Writing Slowly

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:30:00 +1000

The North Head of Sydney Harbour is always spectacular.

It’s amazing how close to the city this is, yet it feels quite distinct.

We weren’t alone; the early spring wildflowers were already out in force.

Flannel flowers: an emblem of New South Wales.

I’m inspired to come here more often.

The ferry took me home.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:52:36 +1000

Do you ever feel there’s too many ready-made answers that don’t fit your needs? Me too. That’s why I’m exploring an alternative: ’living questions’. Not quite Rilke, but also not not Rilke. writingslowly.com

#NoteTaking #LifelongLearning #Zettelkasten

Living questions

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:25:42 +1000

Living questions

Instead of chasing after easy answers, the poet Rilke urged a young artist to “live the questions”. Sound advice maybe, but which questions really matter, and how can we go about living them?

“I beg you … to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not know how to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer …” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Yes, it’s all very well ‘living the questions’ but which questions are we talking about here? All of them? Some of them? Which ones?

Maybe it’s true you can do anything, but you can’t do everything. And despite what Thomas Edison thought, you can’t be interested in everything either. So what should you focus on?

Developer Allen Pike says you should have a research question. Ok, great, but what should it be?

One possibility is to respond to questions that open up creative possibilities.

Who do you want to be, and does it resemble who you are?
When was the last time you were your own best friend?
What do you unequivocally believe in?
Who do you wake up for?
Have you found “it” yet? That something you’re looking for? Do you even know what it is?
What makes you feel like a child?
Do you welcome things you don’t understand and give clarity room to grow?
When are you your “best-self?”
Can you forgive others–truly? Can you forgive you?
Whose voice brings you peace?
Do you like who you’ve become?
Have you decided what to be when you “grow up?”
What are you holding onto? Is it time to let it go?
Whose memory do you hold the tightest?
Can you give the impossible a try?
When is enough truly enough?
Why do you fear what you fear?
Who makes you feel important?
What are you sorry for?
Why do you believe what you believe?
When is the last time you had a real conversation with God?
What is your most secret wish?
Do you wish you had a do-over?
What do you love about yourself?
How can you make today less ordinary?
What is the dictionary definition of you?
If you were stuck on an island and could bring three books, what would they be?
Are you living out of desire or circumstance?
What do you want to change about yourself? What are you waiting for?
If you could have a conversation with anyone who would you like to talk to?
Did you wake up thankful?
When is the last time you took yourself out for a date?
Who do you love? Do they know?
(Source: thisquotablelife.wordpress.com)

But such questions, interesting as they are, come from outside. They’re ready-made, not bespoke. Your answers to such questions may be useful but since they are not your own questions, many of the answers may not be all that important to you.

“We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.” –- Elaine Bellezza, on Hildegard of Bingen

So which are your questions? Which are the questions you seek to live, the questions that have the power to shape your life? Which are the questions that only you can ask, that your unique life might be the answer to?

It may feel hard to address these questions head on, because we may feel the lack of answers most keenly. Perhaps an appropriate question is: what are the questions you most need answers to? What questions do you avoid even articulating, for lack of an answer?

It may feel too heavy to consider the questions that really matter. But you already know what interests you, at least to an extent. Living questions may spring from your areas of interest. What activities and ideas and values most engage you?

Here are some prompts from the University of California Berkeley to explore your areas of interest.

If you could teach courses on any subject, at any level, what subjects would you teach?
If you had $600,000 to invest in 3 business ventures, what kinds of businesses would you invest in?
If you were an excellent writer or journalist, what topics would you want to investigate and write about?
If you could switch jobs with 3 people, what jobs would you select and why?
What local, societal, or world problems interest you?
There is a conference focusing on the topics you have always wanted to learn about: they are:
What classes or subject areas fascinate and absorb you?
What subjects do you most enjoy reading about?
What are your favorite hobbies or pastimes?
What subjects do you enjoy discussing with your friends?
What did you dream you would be when you were young?
If you could make money doing whatever you wanted, what would you do?
If you could intern at any business or organization right now, what would it be?

Source: Planning Your Future: Exploring Your Interests (berkeley.edu) | Know Yourself - Areas of Interest | Career Center (berkeley.edu)

Articulating your own living questions may be a way to ‘find the others’ — other people, that is, who are intrigued by or puzzle over the same questions as you. Asking your questions out loud, in public or semi-public, may be a means to find your people. Conversely, the inability to articulate your own questions amounts to a kind of isolation.

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” — C.G. Jung

Doing things often means doing things *with others*. Here are some questions to ask yourself.

Who do you most admire?
Who do you aspire to be like?
Who do you like spending time with?
Who do you like working with?
Who would your favourite housemate be?
If you were to make a long journey, who would you choose to travel with you?

For questions to live, they need to be articulated, therefore you need to write them down.

Uncertainty and diffidence are on your side, because like many living things, questions grow gradually from seed to maturity. The tiny germ of an idea written down is worth far more than a complete thought that remains locked in your head. The former can grow and flourish, while the latter is root bound and in danger of withering before anyone can admire it.

The American physicist Richard Feynman pointed out that writing and thinking are not separate. In his experience, writing is thinking.

Similarly, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann claimed you cannot think without writing - at least not systematically.

“Behind the Zettelkasten technique stands the experience: You can’t think without writing - at least not in a sophisticated way, selective access to memory in demanding contexts. This also means: without marking differences, one cannot think.” — ZK II: Zettel 9/8g - Niklas Luhmann-Archiv.

Living questions amount to a personal research programme, an agenda for thought and action.

“Richard Feynman¹ was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’”― Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts.

Living questions can arise organically - there is no need to force them. Living questions are not what you think you should focus on, but what you actually do focus on. They are the questions and themes you find yourself returning to.

Living questions can arise organically from a process of writing notes without hierarchy. The Zettelkasten approach to notetaking can aid this organic discovery of key questions. A Zettelkasten helps you write ‘from the bottom up’ instead of ‘from the top down’. Without any predetermined categories you take short notes and link them. At first everything seems random and scattered, but over time themes emerge by themselves, and because the notes are linked you can identify clusters of interest. This way, from fragments you can build a greater whole.

Of his own Zettelkasten, Luhmann said:

“Much peters out, many notes one will never ever see again. On the other hand there are preferred centres, where lumps grow and areas with which one works more often than others. There are large projected idea-complexes that were never executed and there are asides that keep enriching and inflating themselves; that, while located at subordinate text passages, more and more tend to dominate the system.” — Johannes Schmidt: The Zettelkasten as the second brain of Niklas Luhmann. YouTube Lecture (28:36) | Translation Transcript

He also said: “The order adapts to the development of the thinking.”

Although I’ve assumed that living questions need to be articulated in words, the starting point might be non-verbal. It might instead be visual. For example, instead of writing down your questions and desires, you could instead map your desire lines. Visakan Veerasamy says “The paths you take when you’re following your desires will reveal things to you”. And the historian Franco Moretti writes:

“A good map is worth a thousand words, cartographers say, and they are right: because it produces a thousand words: it raises doubts, ideas. It poses new questions, and forces you to look for new answers.” — Atlas of the European Novel (Source).

Living questions are not set in stone. The mathematician Richard Hamming recommended changing research areas every seven years so as to avoid becoming stuck in a self-created rut.

In fact it may make sense to think of your wider life — not just your research — in chunks of roughly seven years.

Think Of Your Life In Chunks | Dr. Ian O’Byrne.

It has often been said that while we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in one year, we underestimate what’s possible in ten.

Our path through a period of seven years to a decade may take one of several shapes. There isn’t just a single possible path.

The educationalist Bryan Mathers thinks about ‘pathways’ through learning processes. He uses the metaphors of stepping stones, collections and constellations.

Stepping stones are sequential and prescriptive.
A collection is prescriptive but non-linear.
A constellation is non-linear and descriptive.

These are different but equally valid ways of making a meaningful path through a series of locations or mileposts.

Image Credit: Pathways by Visual Thinkery is licensed under CC-BY-ND.

Some examples of living questions mapped

Questions — Emmanuel Quartey

Each of Emmanuel’s questions has its own web page (Title, Question I return to, I’m curious about, I want to, Establishing quotation, Overview, Stories, Request to send leads and resources). I really like this little framework.

Interests — Ayelet Fishbach

Psychologist Ayelet Fishbach lists her research interests in six areas: Self-control, intrinsic motivation, social connection, feedback, patience, healthy lifestyle.

Her overall approach is introduced with a quote from a profile article: “What unites Fishbach’s research is a kind of hopefulness. Her work shows how we can live up to our highest aspirations.”

Each area is described in a sentence or two and then a statement starting with “My research explores…” followed by three featured articles.

Tom Critchlow’s map of inquiry

A clickable map of four overlapping subject areas, linking to web pages for each of 18 projects. Anyway, it used to be clickable, which was cool.

Patrick Collison’s Questions

The co-founder of Stripe lists 23 interesting questions, similar to lists by bloggers Alexey Guzey and Gwern.

Summary

All this talk about ’living the questions’ can be simplified and summarised. It really adds up to what another poet, Mary Oliver called ‘Instructions for living a life’:

“Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

Well, I’ve been accumulating notes on ‘living questions’ for quite a while now, and I realised it was about time to pull them together and indeed to tell about it. I hope you find at least some of this useful. And if you have your own set of living questions you’d like to share, I’d love to hear about it.

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters.

To receive a weekly email digest of all the posts here and nothing else, you can easily subscribe.

I’ve argued elsewhere that whether or not it was Richard Feynman, for which I’ve found no evidence, it was certainly Richard Hamming. Two Richards, both involved with mathematics, both of whom worked on the Manhattan project. But only Richard Hamming presented ‘You and your Research’: “Most great people also have 10 to 20 problems they regard as basic and of great importance, and which they currently do not know how to solve. They keep them in their mind, hoping to get a clue as to how to solve them. When a clue does appear they generally drop other things and get to work immediately on the important problem. Therefore they tend to come in first, and the others who come in later are soon forgotten. I must warn you, however, that the importance of the result is not the measure of the importance of the problem. The three problems in physics—anti-gravity, teleportation, and time travel—are seldom worked on because we have so few clues as to how to start. A problem is important partly because there is a possible attack on it and not just because of its inherent importance.” ↩︎

Eleven urgent note-making questions are now finding answers

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:56:19 +1000

From time to time I venture opinionated answers to questions people have about making notes — and right now is one of those times.

NB: A Zettelkasten is a simply the German term for a box with paper slips in, a once-popular way for scholars and writers to make and keep their notes. By extension it’s the name of a contemporary method for making digital notes too; but is there a Zettelkasten method?

Question: What made it click for you, and what do you wish you knew before starting?

I’ve been reading about Zettelkasten for a while and keep going back and forth. On one hand it seems like the most thoughtful way to build a knowledge base. On the other hand every time I try to set it up I spend more time on the system than on actual thinking. Genuinely curious — what made it click for you? And what do you wish you knew before starting? I’m also doing a small research project on how people manage knowledge and what frustrates them most. If you want to share more structured thoughts. Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answers:

what made it click for you?

Workable modularity. My ADHD makes long-form writing a chore, so it’s been really helpful to find a process to make lots of bits add up to something worthwhile. I’m not sure everyone has this same issue though.

And what do you wish you knew before starting?

That the ‘rules’ are actually very simple and that keeping it simple is the key.

Plain text (Markdown) notes.
Each note is a single idea with a unique ID.
Each note deserves a clear title.
Notes link meaningfully to other notes.

That’s it, and I wish I hadn’t tried everything else first.

If you want to share more structured thoughts.

Do I ever?

Question: A second brain for my life?

I know that zettelkasten is used mainly for academia and creating written work but could I use it to create a second brain for my life and for learning subjects related to engineering? I’m rather a forgetful person and I often miss what’s important about other people, things I’ve learnt and even things about myself. I believe that this system could force me to think and help to create long-term memory based on system of small connections. My goal is not any measurable output like writing an article or a book, but to not lose myself in the world of people, ideas and information. Is there a better system/solution for my problem or should I try out Zettelkasten for that? Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answer: Yes you can use a Zettelkasten for personal knowledge management, but in this case, a better fit might be a personal wiki.

A Zettelkasten breaks your thoughts apart to build new arguments (analysis and synthesis). In contrast a personal wiki keeps related thoughts together while still preserving the benefits of linked, self-authored thinking.

Strict Zettelkasten modularity, one idea per note, exists to help writers reassemble notes into articles or books. If your aim is simply to retain knowledge and track your life, forcing every thought into an atomic note requires a friction that may be unnecessary for your use case. A personal wiki lets you keep longer, evolving pages while still keeping some of the core habits of the Zettelkasten approach. I ultimately found long wiki-style pages hard to use in my writing process, but not everyone intends to write.

But even if you do go for a wiki there are still some Zettelkasten habits that might be useful:

1. Don’t just collect information, process it too

It’s tempting just to clip text or save links. But you’ll probably forget why you did it. Write notes about concepts or people or whatever in your own words. Translating ideas into your own language encourages active recall and builds long-term retention. Crucially the ideas become yours rather than someone else’s. That’s where a lot of the value lies.

2. Create dense, contextual links

Skip the heavy folder hierarchies. Instead, link pages directly within your sentences so notes connect through natural relationships. This mimics (to some extent) how human memory works and it makes retrieval fairly easy.

3. Let the structure emerge from the bottom up

Don’t bother designing a master template on day one. Some people use classifications like the Dewey Decimal system. I haven’t found this useful because for most of these categories, you ain’t gonna need it. Create individual pages for specific topics, projects, or people first. It’s only worth building broader index pages when you have enough notes to justify them.

4. Decouple your notes from chronological time

There’s a risk that a daily-log-style wiki might hide patterns over time. Dedicated pages for ongoing subjects let you aggregate scattered details about a person or topic into one living document. I’m not saying don’t journal. I like journaling. A lot. But I transclude sections of my journal into separate notes to help me spot the wider patterns.

5. Iterate to improve as you go

Whatever system or app you use, just start, and make gradual improvements to your system as you work with it. There’s nothing like doing it wrongly to clarify what you need to do differently. Few decisions, if any, will be fatal. I favour the simplest possible and least locked down approaches so I can shift without finding I’m locked in to someone’s proprietary system. But even then you can probably still escape if necessary.

Oh, I nearly forgot to say that I’m also a rather forgetful person and I’ve found that almost any form of at least minimally structured writing (rather than just totally random notes) has been really helpful. Another thing that really helps is a regular review of my notes.

Question: Struggling with reference numbers?

Im a PhD student in Literature, Ive recently discovered the Zettelkasten method and fell in love very quickly. One problem, I have so much doubt favour my coding system. At the moment I’m using 1.1.1.1(a/b/c), however this is pointless because I genuinely dont have references for each point. Does anyone have any examples of their own tracking system or keys? I’m stuck before I properly begin. Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answer: The numbering just shows you where you had a clear run of connected ideas, and this is an entirely subjective judgement, which is barely worth getting concerned about. You can’t really ‘do it wrong’.

To start, think of it as ‘running numbers’. The first note is number 1, the second is number 2, the third is number 3, and so on. It couldn’t be easier. This is a very standard approach to library cataloguing, especially for acquisitions, where the lowest number is the oldest acquisition and the highest number is the newest.

So far, so simple. Niklas Luhmann took this a step further, but this next step is also fairly simple.

Let’s say you have six different ideas and you make it all the way to note 6, when you suddenly realise that you’re not done with the subject of note 2. Now you have a choice. You can now:

just write note 7 and link it back to note 2, or
you can label it as note 2a instead.

The same goes for note 2a as well. If you want to write more, you can now choose whether to make it:

note 2b (because it follows on from the idea in note 2), or
note 2a1 (because it follows directly from note 2a, not just note 2), or else
to label it note 7, because it’s simply a new note with a new idea.

That’s it. That’s the whole system.

Observe that the numbering just shows you where you had a clear run of connected ideas, and this is an entirely subjective judgement, which is barely worth getting concerned about. You can’t really ‘do it wrong’. Further, the decisions about numbering hardly paint you into a corner, since you can always link notes across this labelling, and despite it. For example, you can always link note 7 to note 2, which is similar but not identical to creating a note 2a instead. Either way you have formed a useful connection between your notes.

People argue about how much use they get from this kind of numbering, which is commonly referred to as ‘Folgezettel’ (follow-on notes). Niklas Luhmann clearly seems to have benefitted from it (his Zettelkasten was pre-digital though). But even so he also noted that the important thing is that each note should have ‘a firm, fixed place’ (Stellordnung). In other words, a fixed ID to allow cross-references to be accurate.

My own approach is to use unique timestamps. Again, these are really just slightly fancy running numbers. On reflection, the timestamp information is marginally less useful than the Folgezettel information would be. I can’t really see ‘chains of thought’ at all. But the key remains: to make useful links between notes, and to ensure each note has a unique and permanent identifier.

Question: Is there a simplified Zettelkasten approach?

I’m trying to find a system where I can organize my thoughts, find patterns and also help with my projects. “Full” Zettelkasten seems a little overkill, tbh. Do you guys know any other method or maybe a simplified Zettelkasten approach? Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answer: Yes, there is a simple approach, which is to start really simply and to add complexity only when you’re comfortable - or never.

I turned to the Zettelkasten approach because I have ADHD and get overwhelmed/bored by needless complexity. This is what has worked for me. I grew my Zettelkasten organically, in stages — and only moved forward when I was fully comfortable with what I was doing and could see in practical terms what benefits the next stage would offer. Stage one is the only essential stage. The rest follow naturally, or not at all.

Stage one: the basic principles

I have a few simple rules that I mostly stick to.

Plain text (Markdown) notes.
Each note is a single idea with a unique ID.
Each note deserves a clear title.
Notes link meaningfully to other notes.

That’s it. This effectively is a Zettelkasten, even though it’s very simple. With this you will go far. You don’t really need the other stages. They’re all just embellishments to the basic principles.

Stage two: reference notes and main notes

After you’ve done this for a bit, you’ll probably notice that it’s useful to have two kinds of notes:

reference notes, that give bibliographic details of a source you’re reading, watching or listening to; and
main notes, that make a single point.

You might well find you’ve already been doing this, but it won’t hurt to get a little more systematic about it. Each reference note will link to a set of main notes that relate to that reference source. And each main note that refers to a source will link back to a reference note, so you can find all the notes that relate to that source. That’s pretty much it, and you don’t really need the next stages.

Stage three: hub notes and structure notes

This is where you notice that a reference note acts as a kind of hub for your thoughts inspired by that particular source. You realise that you can have other kinds of hub note too if you want. Like a note that identifies a major concept, which links to a set of further notes that all explore that concept in more detail.

And while a hub note is pretty much just an unordered list of notes sharing a common theme, you can also create structure notes, where the list is ordered in some way, and is on its way to becoming an outline of a piece of writing. That’s it. You don’t need the next stage, which is…

Stage four: four simple folders

Bob Doto, author of A System for Writing, has suggested four folders are all you need for a complete Zettelkasten and I’ve found this advice helpful. Here they are:

in-box (fleeting notes you haven’t yet fully written)
reference notes
main notes
sleeping (the overflow from your in-box, consisting of notes you’ve pretty much abandoned, but that you might get back to some day).

More than just folders, these represent a simple workflow. Basic notes start in the in-box, and move to another folder as you work on them, or else abandon them. The principle is that it’s better to write a super-crude note for the in-box than to write nothing, and it’s better to put a note to sleep than to worry about whether it’s ‘complete’ or not. The notes you work on are the notes that engage your attention.

Now there’s just one more stage, in which you start writing.

Stage five: produce something

Some people treat their Zettelkasten as a knowledge bank, and just keep saving it all up, but I prefer to make regular withdrawals by creating things from my notes. Some say that making notes is valuable in itself, because note-making is part of the thinking process.

Fine, I agree, but now since I’ve done the thinking via my notes, I might as well have something to show for it. The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann and other twentieth century, pre-digital scholars used their notes to write articles and books. It wasn’t just a database without a purpose. As you produce things, you’ll be able to fine-tune your Zettelkasten to serve your unique purpose. You might well stick with the four basic principles of stage one, because in my opinion, the purpose of a Zettelkasten is to do something with it.

Now if you’ve read this far and are thinking ‘why did he make it so complicated?’ just go back to stage one and consider those four basic principles. That really is the core.

Question: How do you bridge the gap between ‘academic’ notes and your Zettelkasten?

I’m a big fan of Sönke Ahrens’ “How to Take Smart Notes” and the Zettelkasten methodology, but I’m curious about how other students handle the intersection between their college coursework and their long-term knowledge base… My question for you: Do you keep your college notes completely separate from your personal Zettelkasten, or do you mix them? If you mix them, how do you prevent your vault from being cluttered with “temporary” exam-specific info versus long-term knowledge? Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answer: My experience is that there’s a big difference between undergraduate style study where you mostly have to remember ‘facts’ and the ‘correct’ answer, and honours or postgrad work, where you’re researching for yourself.

In the case of the former, I found my notes to be really specific and strongly focused on exactly what I needed to know just to pass exams and assignments. So I decided to firewall my Zettelkasten and keep my study notes separately. This was probably the right decision, since I hardly had time to scratch myself, let alone take thoughtful notes. A lot of the material was literally just for one test, with no sense that I’d ever need to know it again.
A down-side to keeping these notes separately is that this knowledge now doesn’t cross-pollinate with the rest of my Zettelkasten, but since I’ve kept these study notes I can always go back to them if I feel the need. But as predicted, I mostly haven’t felt the need to do so. Also:

When a specific topic from a class really interests me or feels relevant to my broader understanding of AI, I “extract” it into an atomic note in my main vault.

This is the way to go.

I expect a few people will have a different perspective, but this is my experience.

Question: I spent a year building my graph. It looks great. It doesn’t move me forward

A question about the usefulness of graph views in tools such as Obsidian. The original post was deleted but the comments are still available at Reddit/Zettelkasten.

My answer: There are useful things to be done with these graph views.

For those not yet put off, I’d recommend Arthur Perret’s article What’s the point of the graph view?, and the response by Hendrik Erz, Quo Vadis PKM - as well as Eleanor Konik’s It’s not just a pretty gimmick, which she mentioned in the comments here.

There are useful things to be done with these graph views, though I must admit I myself have not done them.

Question: How did Luhmann come up with those 11 super-themes around which he organized his entire zettelkasten?

In ZK2, how did Luhmann come up with those 11 super-themes around which he organized his entire zettelkasten? [A comment relating to a video of researcher Johannes Schmidt describing the Zettelkasten of Niklas Luhmann]

My answer: Luhmann’s second Zettelkasten (ZKII) was arranged according to eleven top-level categories, based on subjects or themes associated with his singular major project, a theory of society.

Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist who wrote about 90,000 notes in two collections. Here are Luhmann’s top-level categories for his second Zettelkasten:

Organisation theory
Functionalism
Decision theory
Amt: office, post, job, duty
Formal / informal order
Sovereignty / State
Isolated/individual terms, problems
Economy
Ad hoc notes
Archaic societies
High cultures

In his lecture on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, Johannes Schmidt observes that these headings are far from comprehensive. Instead they strongly echo the progression of Luhmann’s scholarly interests over many years.

“Looking at these you quickly see that this does not describe a certain body of knowledge to work through like in the first Zettelkasten. If you know a bit about the development of Luhmann’s theory you quickly recognize this as a historic record of research interests.” [Source doc]

Schmidt claims the first five sections are an organised summary of Luhmann’s research interests in the 1960s, while the later categories are less organised and more ad hoc.

But even in the supposedly more systematic sections, there is a marked unevenness to the amount of material. For example, section 21 of category 5. — Formal/informal order — is labelled ‘Functionalism’. This section contains between 15,000 and 16,000 notes out of 67,000 total (more than 1/5). In marked contrast, there are other sections that are almost empty.

And the top-level Zettelkasten categories don’t align with the major contours of his theory. These are the subsystems of society that I can clearly identify from Luhmann’s work. They don’t really match his top level Zettelkasten categories. Im not saying this is any kind of problem, just making an observation:

Economy (Payment/Non-payment),
Law (Legal/Illegal),
Science (True/Untrue),
Politics (Power/Opposition),
Religion (Immanence/Transcendence),
Art (Fit/Unfit),
Education (Better/Worse),
Mass Media (Information/Non-information),
Health (Ill/Healthy),
Intimacy (Love/Non-love)

But Luhmann didn’t have this mapped out in 1963 when he started his second Zettelkasten. He derived it from working in his Zettelkasten for many years. I see this as a fantastic example of someone working on what mathematician Richard Hamming would have called their 10-20 basic problems — but that’s a story for another day.

Question: How long should a note be?

I understand the core of zettelkasten is writing atomic notes so that as they link they build an organic and ever evolving web of your knowledge and so on and so forth. My question however is how small should atomic be? I’ve read that if it’s longer than three paragraphs, you should probably split it into more notes and link them up. Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answer: There’s no fixed length of a note. What matters is the difference between simplexity and complexity.

A simplex note, typically involving a single idea or concept, can be re-used in different contexts with little effort. A complex note tends to involve several ideas braided together, and to reuse that note you have to untangle the threads and separate them out. It’s easier to write that complex note but the complexity leads to more work later.

This concept of ‘separation of concerns’ is 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, which you can see in my article: I found a way to create order from my jumbled ideas. I’ve found it’s also a really helpful principle for writing useful notes.

But I didn’t and couldn’t appreciate this difference until I’d written quite a few notes and tried to reuse them. Eventually it clicked: the point of ‘atomic notes’ isn’t to write short notes (although that’s OK); it’s to write modular notes.

You work out the right length by noticing what happens with your longer notes when you try to use them.

Question: Can you work with a hybrid digital Zettelkasten/ physical notebook system?

My answer: Pen and paper is still great, especially while reading, which is why I haven’t gone completely digital.

Here’s what I do with my notebooks:

Treat each notebook as a cite-able source, exactly like any other source.
Number each notebook and every page.
- I number my notebook pages starting from p.1 each new notebook, but if I was to start over I might instead follow cyberneticist W. Ross Ashby and number all pages in one long continuous sequence. He made it to 25 volumes and p.7189.
Refer to all notebook notes by unique ID, e.g. “Notebook 2, p.30”.
- All links are made in my digital Zettelkasten, not in the notebooks. If a link is worth making, it’s worth writing a short note about. Otherwise I end up with enigmatic links, the purpose of which I’ve forgotten. I suspect this is a potential problem with references like ‘> (C.08.notebookB: 210 - Stiegler 2)’ - but I might have misunderstood this.
For drawings and mindmaps that are worthy standalone artifacts, I photograph them and then link to the image in my Zettelkasten (I have a ‘media’ folder for this purpose, as my main Zettelkasten is text files only).

This system requires me to keep all my notebooks, even when they’re mostly full of ephemeral or fleeting notes. But I’ve found this is OK. Old ’temporary’ notes have later proved to be valuable so I tend to keep them all. But also, I try to write my ‘main’ or ‘permanent’ notes in such as way that they make full sense even without access to the original source, so if I did lose my notebooks, it wouldn’t be a disaster for my Zettelkasten.

I tried just having paper notes but ultimately, full-text search was just too useful, which is why I’ve mostly gone digital. I also find semi-automatic backlinks, an ability to find ‘orphans’ (notes that are not directly linked from another note), and an ability to find ‘missing’ notes (notes that don’t yet exist, but have been linked to from other notes) really useful.

But pen and paper is still great, especially while reading, which is why I haven’t gone completely digital.

Question: What exactly becomes a permanent/atomic note?

My problem is simple: Where do I exactly draw the line between what should be made into atomic notes (externalized) and what should be memorized (internalized) or written in some other form (another form of externalization)?
…Niklas Luhmann wrote an average of only 6 atomic notes per day. I just cannot wrap my head around what filters he put down. Everything seems important. Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answer: Personally I don’t use the ‘internalized’ category you mention, because I have a very average memory so I forget almost everything I attempt to remember. That means it’s easier just to write things down.

The filter that’s hiding in plain sight is that all Luhmann’s notes (in his second Zettelkasten, ZKII anyway) related closely to his scholarly project of writing a new ’theory of society’. He either didn’t write any notes that couldn’t directly inform his sociological work, or else he only wrote about what he’d made notes of. Either way he seems to have been filtering rather strongly. This relates to your point number one, which you say doesn’t solve your problem¹. I’d suggest it might.

But personally I don’t use the ‘internalized’ category you mention, because I have a very average memory so I forget almost everything I attempt to remember. That means it’s easier just to write things down (’externalized’?).

That leaves two different kinds of notes:

Things I might write about (these go in my Zettelkasten); and
Things I almost certainly won’t write about, such as shopping lists (these are not for the Zettelkasten).

Question: Should I use structure notes?

I have a question about structure notes. If my goal is not writing should i use them in my zettelkasten? Reddit/Zettelkasten

My answer: Even if you’re not writing to publish, this process of working out different levels of abstraction can be very useful – it can really clarify your thinking and understanding.

Ideas work at different levels of abstraction. A series of simple atomic notes, where each note relates to a single idea, can be combined to create a note at a higher level of generalization. A hub note would perhaps just list the component notes, but a structure note provides added structure (yes, really!), to suggest how a small group of simple ideas combines to form a more complex idea. Even if you’re not writing to publish, this process of working out different levels of abstraction can be very useful – it can really clarify your thinking and understanding.

Consider a student writing notes about blood clotting. Their initial note might cover matters such as platelet aggregation, coagulation cascades, anticoagulant proteins, and clot breakdown. So is this one idea (blood clotting) or four (the ones I just mentioned)?

In this example, I’d suggest writing a single structure note, with links to four further notes at a lower level of abstraction. Here’s an example:

How blood balances clotting and flow

Blood must prevent hemorrhage without causing thrombosis. Several mechanisms achieve this balance:

[[Platelets form hemostatic plug]]: platelets aggregate at injury sites and create an initial seal. This triggers [[Thrombin converts fibrinogen to fibrin]], which generates a stable mesh that reinforces the plug. As a safeguard, [[Protein C prevents excessive clotting]] when it inactivates coagulation factors when clotting is no longer needed. Finally, [[Plasmin breaks down clots]] after tissue repair completes and restores normal flow.

When these mechanisms fail, bleeding disorders or thrombosis results.

Notice that this note describes a process (blood clotting), which none of the more specific notes alone could realistically cover. That’s the extra value the structure note delivers. Notice also that the note-writing process is reversible. You could start with a structure note, then break it down into its component parts and write related notes at a lower level of abstraction, or you could start with one of the more basic notes and then work up to the structure note.

For my money, this is one of the major benefits of the Zettelkasten approach: it’s like an ongoing lesson in analysis and synthesis across different levels of abstraction.

Finally, a disclaimer: please don’t rely on this example during your next medical emergency involving blood loss. I have little real idea how blood clotting actually works, so I made it up.

Thanks for reading this far. Amazing! You are a true knight (or dame) of the order of the Zettelkasten. But what if you didn’t find your own question answered here? That’s a shame, but don’t despair. Here’s a previous edition of the answers to note-making questions service:

Some urgent notemaking questions find answers

And you can always hit me up on micro.blog or Mastodon or BlueSky for a geeky conversation. Oh, and you can subscribe to the weekly email too.

“1. The idea must contribute to an end, which can be anything from writing a whole book to solving a problem to strategizing for your life." ↩︎

The strange return of the continuous need to make sense of things

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:50:24 +1000

The idea of reading continuous narrative may be relatively recent. For example, the Bible is arranged in many places with a long sequential narrative, and some have seen it as ‘the greatest story ever told’. But liturgical practice, both Jewish and Christian, is to split this extended narrative up into excerpted readings (’the reading’ or ’the lesson’; ’the portion’ or parashah).

The novel, meanwhile, encourages readers to assume continuous reading is the natural way of things, even though many novels even into the 20th century were actually serialised on first publication. Here’s Robert Darnton on the significance of fragmentary reading.

“Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end (unless they are digital natives and click through texts on machines), early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your own personality. . . By selecting and arranging snippets from a limitless stock of literature, early modern Englishmen gave free play to a semi-conscious process of ordering experience. The elective affinities that bound their selection into patterns reveal an epistemology — a process of knowing — at work below the surface”
— (Robert Darnton, “Extraordinary Commonplaces,” New York Review of Books 47 (20)[December 21, 2000] 82, 86).

I note this because these days it feels like the age of fragmentary reading has well and truly returned. Every medium has cracked into splinters. Along with this fragmentation comes a revival of the need for a continuous effort to make sense of an increasingly disordered experience. As a result there’s a great need to work out new ways of knowing.

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 20:16:02 +1000

A question I asked on Hyde’s under/over:

Before we find our own voice, we usually copy our mentors or heroes. Who was the teacher or model that inspired you when you started blogging, and how did following their example eventually help you find your own style?

And here’s software engineer Alex Hyett’s excellent answer.

#indieweb #blogging

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 12:36:07 +1000

📷 🍳Sunday morning is time for shakshuka.

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 12:33:53 +1000

Currently reading: Wise Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life by Frank Tallis 📚

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:34:40 +1000

I’m delighted to be featured in Hyde’s intriguing series Under/Over, where bloggers are asked for their thoughts on what they find under-rated and over-rated. I have opinions on Zettelkasten, POSSE, solitude, journalling, pavlova(!) and more. Read on at lazybea.rs.

#indieweb

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:17:59 +1000

Currently reading: Wise. Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life by Frank Tallis 📚

One reason I write:

“We remember only a tiny fraction of existence. We have forgotten most of what it is like to be alive, long before we die. Oblivion starts seeping into our heads as soon as we are self-aware.” (p.44)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:09:10 +1000

I made the twenty photographs that accompany the text of Shu Ha Ri as part of a personal learning process, inspired by David Ulrich’s Zen Camera. I was influenced by Empire of Signs by Roland Bathes. As the author said of that work, “The text does not ‘gloss’ the images, which do not ‘illustrate’ the text.” During the COVID pandemic it was impossible to travel far, but several Japanese-style gardens were within reach. The images included here are of three in particular: Himeji Garden in Adelaide, Edogawa Commemorative Garden in East Gosford, and Auburn Botanic Garden in Sydney.

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:57:07 +1000

📷 A pair of cockatoos, feeding each other while scavenging.

#BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:41:33 +1000

The Atlantic suggests that the end of reading is here. It used to be easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But now its easier to imagine the end of literacy than the end of YouTube.

At the End of the World (1921) with Betty Compson and Milton Sills. Public domain.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:00:00 +1000

Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk’s flight
On the empty sky. – Ursula K. LeGuin

You might care to check out the shortlist for the 2026 Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction.

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 03:00:00 +1000

Cockatoos? Five sulphur-crested cockatoos, foraging beneath the Norfolk Island pines of Botany Bay? Well, all right, if you insist.

#BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends

Learning to tell a bright cow from a dull one

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 12:23:10 +1000

You might be wondering how anyone can grow from being an advanced learner to becoming an expert. It might seem like an impossible step to climb.

According to the traditional Japanese approach of Shu Ha Ri, a vital step in the learning process is to so absorb the rules that the student transcends them. The rules and conventions become second nature. But what does that look like in practice?

Here’s a great example from the world of veterinary medicine, where veterinary students were trained to identify whether an animal is bright (i.e healthy) or dull (i.e. sickening):

“Eventually, the students get good enough at evaluating bright vs. dull. What’s interesting is that, by then, they’ve lost the rules. What was once effortful and algorithmic is now perceptual and automatic. They can see things you and I do not.” – Oddly-Influenced

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.

And if you found this article interesting you might like to sign up to the Writing Slowly weekly email digest. You’ll receive all the week’s posts in a handy email format which you might prefer. But this site does of course have an RSS feed.

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 11:55:20 +1000

News just in from 2009:

“It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter.” – Techcrunch.

Well that didn’t exactly age well. And now there’s an RSS resurgence in the air – from Dave Winer, of course, who made RSS immortal by giving it an audio payload and thereby inventing podcasting.

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 11:43:50 +1000

We’ve been having our regular family disagreement about thinning our bookshelves, which made this article timely: How and why to cull your book collection [via Kottke.org].

On reflection, our bookshelves are very much a working library, more about flow than about stock. Most books pass through.

Odysseus: A name that spells trouble

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:58 +1000

Since we’re currently lost somewhere in the middle of wars that seemingly have no end-point, and arguably no point, I wonder just what film director Christopher Nolan will make of The Odyssey, his blockbuster movie of which comes out mid-2026.

After I watched another recent movie version of the story, The Return, I found out about the work of psychologist Jonathan Shay with Vietnem veterans. He wrote two books linking the works of Homer – The Iliad and The Odyssey – with the modern experience of warfare and with the travails of homecoming.

Two quotes from Jonathan Shay’s work stood out particularly. First, this one about war-induced PTSD:

“Combat veterans with unhealed PTSD have the greatest difficulty conceiving of any struggle apart from killing and dying. Passionate struggle conducted within rules of safety and fairness simply doesn’t make sense to them or seems a hollow charade. For them it is psychologically impossible to win a struggle without killing or to lose without dying, and they do not want to do either.” – Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam.

This was depicted brilliantly and chillingly in The Return, which premiered in 2024. Ralph Feinnes’ Odysseus seems both haunted by his violent past, and doomed to relive it. Classicist Joel Christensen didn’t love The Return, and I understand why he called it a shabby, Cliff’s Notes version of the Odyssey. But I felt the movie at least illuminated some of the PTSD aspects of war that Shay describes – enduring trauma less as a disorder than as an injury.

Then there was this quote, which really made me think:

“A shared narrative future – as expressed in such statements as “Yes, I’ll come to the picnic next Friday” – defines socially shared predictability of behavior. Prolonged contact with the enemy teaches that predictability is fatal. Being unpredictable is a basic survival skill in combat, where the enemy is ever observant. Many of the veterans in our program take different routes to the clinic every time they come.” – Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam.

On reading this, I thought of the epithets, the numerous descriptions applied to Odysseus. In The Odyssey he is introduced as ’the man of many ways’ (polytropos). The meaning of this name has been argued about ever since antiquity. Is it a compliment, as in ‘well-turned’, or a criticism, as in ‘shifty’?

Either way there’s a certain elusiveness to Odysseus. The point is, I’d never before encountered the idea that perhaps this unpredictability might relate directly to the trauma of the Trojan War he has survived while seeing his comrades perish (and often being the cause of their deaths too). I used to think it meant he was cunningly shape-shifting, crafting his words and actions to be ‘all things to everyone’. But if so, why exactly is he like this? When I think of the veterans taking multiple paths to the clinic, the image sheds light on Odysseus’s detour-heavy, periegetic journey home, and his frequent reluctance to admit to his hosts who he is. He’s trying to survive the war, even long after it’s over. The Return captured this well, I felt. Odysseus doesn’t so much remain in the shadows as become a shadow himself, returned to the palace but reluctant to claim his place, as though he knows his name can only ever mean trouble¹.

Well, another year, another interpretation of Homer. Apparently Christopher Nolan’s movie cost more than ten times as much as Uberto Pasolini’s film did. It will be interesting to see whether it’s ten times as incisive.

Each age makes its own version of the Odyssey. Here’s Pinturicchio’s The Return of Ulysses (1508-09).

Further reading:

Austin, Norman. “Name Magic in the ‘Odyssey.’” California Studies in Classical Antiquity, vol. 5, 1972, pp. 1–19. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/2…

Christensen, Joel. “Terrible, Wonderful Odysseus: The Meanings of his Epithets, His Name(s) and How We Read Him.” Sententiae Antiquiae, 2018.

Christensen, Joel P. Why Odysseus?: Survivor, Scoundrel, (Anti)hero. Palgrave Macmillan, 2026.

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Emily Wilson, W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Pucci, Pietro. Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad.” Cornell University Press, 1987. JSTOR.

Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. Atheneum, 1994.

Shay, Jonathan. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. Scribner, 2002.

See also: No Other Odysseus - ‘a collection of links to materials on Odysseus and the Odyssey.’

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters. It’s a short and accessible introduction to the concept, available now.

And if you liked this article, why not subscribe to the weekly Writing Slowly email digest?

That the name of Odysseus should spell Trouble was first suggested in Dimock, George E., Jr. “The Name of Odysseus.” The Hudson Review, vol. 9, no. 1, 1956, pp. 52–70. ↩︎

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:59:35 +1000

Watched: The Return 🍿

Odysseus brings the war home with him. As Simone Weil said of The Iliad, the true hero is force itself.

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:36:48 +1000

Happy 250th birthday, USA. The defining image in my lifetime of American culture is the hooded man at Abu Ghraib prison. Well, you’re still young and “finding a place to be/ in the early days of a better civilization,” as Dennis Lee’s poem put it. Here’s to the next 250. It’ll improve; it has to.

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:39:40 +1000

The ascended Christ of this mural at St. Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague seems so happy I couldn’t help but think of the song by The Postal Service:

They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now, they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now, but we’ll stay.

The heart of the craft: an encounter with the spirit of Shokunin

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 08:57:51 +1000

“There’s something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there’s always something you can learn.” – Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973.

I read this quote in the epilogue to Matt Alt’s book, Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World. (London: Constable, 2021).

It could be a summary of shokunin kishitsu (職人気質), the spirit of traditional Japanese artesanal culture.

In fact, Jiro Ono the consummate master of sushi, featured in the acclaimed documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and who was still going strong at the age of 100, says something very similar in the movie:

“I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more.”

This yearning, to learn, to achieve more is kojoshin (向上心), or aspiration, and it’s an integral element of the shokunin spirit.

Shokunin (職人) is a Japanese concept translating to “craftsman” or “artisan,” but its cultural meaning runs much deeper. It describes a master of a trade who dedicates their life to the relentless pursuit of perfection, continuously refining their skills, and feeling a deep, altruistic responsibility to their community and craft.

On visiting Japan, it was clear to me that alongside the relentless modernity, there’s also a deep respect for traditional craftwork at an extremely high level of skill. People are devoted to this and it’s marvelous to see.

Here’s the master woodcraftsman, Shuji Nakagawa, who makes exquisite wooden utensils:

“When I was a child, my grandfather was making 200 wooden buckets a month! Wooden buckets were used in every household for everything from wash buckets to rice trays. By the time I was grown, plastic had replaced them and my father had fewer than 20 orders a month. I knew that if I was unable to think outside the box, our beautiful heritage would be lost. This is not about nostalgia. What is more important is that we not lose sight of the original ideals that guided our ancestors–that deep, connection to the natural world through the materials we use and an awareness that our lives are but a moment in a continuum of the craftsman’s tradition.” — Shuji Nakagawa. Shokunin: Five Kyoto Artisans Look to the Future – Portland Japanese Garden

It’s interesting to witness the way the Japanese have revived and re-imagined their traditional crafts, and attempted with some success to strengthen this culture of dedication to perpetual improvement into the 21st Century.

“The word Shokunin (職人) means “artisan,” a word that signifies a person who has achieved a high level of accomplishment and a deep commitment to carry on the legacy of a traditional craft. A shokunin who works in the 21st century is an artisan whose work shows respect for the traditions of fine craftsmanship that have been handed down for generations—the handmade tools, the time-honored techniques, the finest natural materials, and the patience and indomitable spirit needed to carry on a painstaking craft.” - Shokunin: Five Kyoto Artisans Look to the Future – Portland Japanese Garden

Some links

Some reading

The Beauty of Everyday Things, by Soetsu Yanagi. Classic essays on Japanese folk crafts (mingei). Penguin Classics 2018.
Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town by Hannah Kirshner. New York: Viking Press

Some viewing

Jiro Dreams of Sushi. The now classic documentary on a culinary obsession
Shokunin: Japanese Arts and Crafts Across Borders
The Last Artisans of Japan
The Reluctant Master www.youtube.com/watch
American Shokunin (Ryan Neil bonsai craftsman) www.youtube.com/watch

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now. And if you found this article interesting you might like to sign up to the Writing Slowly weekly email digest. You’ll receive all the week’s posts in a handy email format which you might prefer.

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 17:53:54 +1000

📚 Spotted in a charity store, the most ambitious book title I can remember. Can anyone beat it?

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 08:36:10 +1000

Samuel Johnson, writing on hope.
(More)