The First Thread on the mighty Zettelkasten 🗂

[Karthikk]

This thread would serve as a pilot discussion for deeper exploration into the digital zettelkasten system .
For starters , we are going to collaborate with our beloved Zettel Master , from our roam-cult !
Pleased to introduce Beau Haan to you all !

A few words about him :

• He’s been hard at work developing a novel zettelkasten system , centered around Roam that takes full advantage of it’s block referencing features .
• The system has been rigorously tested by himself and a few other notable roam-personalities and it stands UNDEFEATED . He has given an open invitation for people to challenge his workflow/system of zettel and find a weakness ( in good spirit , so that he may perfect the flaws )
• While , I don’t intend to challenge the system yet , this is a project to understand his ways and procedures . His mission is to get such systems out there to the world , so that no one may suffer from information overload or obesity . He wants people to actually use what they read and he will not rest until he’s let this beast out into the world .

To get acquainted with his works , i suggest you see these two videos :

1. Roam tour by Robert Haisfield
2. Live threadapalooza session by Beau Haan about Zettelkasten

Also , check out his threadapalooza here :

Beau Haan (beauhaan)

My personal favourite feature in his workflow :

• The ability to nest the zettels and visualise the clusters , just like the analog version .
• This is quite tricky to achieve in a digital system and i for one , went through a few hoops by using rem references to arrange based on relevance in a separate slip box , while the actual zettel and its references existed elsewhere . He went many steps ahead of me there and has attained a beautiful workflow ! I truly admire the system and wish to decode it with him and document the process here .

@beau - Once you jump in and start posting , i will be granting you higher level access so that you can edit this post into a Wiki

Let’s goooo !

P.S. I have already figured out one area of improvement in your workflow I shall reveal it after you have given an official walkthrough of your process !

[beauhaan]

Hi!

Glad I can be part of this, does anyone have any specific questions about Zettelkasten in Roam Research that they’d like to talk about?

The entire process of thinking in a Zettelkasten is incredibly powerful and when used with the tool-like aspect of Roam, does some interesting things that I feel like more people ought to know about~

[Karthikk]

So , i guess i will start with the questions :

1. What is the difference between fleeting thoughts and literature notes , in your workflow (not in general)
   ?

[Oshyan]

The First Thread on the mighty Zettelkasten

Ahem, the first thread to get replies.

Do you use Zettelkasten? What attracted you to it?

Are you a regular user of the Zettelkasten method? How long have you been using it and what results have you noticed over that time? What attracted you to it in the first place? What tools and workflow do you use to realize your Zettelkasten? To be honest I’m a bit of a skeptic, but I’m definitely curious to know what has worked for you!

More seriously, I continue to want to quantify the benefit that the rigor of Zettelkasten methodology brings. Because I feel it involves quite some work, even with modern digital incarnations. And I frankly want a way to know it is worth the extra time/effort.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in the minority in already having a system that I think works very well for me to surface both new and old knowledge and interconnect it. And until recently I have been using far more primitive systems than Roam (Quip, Redmine before that, now moving to Obsidian, with a 3 month stopover in Roam before). I don’t use block references or queries really. I do use page links, but only recently (~6 months) started relying on backlinks…

Anyway, my point is for someone who already feels like they have a pretty good system that balances time investment vs. benefit well for their particular needs; for someone who sees their main challenges are not so much “how do I organize” or “how do I connect knowledge”, etc., but more “how do I get content into the system?” and other such problems that Zettelkasten doesn’t really seem (to me) to solve… what would you say to them?

Is your opinion that ZK is a potentially ideal system that everyone should use (or at least try)? Or, if someone is fairly happy with their note-taking and thought distillation already, would you say “Great, stick with it, focus on output” or something?

Glad to have you here @beauhaan, I loved your breakdown with Rob! It was fun seeing his brain explode a little.