these preferences. Assume a study came out showing that black ink assists memory retention. Shouldn't you change your ink?I would definitely do; our preferences are not always the most effective ways of doing things. That is why we all hung out in this forum: we want better, faster, and more efficient tool/method of doing things.

My problem with the zettel notes is the amount of time and effort required to collect, curate and write the notes. I am in an impression that one person is better to put these notes into his/her draft (or simple reading notes, as in the traditional excerpt) than collect those in zettels forms because:
- the zettels require a lot of hard work, just for the mechanical part (not necessarily for the understanding part) because you try to make the note self-explanatory and linked to other notes.
- she might forget about it at all; ideas can be buried in zettel notes as well (think of collecting thousands of zettels, there is no guarantee that the ideas in the zettel will be available and visible all the time. We still need the help of indexes or searches).
- that the ideas will be outdated
- that, a good literature search (search into a pdf database) can provide as good idea as these zettels are supposed to provide
- time sink: a way to a burnout. One can collect thousands of zettel notes without generating any actual product (publication). That can lead to a burnout, and giving up the whole system.

I understand why one might use these kinds of methods with the paper-pen system. There is no easy way of finding ideas (concepts); need to have some good way of physical organization. With the presence of powerful computer searching algorithms, the value of writing a zettel doesn't seem to worth the time and effort required to develop it.

I would be glad if the users/fans of zettels teach me where I am wrong.

I personally highlight text as I read it, then export all my highlights from each book or article as a single document to an outliner which supports tags (Dynalist or Outlinely). I then structure the text so that I can easily zoom in to a section, chapter, or section (I highlight the titles for these as I read, which makes it easier). Then, if I'm working on a project I add relevant tags to those sections (or individual quotes) that are useful for me. Not completely automatic, but much less time consuming than other methods I've seen described, and the structuring/review process helps me remember what I read.

But also remember that my namesake operated at a time before full text search and machine learning. His method made sense for his time, but I'm not sure it makes sense for our own. Search often reveals relevant stuff on my computer or cloud files that was never tagged or stored properly...

That's the gist of the problem, isn't it. Is there a method of note taking that is objectively, measurably, and universally effective? Something we should strive to learn and adopt. I don't see how there could be. There are too many personal and situational variables. There are obvious prescriptive rules that are sensible for everyone (take notes in a language you understand; don't use disappearing ink). But, "effectivity" is dependent on the individual and their situation, or even the narrowly specific task at hand. I've been taking notes for 60+ years, with good professional success, but I have not hit about a note taking method that I found so persistently effective that I never wanted to deviate from it. The search continues :-)

It would be interesting to look into what makes for effective machine learning / AI, and try to do a sort of backformation to apply that knowledge to our flesh and blood interest in finding effective note taking methods.

Dellu wrote:

Assume you like to write in blue ink, and Hugh likes to write in black
ink. You have these preferences. Assume a study came out showing that
black ink assists memory retention. Shouldn't you change your ink?I
would definitely do; our preferences are not always the most effective
ways of doing things. That is why we all hung out in this forum: we want
better, faster, and more efficient tool/method of doing things.

Some thoughts on this subject:

I am not a professional note-taker. By that I mean that I am not a researcher or student. My daily note taking mostly consists of random bits of information that I feel I may need to recall sometime down the road. I also take notes for specific projects. These usually do not require me to examine long texts and create my own original thoughts about the content. But every now and then I do have to do that and I've found that creating a Tinderbox document like the one Beck demonstrate's in her video (though not nearly as chock-a-block full of information) helps me to understand the information better. I suspect that this is the major benefit of the Zettelkasten system. It is not just that you have a note-network you can refer to in the future, but the process of setting up that system and using it has facilitated a deeper understanding of the material. The fact that it takes a lot of work to build and grow a system like Beck's is irrelevant in my opinion, because it is part of the learning process, and not just a mechanical exercise in filing notes away.

I think it is worth noting that Beck's Zettel-Tinderbox system is for a specific purpose: recording and understanding the material for her research project. It is not a system she has built for all her notes on every topic she may study. (At least that's not the impression I got from the videos.) An effective system for working in one project may not be optimal for another.

Of course the flexibility to make new note systems is one of the benefits of Tinderbox.

Steve Z.

As an academic, I am also faced with the challenge of taking, storing, and accessing notes from literature and seminars. It's an important skill that I am constantly trying improve. I first became aware of the Zettelkasten approach after stumbling upon Christian Tietze's excellent website (https://zettelkasten.de/ and losing myself there for a few hours. Like many people here, I was also fascinated by Beck Tench's recent post (as well as the rest of her site, if you haven't had a look). I plan to think more about how Zettelkasten techniques might fit into my own work and to try the experiment. However, I do share Dellu's skepticism about how useful these granular, single notes will be when removed from the context of the bigger picture provided by the source material.

Another approach that I like very much, that I haven't seen mentioned here, was described by Scott Lougheed on his website:

https://scottlougheed.com/2015/07/17/summarizing-literature-with-omnioutliner/

Scott is an environmental social scientist and describes an approach to note taking in which sections of a text are highlighted and copied to the clipboard. Scot then switches to outliner software and paraphrases the concept as an outline item and pastes the verbatim copied text as a child to that item. Scott uses DevonTHINK and Omnioutliner on MacOS, but the approach is platform-independent. The advantage of using DT and OO together is he then pastes a link back to the original highlighted text in the "Notes" field of the OO item for a permanent reference pointer. The advantage of this approach is the parent-child relationship between the summary and the highlighted text is conserved and can be manipulated within the structure of the outline and the "chunk" of information may also be copied to another outline document when, for example, assembling a literature review or planning other writing projects such as manuscripts or grant applications.

I mention this here because the approach seems to share some of the strengths of Zettelkasten. The notes are taken in a granular manner - one idea per outline item note. Also, the reader restates the concept the note in their own words, thereby (hopefully) internalizing the information more effectively than if they simply highlighted sections of a text and exported annotations to a text/RTF file. However, the structure of the document preserves the context of each individual note in a way that a folder containing single ideas from multiple input documents would not (even if they are linked by links or some numerical scheme).

I would refine Mr. Lougleed's method slightly. While you can write (or paste) lengthy notes as OmniOutliner topics, that's probably better done as notes for the topics.

He pastes an excerpt as a child topic. I think it's a better use of hoisting/focusing to keep the topic title short. The optional note on each topic is easier to use for lengthy input, since the enter key works as a line ending and doesn't terminate the entry process. Cmd-enter is a keyboard shortcut that will close out a note.

With the long and windy stuff in the notes, OmniOutliner's show and hide all notes features can quickly switch between a full-on display of everything and a more navigable menu of what's there.

I keep wishing Devonthink had more fluid navigation. On the other hand, I really like DT's feel of cast-iron dependability, something I didn't get with Tinderbox.

Maybe I should take another look. I still have a Tinderbox license,

Hi everyone, ߑ‹, thought I'd chime in here.

First, I think it's important to point out that my zettelkasten is untested for its ability to recall and reference. It's working well for me as a learning tool, as has been noted by others in this thread. My current approaches are an evolution of strategies that have or have not worked for me over these last few years as I have needed to synthesize, remember, and connect a greater pace and volume of ideas. I will continue to share how it changes and if the zettelkasten succeeds at meeting the demands I throw at it.

Secondly, what Paul wrote here is of particular resonance:

Paul Korm wrote:

I generally have an aversion to the modern preoccupation with
"productivity" or "workflow", which seems to be a recurrent topic in
many forums. Coming from a manufacturing and service company
background, "productivity" is something we do to improve machine or
workforce throughput and output, not ourselves. So, in my mind, the
highest purpose of note taking is learning and enrichment.

Last year, I wrote a piece called "Reading is Useless" — https://medium.com/@10ch/reading-is-useless-644399af3cce — which may go a long way in positioning where I stand with regard to productivity and efficiency, which is to say I think they are complex ideas, in some ways full of merit and in others ways manipulative and not necessarily in our best interest.

https://medium.com/@10ch/reading-is-useless-644399af3cce

To lay all my cards on the table, I'll say this... I used to judge the way I spent my time: this is a good way, that is a bad way. Now, I look I see life being lived in either way. Either is good. This orientation means that I do a lot of things in my life that causes some people to question why I spend so much time doing things that could be done faster if they were purchased or algorithmically approached, etc., but to me it's life being lived in either case. I don't have to value efficiency, I can value other things... like the joy of wrestling with an idea, creating a beautiful map, or sharing it on Youtube. :)

Third, regarding scope of the system. I certainly do bound what goes in, but by what I'm unsure. It's probably some sense of what the 10-years-from-now me would want to have available to her. It's just a guess, of course, a gut instinct, but there's a lot that doesn't go in when looking at it that way. (And also a lot that does.)

Thank you for your frank and thoughtful post, Beck.

It resonates with me in light of a few other comments, above, which I interpreted as fretting "ugh, do I have to make a note about everything I read or think?" Ugh is right -- doing that much note making melts minds.

I think it's important in a note taking practice to figure out and use a mental sieve that lets serendipitous thoughts, or quotes, or passages in our reading or hearing through into our note taking, and disregards the dreck.

This thread is a perfect embodiment of why this is a great forum: thoughtful, intelligent people discussing an interesting topic civilly, each contributing excellent insights.

Thank you!

Steve Z.

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.

This makes sense to me, too. Lougleed's rationale for structuring text verbatim from the source as a child object was so that the links back to the DevonTHINK database could be hidden for readability, but there's no reason why the link couldn't be appended to the OO "note" field.

Amontillado wrote:

I would refine Mr. Lougleed's method slightly. While you can write (or
paste) lengthy notes as OmniOutliner topics, that's probably better done
as notes for the topics.

He pastes an excerpt as a child topic. I think it's a better use of
hoisting/focusing to keep the topic title short. The optional note on
each topic is easier to use for lengthy input, since the enter key works
as a line ending and doesn't terminate the entry process. Cmd-enter is a
keyboard shortcut that will close out a note.

With the long and windy stuff in the notes, OmniOutliner's show and hide
all notes features can quickly switch between a full-on display of
everything and a more navigable menu of what's there.

I keep wishing Devonthink had more fluid navigation. On the other hand,
I really like DT's feel of cast-iron dependability, something I didn't
get with Tinderbox.

Maybe I should take another look. I still have a Tinderbox license,

The roots of the concept , as well as a few interesting apps by the same name, are German. Might remember the Stasi index card boxes, but that is not what I am referring to. Luhmann was a great mind, not a cold fish with no substantial human warmth lacking the milk of human kindness. He was not self obsessed with his own areas of interest and railroading concepts and people and indexing them, but very social and insightful and had relations with the group known as the Frankfurt School.

The group which included his philosopher friends, like Adorno and others like Habermas who is still alive, influenced his work, and vice versa. Unlike previous generations of philosophers, they expanded their fields of study. The next great generation of about a dozen thinkers in France continued this multi disciplinary Cultural Theory. Some of which, i.e. modes of analyses, is even beyond most academicians who teach the subjects. Luhmann thus started to collect information on a wide range of subjects. Also there were no personal computers. That was his context and Zeitgeist.

In current IT, an equivalent is tagging, from relational databases to apps. BTW there are certain cutting edge computing technologies related to outlining which are never discussed here, I know as I search for them here with no results. Lets not assume all relevant info is here.

In real life right now for billions, the index card retrieval system is called "Googling", generally. Specifically, it is the summary at top of what is called the pages in "Wikipedia".

As far as tools in my experience, there is no single tool that does it all for this sub-genre for me. I link a few tools for this specific purpose, with unified data format structures. Like above paragraphs, expanding would take time and space.

Another area of confusion in this area is mixing up two separate fields. The first is that of collecting data, like brief descriptions of terms or ideas. In fact since the Frankfurt School and Luhmann and then the French theorists, an indeed the 3 great figures in 3 generations before the German wave, influencing them, we now have "History of Ideas" as a field of study in many universities. Back to the point, this is basically data/information summary/collection/indexing.

The other area, being mixed up, is for creative purposes. This can have the prior as a subset but it's main raison d'être is completely different. So commenting on them as though both are the same is talking at cross purposes. This lack of ontological clarity and separation is often a given in generalized discussions. As to this very interesting category, the process of creative building blocks and symbiotic flows between them, I have found certain data modelling aspects to be indispensable, but that is beyond the topic here too. But mixing the two, simply means the wires are crossed, ironically from a Luhmannic system POV, with little formal progress in the dialectics.

Yet to another point,briefly. I've known many who thought if they get an expensive piece of kit they will be great thinkers or researchers or innovators or artists in various fields. I always disagreed, and when they did get what they desired, it did not happen as I predicted. The prospectors' gold fever here for the perfect outliner eldorado app is also a mirage, just leads to cabin fever.

Which is why once I said here that pen and paper is superior to any app, and those great Franco German thinkers would agree. I also said once, even above pen and paper is the mind. Those figures had great minds,which can be developed like muscles in a gym. With memory tools, indexing methods, visualizations, exercises, flow systems, alternative thinking processes etc. etc. For example most people can be trained to sequentially remember dozens of items.

But this is the low end and mechanical aspect of mind. I am talking of much higher aspects than mind mechanics. Just as the 2 perspectives, top-down analytical and bottom-up neural network architecture style sense/data/info input/collection. It is not either or, it is all. What I am not referring to here is merely simple indexing, that is a tiny aspect.

Could go on as there are many other aspects but would like to finish with those great thinkers. They were not OCD self obsessed psychopathic people or like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman collecting data or simply wanting comfortable input to suit their closed minds as most. They developed their mind beyond the tool obsessed top-down data possessed caricature some make of them. In many wonderful and unusual ways, often attacked by lesser beings who always disappear in the mists of time.

How can one expect the majority to do the same when they can not even dare look at their own mind once before they die? Such great ideas came from unusually developed minds not because of tools, or apps or methodologies, but through: "real intelligence", sense of wonder, reinventing the rules, instead of shelter in conformity as in their less moral attackers, creativity and above all being warm empathetic "human beings".

But then again, we can not go into these climes on the infinite potential of human mind, as this is not the topic nor the forum on mind or even pen and paper, just obsession with outliner software.

My understanding is that the content, indexing and interconnections of zettel notes can be reproduced in any wiki, with a wiki page being the equivalent of a note.

What software like TheBrain (and Tinderbox, and more recently InfoQube I believe) can provide, which most wikis and the original Zettelkasten lack, is the visualisation of those connections.

In TheBrain, this occurs for the hierarchical (parent-child) and horizontal (jump) links. Not so for tags.

It is also possible to use TheBrain as a wiki, i.e. each 'thought' has its own local URL which can be copied into a note of TheBrain, in effect providing the full Zettelkasten functionality. However, these links are also not visualised in TheBrain's 'plex'.

In brief, win some lose some.


Amontillado wrote:

The Brain has a vertical parent-child structure, the hierarchical tree,
and it has a horizontal hierarchical tree, the jump thought references.
Both can contain multiple parent and circular references.

That's not quite enough, though, so it supports tagging, too.

Revising the forums about DEVONthink, I realized that people have been divided on this issue for a long time.
It seems like there have been two main approaches for reading and understanding literature.

1) The separationist approach: attempts to pick some ideas from the reading material, and attempts to give the idea its own life (write it in a separate file, with separate file names and tags).
There are two approaches within this system:
a) extremist separationism: this the slip box approach: might link the note to the source reading the material. But, it is important for this approach for the note to be self-standing (not dependent on the context given by the reading material). This is the zettel (slip box) approach.

I am very skeptic of this approach; doesn't sound tenable in the long run (unless you are obsessively committed person, which many of us in here doubt to be so).

b) the pragmatic separationism: attempts to keep give a life to the note (quote); but doesn't attempt to remove it from the context of the reading material. The note (quote) might have its own title or tag, but, is still understood within the context of the bigger reading material it stands in.
- I have used this approach for a whole when I was using Sente.
- I pick snippets of ideas as I read the article
- these snippets have their own title and tag. They also have the page number. But, they are also linked back to the main material.
- export these snippets of the ideas to Tinderbox


Another tool that is used largely a script known as "Annotation Pane" in the Devonthink community (https://forum.devontechnologies.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=21707 Frederiko (the one who developed Annotation Pane) also has another tool that quotes material to Omnifocus.

Both of his scripts amazing; could be very useful for this community.

2) unification approach: an idea picked from the reading material is dysfunctional if the context where it is written is removed. We have to understand the ideas only within reading material. A general summary, or excerpt of the reading material might be possible. But, picking up individual ideas separately doesn't make much sense.
This is the approach I have been using for the longest time.
I use Skim (PDF expert) for this.

- I read the text (article) from the beginning to the end
- highlight texts
- write short reflections if I find the ideas very attractive (write comments)
- at the end, I write a summary and reflection
- I export the whole thing into one file
- tag the whole note material ( and use the whole reading material in my future reference).
Copy part of my reflection or quotation into my drafting system (or, Scapple, or Tinderbox) for developing the idea.

QuoteHighlight (https://forum.devontechnologies.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=12038&hilit=QuoteHighlight#p56483 another example for the implementation of this approach.

correction: Omnifocus => OmniOutliner

Sorry for reviving this after a month! Couldn't resist :)

(1) So in the initial post, @Dellu said that a Zettelkasten takes a lot of time because you are going to extract every usable bit of information.

I like to argue this is a misconception. It makes a difference if you scribble "argument" in the margins of the book for later reference, or actually quote the premises and conclusion in an easy-to-digest manner in a note on your computer. The latter takes more time. It does make a difference which approach you take. But you should pick a suitable approach for your project, that's most important, I think. Your life is limited, and you cannot be expected to extract every usable bit of information from ever 1000-page tome when a cursory reading of the 20 most important pages in chapter X would have done. What for?

The underlying issue could be anything; you have to be honest with yourself :) It could be Collector's Fallacy, i.e. mistaking the satisfactory feeling of collecting info for making tangible progress. It could be Fear of Missing Out, i.e. "who knows when I will ever get my hands on this treasure of a book, better extract everything immediately!" -- it could also be a problem similar to other addictions: you want your fix, and you want it now, and cannot bear to skip all the remaining 980 pages. Who can say?

In "How to Read a Book" by Adler/van Doren, the authors put parallel reading of parts of multiple texts at the top of the hierarchy. It's not useful for everything, but it's the most efficient way to get an overview. Again, this depends on your aim, how far you have progressed in your research, and a myriad of other factors. (E.g., is this text super boring?)

The Zettelkasten Method focuses on how you process information. In terms of "Getting Things Done", it's mostly about the reference management of items in your inbox. Sascha and I discuss how to add stuff to your (virtual) inbox, i.e. how to approach reading in general, but a Zettelkasten is about the way you store and cross-reference the notes that you are taking. You decide which notes are taken, and the criteria are not immanent to the method. They are all up to you.

I'm not an expert in the U.S.-american philosophical tradition Pragmatism, but I do think that this is right up a pragmatists' alley :) The method is good if it is useful.


(2) @Dellu asked if there would be a scientifically superior method.
(3) Also, the concern that the Zettelkasten is a time-sink without product.

This really follows from what I just mentioned: what is most useful to you?

Do you _want_ to produce texts? Then the criterion is how many articles you publish per year, for example. Or blog posts, or books, or whatever. That's your measuring stick. Tweak and measure, then tweak again.

I don't see how science could help get useful answers, because it makes a difference if you measure output in blog posts per year of (a) a fashion blog with affiliate links and product recommendations and reviews, (b) a sports team behind-the-scenes website, or (c) deep-sea diving research that can only be performed once a year for a couple of weeks because of the current, or whatever, only some of them making enough money to do this full-time, too. It's just waaaay too hard to get data that is reasonably general while also being relevant to your life in particular. So I wouldn't bet on this happening, at least not while we're alive and maybe not for the ever-so-rapidly changing landscape of computer software.

Now that I crushed all your hopes for a better future, do not fret! Let me reiterate: there still is light! As all the others in this thread have pointed out time and again, you are going to have to find it yourself, though, and it might not shine as bright as you imagined the scientific truth to illuminate your work; but it's going to be the best you will have, and it'll shine brighter the more you keep working. Because by doing, you hone your skills, and thus you improve and get better: you will know better what to focus on and how to integrate it into your work, if at all.

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All that being said, I am a strong proponent for the Zettelkasten Method for my own stuff. I can take notes now and use them in drafts 5 years from now. That's super useful. And that's not gonna happen with all the hastily scribbled marginalia in super-interesting books I have read but never processed. Their use diminishes, and after a couple of years, I am glad if I can recognize any unique thought that goes beyond the goodreads or Wikipedia summary. When I was at University, I wanted something like this, but was content with keeping things on paper and in my head and rehashing ideas again and again to get a better grasp. That's paradise, compared to the life of journalists, where the throughput indeed is a factor, and nobody cares about how you organize your notes, and you better find out how to excel at what you do.