Save yourself; it's too late for me.
In my blog article "On Keeping a Personal Journal," I comment on a book entitled How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens and on the corresponding methodology with an accompanying website known as Zettelkasten. I should have included a stiff warning regarding the subject or, at the very least, a plea not to visit the site or get involved with the matter. You see, the Zettelkasten is a drug, a form of crack for the brain, and like all addictive substances, its promise seems barely out of reach.
I became addicted by reading the blogs and posts on the Zettelkasten.de website. Luhmann's promise of a "communications partner" in the form of notes painstakingly written on 3x5 index cards or within the confines of dozens of different note-taking applications seemed too good to be true. Luhmann's promised system connects notations and ideas, forming unique strings of thought. I can present these various ideas in any order I choose; it was so exciting to think about, and the method is similar to what an author does when writing a book. Niklas Luhmann authored hundreds of books utilizing the system. At the time, I had nearly 30,000 notes, journal entries, and sparsely connected ideas. The Zettelkasten methodology seemed the perfect approach to take my note-taking to the next level.
Three years later, I eventually stopped reading the blog posts and forum comments as I attempted to wrest myself away from their harmful effects. Luhmann's system had become a perpetual black hole of yearning. A pipe dream that everyone on the forum seemed to understand but me. “Suppose I make the correct type of connection and find the perfect way to see the threads. I'll have found the magic bullet allowing my notes to communicate with each other.” I never did.
I was paying enough attention to note that over the three years of regular reading, some of my favorite authors who contributed the most and best material disappeared from the site. They either found a way to make the Zettelkasten system work successfully enough that they no longer needed input from others, or they, too, had given up. It was when I reread some external threads regarding the Zettelkasten where once jubilant authors had returned and were brave enough to note that the system hadn't worked for them, and they had moved on.
That's why I knew when I started reading Bob Doto's article about the Zettelkasten I was making a big mistake. “So please don't read it;” I begged myself as I studied Bob's writing and copied some quick quotes.
The article, Don't Ditch Your Old Notes: An Argument for Holding onto Abandoned Ideas, by Bob Doto, was wonderfully written and contained chunks of information I copied into my notes. I consider Bob a gifted writer and author I had followed closely in the zettelkasten forums. He was one of the disappearing authors I followed outside the forum discussions on his website; Bob seemed to understand the system deeper than I ever could and could put that understanding into words.
However, the words keep me up at night or at least wake me up early in the morning. I think, "just a minor tweak here, and I'll have it. Maybe, I should write a few lines of what the quote means to me. Perhaps, this time, I'll use the search-enabled UID to tie it all together," so my rambling goes. Early in the morning, I pour all my hopes and dreams onto the page, and still, I feel that I'm no closer to a functioning zettelkasten. But, of course, I have some pretty cool notes written in that everlasting hopeful semi-sleep-deprived fog state that exists for perpetual dreamers.
Written November 7, 2022