This week I read How to Take Smart Notes by Söhnke Ahrens (2017), and I really enjoyed it.
The author explains the Zettelkasten system by Niklas Luhmann, who had a physical box with DIN A6 (4.1×5.8 inches for my imperial friends) cards, each of which had contained one note and was densely linked and clustered to other notes.
This technique allowed him to collect a lot of knowledge with their context and discover topics to write about.
Having all your ideas and knowledge embedded into this system frees your mind to think of new things and put clusters of notes into context.
And if you’re a writer that uses this concept, you never have to start with a blank piece of paper.
Always read with the slip-box in mind, collect notes first with arguments, counter-arguments and research.
A topic to write about will present itself over time.
I really recommend reading this book (no matter if you write or not), it has given me lots of ideas to improve my personal second-brain/slip-box/Zettelkasten.
If you know German, make sure to subscribe to my podcast Sprachnachrichten, where we talked about this book, the episode will be published next week.
Tweet of the Week
Here's a great chess tip for beginners, I never knew the reason behind that rule!!
— @KungFuChessOrg
Hillel Wayne asked 17 crossovers that used to be traditional engineers and then worked in software to answer the question: Is building software engineering?
Gina Kolata and Benjamin Mueller explain the long history of mRNA and how it went from being overlooked to the most important defence against COVID. Thanks, Mum!
