How I learned to make useful notes the Zettelkasten way
I encountered Niklas Luhmann’s sociological work in 1990 but only came across his Zettelkasten approach in 2007, thanks to historian Manfred Kuehn’s wonderful but sadly defunct blog Taking Note Now.
I gradually converted my existing personal wiki from then on, at first emulating Kuehn’s use of Connected Text an also sadly defunct app. So that’s 17 years and counting.
It has taken ages to get to a system that works well for me, but I think I’ve got there now. 🤞
“The rapid passage of time is a complete antimeaning machine. Doesn’t life absolutely require tactical slowing down if a person, even a smart, serious, concerned one, is to find the time and space to make meaning?” - Eric Maisel
Tactical slowing down is great, but then writing slowly is a whole strategy.
“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can be used to wash the floor, to live in the soil, to lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better. "
Erin Bow, Anti-advice for writers
Leibniz created a haystack of notes that wouldn't fit in his Zettelschrank
Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz (1646-1717), that complex polymath who (probably) invented calculus, used to write down all his thoughts then cut up the pieces and attempt to rearrange them. He once admitted this had resulted in “one big chaos”.
Leibniz said he had so many thoughts in a single hour that it took him more than a day to write them all down.
“Sometimes in the morning, in the hour that I spend still lying in bed, so many thoughts come to me that I need the whole morning, indeed sometimes the whole day or even longer, to set them down clearly in writing.”1
These are just a couple of the intriguing facts I learned from reading Michael Kempe’s excellent biography, The Best of All Possible Worlds. A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days (Pushkin Press).
Image source: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek—Niedersächsiche Landesbibliothek.
Though he wrote and cut up and rearranged mountains of notes, he didn’t publish much in his lifetime.
“I wrote countless things about countless things,” he wrote to the Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli in 1697, “but only published a few about few.” And he told the Hamburg lawyer Vincent Placcius: “If you only know me from my publications, you don’t know me.” 2
All this sounds quite dismal, but on the other hand Leibniz was a genius in several disciplines, who left behind “one of the largest literary legacies of any scholar in world history” (Kempe).
Furthermore, Markus Krajewski, scholar of media history, claims “any history of ‘assisted thinking’ with artificial intelligences finds a worthy starting point in Leibniz.”
Perhaps then his seemingly disorganised notes were just part of the genius.
Krajewski’s recent chapter “Intellectual Furniture: Elements of a Deep History of Artificial Intelligence.” sets Leibniz’s endeavours in the context of an intellectual history that stretches from the specialised furniture Leibniz acquired to arrange his notes, via the dawn of the computer age, all the way to the recent rise of artificial intelligence. Heady stuff!
In Hanover Leibniz kept a special cabinet for his notes, where he hung up the notes he had cut up in various combinations. This was his Zettelschrank, modelled on Thomas Harrison’s scrinium litteratum. After his death Johann Friedrich Blumenbach inspected this contraption and called it “the most fearsome and cumbersome machine that one could imagine”3. Well, I don’t know about that. Perhaps he didn’t have a particularly strong imagination.
Image source: Krajewski, p.186
This sense of being almost overwhelmed by information is really the prehistory of the situation we’re in now, where not only is there ‘too much to know’4, but AI is making more and more of it every second. Our information machines aren’t so much helping us to get the chaos under control as simply creating more and more chaos, faster than we can comprehend it, much less organise it.
Yes, we’re drowning in data, but it may be comforting to know that this is nothing new, and that despite the mounds of ‘stuff to know about’, some remarkable breakthroughs were still possible, and may be still. In 2013 Stephen Wolfram visited the Leibniz archives in an attempt to understand how Leibniz had achieved so much so early - and how he had also missed so much of what we now take for granted in the computational perspective on science.
With the utmost presumption, I’ve previously claimed that Leonardo, that other great polymath, might have benefited from a more coherent approach to making notes than his zibaldone. Dare I make the same claim for Leibniz?
Oh look, I just did.
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References
Kempe, Michael. The Best of All Possible Worlds. A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days. Translated by Marshall Yarbrough. London: Pushkin Press. 2025.
Krajewski, Markus. “Intellectual Furniture: Elements of a Deep History of Artificial Intelligence.” Chapter 8 in Bajohr, Hannes, ed. Thinking with AI: Machine Learning the Humanities. First edition. London: Open Humanities Press, 2025. PDF.
‘Leibniz, LLull and the computational imagination’ Public Domain Review.
von Rauchhaupt, Ulf. “Leibniz’ Manuskripte: Schönschrift war nicht seine Sache”. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2016.
Wolfram, Stephen (2013), “Dropping In on Gottfried Leibniz,” Stephen Wolfram Writings.
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Leibniz, [no date], LH 41, 10 Bl. 2: “il me vient quelques fois tant de pensées le matin dans une heure, pendant que je suis encor au lit, que j’ay besois d’employer toute la matinée et par fois toute la journée et au de là, pour les mettre distinctement par ecrit.” Cited in Eduard Bodemann, Die Leibniz-Handschriften der Königlichen Öffentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover 1895 (Hanover: Hahn, 1895), 338. Quoted in Kempe, 2025, ch 1. ↩︎
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loosely translated from Ulf von Rauchhaupt’s article, “Leibniz’s manuscripts: fair handwriting wasn’t his thing”. ↩︎
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quoted in Krajewski, p.188. ↩︎
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Ann Blair’s memorable phrase: Blair, Ann. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. New Haven London: Yale University Press, 2010. ↩︎
Sinister Zettelkasten?
The 2025 Sydney Film Festival program features Jodie Foster’s new film, “Vie privée,” accompanied by a marketing image that evokes mystery with index card boxes in the background.
“You only come to know these things in hindsight – when you look back and see the precarious chain of events, happenstance, and good fortune that led to wherever you are now. Before you reach that point, you have no way of predicting which idea will make a difference and which will die on the vine. That’s why you record them all. No matter how random, how small, how half-baked, how unfinished it may be; if you have a thought, record it right away.” ― Antony Johnston, The Organised Writer.
From a single idea to many, and from networks of linked ideas to reconfigured networks of knowledge. I found a way to create order from my jumbled ideas.
#zettelkasten #writing #learning #pkm #notetaking #writingprocess #learningstrategies
I found a way to create order from my jumbled ideas
From a single idea to many, to networks of linked ideas to reconfigured networks of knowledge.
This is a model of how students learn, devised by educational psychologist John B. Biggs and presented in his co-authored book, Teaching for quality learning at university: what the student does.
The key concept here, ‘structure of observed learning outcomes’ (SOLO), is summarised quite well in Wikipedia.
(Image source: Biggs and Tang, 2011: 91.)
To me this diagram clearly relates to the process of writing and developing short, clear notes.
From a single note to many, to networks of linked notes, to reconfigured networks of knowledge.
The first, prestructural stage, though, isn’t simply empty in my experience. Instead I begin from a whole heap of ideas and thoughts jumbled together like pick-up sticks.
Image source: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File…
The problem is it’s too easy to stay in this prestructural stage, where thoughts and ideas are plenty, but they’re a jumbled mess. That’s because even when we make notes, our notes remain either poorly organised, or else well-organised, but set up according to some pre-established schema that hinders further conceptual development.
This metaphor of straightening and sorting a convoluted mess is also key for computer programming. For example, it’s evident on the cover of a well-known book, A Philosophy of Software Design, by John K. Ousterhout.
The first stage proper, the unistructural stage, in my estimation, relates to the capacity to create an atomic note, that is, a note that identifies, isolates and deals with just one thought, idea or concept. This is the key move, and the reason I like to refer to ‘atomic notes’ as the leading idea.
The second, multistructural stage refers to the ability to do this repeatedly, reliably, and systemically.
According to Biggs and Tang, these early stages involve increasing the quantity of knowledge. In my adaptation, this simply means making more atomic notes.
The third, relational stage involves the process of making meaningful links, which is at the heart of the Zettelkasten methodology, and is also crucial for wikis.
The fourth, extended abstract stage relates to the ability to reconfigure networks of concepts to create new knowledge and insight.
According to Biggs and Tang, these stages move beyond the quantitive acquisition of knowledge and towards the qualitative:
“This distinction between knowing more and restructuring parallels two major curriculum aims: to increase knowledge (quantitative: unistructural becoming increasingly multistructural); and to deepen understanding (qualitative: relational, then extended abstract). Teaching and assessment that focus only on the quantitative aspects of learning will miss the more important higher level aspects. Quantitative, Level 1, theories of teaching and learning address the first aim only, increasing knowledge.” (Biggs and Tang, 2011: 90)
This is how I move: from jumbled thoughts to clearer single notes, from single notes to many, from many to meaningful links, and then—if I keep going—to something new.
The SOLO taxonomy shows why this progression matters. It’s not just about gaining more knowledge, but about transforming it. Make modular notes, link them, and let new insights emerge. This isn’t just a way for me to remember what I’ve learned—it’s a way to learn what I didn’t know I knew.
And if it still feels like pick-up-sticks in your head, don’t worry, there’s time—the game is just beginning.
Now read: Atomic notes and the unit record principle.
Reference:
Biggs, J and Tang, C. (2011): Teaching for Quality Learning at University, (4th Edition. McGraw-Hill and Open University Press, Maidenhead). ISBN: 78-0-33-524275-7. PDF
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“It is surprising how much one can produce in a year, whether of buns or books or pots or pictures, if one works hard and professionally for three and a half hours every day for 330 days. That was why, despite her disabilities, Virginia was able to produce so very much."—Leonard Woolf. Source.
My take: Choose your own race and finish it. The image is an example of how AI already looks unfashionable.
💬 “Live right up to the last breath and stay positive about the world, your family and the environment you live in.” - Mike Peters, The Alarm.
From tiny drops of writing, great rivers will flow
In his book, 📖 Writing Tools, veteran journalist Roy Peter Clark teaches that writers should break long projects into parts. In fact, that’s how he wrote his book. It started life as a year-long series of online posts, one per week, until finally he’d written fifty of them (I guess he took a couple of weeks off 😁).
It’s an obvious piece of advice that’s surprisingly hard to remember. Conversely it’s easy to feel daunted by big projects, forgetting that they are always made out of smaller pieces.
My working philosophy of creativity is that from fragments you can build a greater whole.
One small part joins up with another and another until soon, like rain, a trickle grows to become a flood. Clark says:
Tiny drops of writing become puddles that become rivulets that become streams that become deep ponds.
This is why I make short notes and join them together to create longer pieces of writing. I’m daunted by the larger task but not at all daunted by the quiet joy of writing one short note followed by another, and another.
This is what I call the shortest writing session that could possibly be useful.
It may be short, but it’s endlessly repeatable. And the results can be quite impressive.
Clark also mentions that he sometimes asks his new writing students to indicate how many of them have run a marathon. Usually only a couple have, but when he asks how many think they could do it, if they were given a much longer period, nearly everyone raises their hands.
This reminded me of the rather lovely short film about the Australian farmer who ran his own marathon, one piece at a time. In this case he did just one mile every hour until the whole distance was run. And he did a whole lot of other work too. Improbably, this guy’s name is Beau Miles.
OK, that’s great and all, but how exactly do you do it, one drop at a time?
Here’s my take on how to write an article from your notes.
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Education will defeat autocracy
The painful and wrenching demise of entire academic departments opens up opportunities for a more radical understanding and practice of higher education, beyond and despite the confines of university funding.
In France, for example, there’s Le Collège international de philosophie, co-founded by philosopher Jacques Derrida, and Le Université populaire de Caen, founded by Michel Onfray, another maverick philosopher.
In the US, meanwhile, there’s Vital Thought, and The Reading Room, sponsored by Pluto Press, in the UK.
I’ve suggested the future of the humanities is wide open. But in these times it’s much more political than that:
Now Karen Attiah says Columbia Canceled My Course on Race and Media. I’m Going to Teach It Anyway.
You might want to support her summer school: Race, Media, and International Affairs 101.
As she says:
They can cancel us all they want, but we will create community and share knowledge anyway!
Willful ignorance, of the kind supported by the extremists running the US Government, has a fatal flaw.
Can you guess what it is?
Have you ever read a book by mistake?
Revisiting a backup file of my old notes reminded me of the time I was reading what I assumed to be a novel by Ruth Ozeki, but it turned out to be a novel by Cynthia Ozick, published in 1987, called The Messiah of Stockholm.
Anyone could have made that mistake, I submit.
At least, anyone who, like me, failed to read the cover properly.
And every single page with the author’s name in the footer.
In any case I loved the book, even though it wasn’t written by Ruth Ozeki, which I didn’t realise at the time.
It’s about a man who believes he is the son of the Jewish writer Bruno Schultz, who was murdered by Nazis and his magnum opus, The Messiah lost. Although it’s (fairly) clear he can’t really be the great writer’s son, a bookseller, Mrs Eklund, goes along with the man’s story. They strike up a relationship in which she ‘believes’ his paternity claims while he believes, or at least doesn’t question, her repeated claim that her husband, Dr Eklund is inside the flat above the shop.
Is he? Is he really?
And then Adela turns up, claiming to be the daughter of Bruno Schultz, carrying with her the manuscript of the lost book. Are they going to ‘believe’ this too?
So in a way it was appropriate that I should have mistaken Ozick for Ozeki. Displaced identity was the theme. I did wonder, though, why the Ozeki writing style about which I had read was not much in evidence in the novel actually in front of me.
So there is still the genuine Ozeki to be read. Let’s hope I don’t pick up by mistake a novel by Julie Otsuka. Unless that too proves to be excellent, in which case I’ll be happy.
Over to you. Have you ever read a book by mistake? And was it an unforeseen calamity, or an unexpected joy?
Finished reading: The White Ship by Charles Spencer 📚
I knew very little about the rival sons of William the Conquerer, but have now learned some amazing stuff about the Norman dynasty that claimed England. The image of their armies arrayed on the sands beneath Mont Saint Michel is rather vivid.
Writing notes is much more than just writing notes. Done right, it’s a way of working with ideas:
I’m organising my notes right now and stumbled over this quote:
You’re not building a note-taking system, but rather a way to capture, explore, and generate ideas. by Jorge Arango on page 181 Duly Noted
The future of the humanities is wide open
The humanities within universities are facing decline and financial prioritization, yet interest in liberal arts thrives outside academic institutions.
To understand the future of AI, look to the past
The hype about AI isn’t new. In his day, Victor Hugo was breathless about the book.
By rejecting the terms of Trump’s authoritarian bullying, Harvard University may forego $2.3 billion in funding. But they’ll lose much more if they, and we, don’t continue to stand up to it. The stakes, conveniently, are written on the university shield.
Why not publish all your notes online?
Contemplating whether to publish personal notes online reveals both the potential benefits of motivation and community engagement and the drawbacks of self-doubt and privacy concerns.
Time to concede nothing
A reflection on the enduring legacy of thinkers like Erasmus and Castellio, emphasizing the importance of perseverance in upholding values of civility and humanism amid modern strife and polarization.