Thread by @maggied

Saturday afternoon musings about Zettelkasten, knowledge synthesis and Roam 🧵

cc: @beauhaan, @brandontoner, @m_ashcroft, @rossopeter_, @JoelChan86

When I first started using Roam I was really excited by the idea of having permanent reference notes for my future self. But when I started writing these notes out I lost steam because I didn't know how to organize them or view the links between them easily.

In December I watched a youtube via by @beauhaan where he showed how to use an index for his zettelkasten method, which eventually evolved into the @RoamBookClub 3 and 4 full fledged course:

Months later I got around to dumping over 200 of my notes and "seedlings" (basically just page refs to reference ideas) into an index: loom.com/share/a10a6208… and wrote scripts to help keep track of page refs and finding "orphan" notes: github.com/maggiedelano/r…

Still, I was resistant to some ways that Beau uses the zettel index. He uses block references to connect different notes together, and I was pretty stuck on using page references. Without good graph view in Roam this really limited the capabilities of the index.

On the Roam slack @shauna_gm made the good point that one could use page references to refer to zettels while writing, and block references to refer to relevant notes in the zettelkasten. This allows one to easily "hone in" on zettel specific connections vs. references in text.

(I'm pretty sure Beau also tried to explain this to me at one point too but I didn't get it at the time...)

So anyway today I tried making my first permanent note using the structure Beau developed. I really enjoyed it and want to share a bit about what "clicked" for me and how we can think about zettels and synthesis.

First, the zk is about CONNECTIONS over CONTENT. It's not that content doesn't matter, it's that connections enable creativity and deeper insight. This method priorities making the connections easier to traverse. The content is still there, tucked away.

https://twitter.com/beauhaan/status/1392909993171632135?s=20

All the stuff that I wanted to put on my pretty permanent notes can still exist; it goes under literature notes. But, I also get the fleeting notes "for free" in the same hierarchy, rather than having them strewn in the back references somewhere. This is nice.

When is content more important than connections? I think content matters the most in work that needs to be "grounded" in literature, and particularly when that work is shared with other people, e.g. collaborators or publications. Then each person can relate to the content.

Connections are more personal and facilitate the generation of ideas, which can support synthesis. Then synthesis can nest on top of the zettelkasten, or even be mixed with it. The zettelkasten is the beginning, not the end.

https://twitter.com/beauhaan/status/1392910498086129665?s=20

Shorter musings:

You can use prefixes in the permanent note title to indicate "maturity:" this allows one to jot down ideas quickly and not experience dread and overwhelm in developing the system. I style mine using CSS maggiedelano.com/2020/09/05/roa…

https://twitter.com/beauhaan/status/1392915637966675971

You can link "favorite problems" as relevant notes. I have a dedicated page for my favorite problems and I started using block refs any time I refer to them in my zettekasten.

I also wrote a short little note nested under each block reference in relevant notes to say why I thought the connection was meaningful.

Will keep testing out, and would love to hear what people think.