Obsidian Zettelkasten

146 - Processing a Textbook for Understanding

When processing a undergraduate textbook, I think of a four tasks

  1. Create notes for the important concepts themselves (often bolded terms in the book)
  2. Link the note (concepts) with other important notes (concepts) in the textbook chapter
  3. Link the note with the immediate context it sits in (e.g. the textbook chapter)
  4. Link the note to the wider context (e.g. the field you are studying)

For example, I am undergraduate psychology student (hypothetical) with a plan on going into the sub field of cognitive psychology. When reading I would create a note for the concept of “semantic memory”. Following the four tasks, I would:

  1. Create a note for Semantic Memory
  2. Link it to the related concept of “episodic memory”
  3. Both semantic memory and episodic memory are forms of explicit memories, which in turn is a form of long term memory. So I would create a link to my notes on long term memory and explicit memory. This is the “immediate context” that semantic memory sits in.
  4. I would then create a link to the wider context, saying why “episodic memory” is important to the field of cognitive psychology. Or even doing something as simple as including a tag in the note #CogSci
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147 - Using my Textbook Note for Future Development

Now that I have a basic note on “semantic memory” I can use it as a starting point for further development. I created this note during my “introduction to psychology” college course. In my junior year I take a course on memory or cognition. In this course, the concept of “semantic memory” gets elaborated on even more in the corresponding textbook. So I add the most important parts of the elaboration to my original note. Then at the bottom of the note I may also put in references to studies we looked at surrounding semantic memory.

Two years go by and when I eventually get to grad school, I do even more research on the topic of “semantic memory”, collecting in my note all the cutting edge research that has been done on the topic. At some point I see an component of semantic memory that hasn’t been explained or explored, so I make that into my dissertation. I create my own study and add that to my note on semantic memory.

As you see, over a long period of time I’m elaborating on this concept more and more, further developing it in my notes. I’m essentially creating a wiki entry, collecting all the important information I’ve come across on this topic. For this example its all been one note, but in reality what I’d do is create multiple notes. At each step in this process (intro course, intermediate course, grad school, own research) I would make a new note and connect it to the previous one, thereby creating a sequence of notes on the topic of “semantic memory”. The reason for this is that it allows you to use the information of a note in multiple contexts. Say for example that the study I did has implications for other concepts. By having it in its own note, I am able to create a link to it. If I didn’t and instead just linked to the whole page on semantic memory, then it would be confusing and a pain in the ass to find.

148 - Zettelkasten for Graduate Students

You will get the most use out of a zettelkasten as you become a graduate student, where the goal is to not only to create a deeper understanding but further develop the knowledge of your chosen field through a thesis/dissertation. In this way, you are using the zettelkasten to track where your knowledge currently stands and facilitate the generation of new ideas through connecting material.

149 - Fiction Writing with a Zettelkasten works particularly well because the novel writing process is one of creative development. You are creating characters, places, and events from scratch. These different pieces of the story are informed by your personal understanding of reality, which in turn can be further developed in a zettelkasten.

How the universe works in your story is informed by your own knowledge of physics and the other natural sciences. How the societies operate in your story is informed by your own knowledge of our social systems, which can be further understood through the social sciences. How the characters experience the world is shaped by their mental state which can be understood through the study of psychology. For example, on my bookshelf I have the textbook Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research by Howard S. Friedman and Miriam W. Schustack. The idea of using the sciences to inform your writing is illustrated through the work of Will Storr and his book The Science of Storytellilng.

It doesn’t stop with the sciences though. You can study the existing body of literature (humanities) to understand the themes that have been important for our species and what has been said about them. By actively mapping them out, you can see how they have been already explored and use that information to say something new about a theme. The other option is to take a classic theme that has held true throughout human existence and illustrate an important point about it using a modern or new story.


150 - Knowledge Development in Fiction Writing

First Question to Answer is what areas of information do writers develop?

  1. Characters
  2. Settings
  3. Plot
  4. Conflict
  5. Themes
  6. Meta - further developing your understanding of storytelling itself

How do writers develop these various parts of a story?

Characters

You can use a zettelkasten to develop specific characters and your understanding of how people work.

A character you are developing could be a specific one in your universe/novel or a generalized one you are remixing from. Either basing it off an archetype or existing character you find interesting.

The reason a zettelkasten can help you with developing a specific character in your universe/novel is because you usually don’t fully develop a character in a single day. My hot take is that creativity comes about from the mixing of outside information with your internal knowledge. Therefore the best way to spark creativity is to be constantly exposing yourself to surprising & useful information. Because of our limited time and energy, you can’t expose yourself to large amounts of new information in one sitting through reading. Instead it happens over months and years, as you have to understand and reformulate the information.

An example of a remix would be taking the “wise wizard” and mapping out the different implementations of it (Gandalf, Dumbledore, Jiraiya). Then thinking about what new dimensions you can add to the character or interesting takes on themes associated with them.

Settings

Plot

Conflict

Themes

Meta


151 - Further developing your understanding of storytelling w/ a Zettelkasten

152 - Creating a Choose your Own Adventure Book using a Physical Zettelkasten

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153 - Zettelkasten for Programmers

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154 - Zettelkasten for Everyday Living is about thinking how you can use a zettelkasten to further develop your understanding of the aspects of life that have the most day to day utility. In my zettelkasten this means collecting information on health, mental health, and productivity.

155 - Creating a Zettelkasten within Obsidian

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156 - Your first Zettelkasten Note

You now have Obsidian set up and ready to use, staring at a blank screen. It doesn’t really matter what your first note is. If you are having note creation paralysis then create a note describing what problem you want to solve or what area of information you want to develop knowledge in. Once you’ve done that then start with step 1 of the Core Zettelkasten Workflow.

157 - Core Zettelkasten Workflow

  1. Pick a source of Information
  • Digest the Source of Information
  • Create Notes out of the Information
  • Create the primary link
    • Note Sequence Link
    • Add to Index Manually?
    • Add to Index with a Tag
  • Link the Notes with other ones
  1. Develop and use your Notes
  • Further Develop Existing Lines of Thought
  • Create new Lines of Thought
  • Using your Notes
    • Formalize your Notes and Share with Others
    • Formalize your Notes for Personal Use
    • Reference your Notes for Personal Use

158 - Developing Specific Knowledge

159 - Developing General Knowledge

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160 - Principles that Support Knowledge Development

Rules help guide you in achieving an outcome. These principles (rules) help push you in the direction of knowledge development instead of just knowledge management.

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161 - Zettelkasten FAQs

Pull from

162 - How to of Knowledge Development - what are the different ways knowledge gets developed and how can we create tools that help facilitate it?

163 - Ranking of Knowledge

If you imagine a graph quadrant:

Quadrant 1: High Utility & General Knowledge is knowledge that is widespread through society but is of high utility due to your ability to execute on it. Think about sports, where most people can play the game but only a handful can play at a high level. The two examples Cal Newport uses for these people in his 2012 book on skills are screenwriters and guitar players.

Quadrant 2: High Utility & Specialized Knowledge is the best type of knowledge you can learn. This is the knowledge that is highly sought after in society but not a lot of people can provide. This knowledge is often difficult to acquire (making it rare) because it is hard to understand or takes a long time to acquire.

Quadrant 3: Low Utility & General Knowledge is the information that still has utility but isn’t particularly valuable because of its ubiquitousness in society. Over time, more and more information gets slotted into this category due to the ability to search the internet and distributed learning (e.g. MOOCs).

Quadrant 4: Low Utility & Specialized Knowledge is the type of knowledge you often see liberal arts majors get mocked for in life. While knowledge about obscure literature still has utility as part of a larger picture, it isn’t highly sought after in society. If you have this type of knowledge, then you have to become much more creative in how you leverage it.

These help contribute to Future Roles in Work


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164 - Steps to Learning

What to Learn

  • Specialized Knowledge & Skills
    • Path of Perfect Execution
    • Unique & Valuable Skills Path
    • 80,000 Hours Approach
  • General Knowledge & Skills
    • Solid understanding of the basics
      • Natural Sciences
        • Physics
        • Chemistry
        • Biology
      • Formal Sciences
        • Mathematics
        • Logic
        • Statistics
      • Social Sciences
        • Anthropology
        • Sociology
        • Psychology
        • History
      • Humanities
        • Mediums of Art
        • Major Themes
    • Mental Models
    • Thinking Skills
      • Critical Thinking
      • Creative Thinking
      • Three Dimensional Thinking
      • Analogical Thinking
    • Communication Skills
      • Writing
      • Speaking
      • Social Media
    • Productivity Skills
      • Deep Work
      • Habits & Routines
      • Time Prioritization
  • Future Skills
    • Working with Machines
    • Gathering insights from Data
    • Computer Programming
    • Effective Communication

How to Learn

  • Finding the right learning material
    • Different mediums of information?
      • Lectures
      • Video - lectures, short videos, etc
      • Audio - audiobooks, podcasts, etc
      • Written Word - books, blogs, wikis, websites, etc
      • Online Courses (MOOCs)
    • What makes a good source for learning?
      • Good match w/ your prior knowledge
      • Well written, makes explicit the model
  • Processing the material
    • Structure Building the Model
      • Components in Structure Building?
    • Elaborating
      • Creating Retrieval Cues
    • Deconstruct the Model for Memorization
  • Practice Problems
    • What are the different types of practice?
  • Dynamic Testing

Further Research and Integration

  1. How does bloom’s taxonomy revised tie into this? What other learning frameworks are out there?

  2. Insights from lasting learning

  3. Insights from SuperMemo Guru

  4. Insights from The Learning Scientists

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165 - Model as a Latticework of Book Abstractions

Zettelkasten is about creating and organizing notes in such a way that they build upon on each other and serve as a form of external long term memory.

Think of a book as a chain of ideas. With it you can either extract out the whole chain or individual links (ideas). Because ideas can be generalized, you will find the same ones across many different books.

For a practical example, see Developing a Model of Storytelling with a Zettelkasten
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