Here are a couple of podcast interviews where the Zettelkasten approach to making notes is discussed in detail. Enjoy!

William Wadsworth (Exam Study Expert) interviews Sonke Ahrens, author of How to Take Smart Notes. Apple Podcasts.

Sönke Ahrens on Niklas Luhmann’s writing process:

“The main part of the writing process happened in this in-between space most people, I believe, neglect. They write notes, they read, they polish their manuscripts, but I think few people understand the importance of taking proper notes and organising them in a way that a manuscript, an argument, a chapter can evolve out of that.”

Jackson Dahl (Dialectic) interviews Billy Oppenheimer, Ryan Holiday’s research assistant, on staying attuned for clues. Apple Podcasts.

“I adopted/adapted Ryan Holiday’s notecard system, which he learned from Robert Greene. And it’s just literally boxes of 4x6 notecards. I’ve never seen Robert’s actual cards, but I have seen Ryan’s. His are filled with shorthands: a maybe a phrase, a word, or a single sentence that conveys a story from some book. They are little reminders capturing the broad strokes of something. You notate it with the book and page number so you can go back and find the specific details.”

“Niklas Luhmann also has another great idea about making notes for an ignorant stranger… Because that’s what you are when you come back to it. We think, “There’s no way I’m going to forget this story.” You come back to it, and it’s highlighted and underlined. You’re like, “What was I loving about this?” I try to make the note cards for an ignorant stranger. You should be able to pick one up and have enough context to make out what this thing is. And so in a similar way, in the margins of books, I try to do that for myself.”