Digital Zettelkasten

Principles, Methods, & Examples

By: David Kadavy

Narrated by: David Kadavy

Are you an academic, author, blogger, or anyone else who wants to make writing a breeze?

The Zettelkasten method is the perfect way to harness the power of technology to remember what you read and boost creativity. Invented in the 16th century and practiced to its fullest extent by a German sociologist who wrote 70 books and hundreds of articles, the Zettelkasten method is exploding in popularity. Writers of all types are discovering that digital tools make the method more powerful than ever, turning your digital life into an “external brain” or “bicycle for the mind”.

In Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples, blogger and nonfiction author David Kadavy shares a first-principles approach on how to adapt the Zettelkasten method to simple digital tools of your choice.

• How to structure your Zettelkasten. Kadavy borrows an element of the Getting Things Done framework to make sure nothing you want to read falls through the cracks.
• Naming convention pros/cons. Should you adopt the classic “Folgezettel” technique, or do digital tools make it irrelevant for your workflow?
• Reading workflow. The exact steps to follow to turn what you read into detailed notes you can mix and match to produce writing.
• Staying comfortable. Build a workflow to maintain your Zettelkasten without being chained to your computer.
• Examples, examples, examples. See real examples of notes that illustrate concepts, so you can build a Zettelkasten that fits your workflow and tools.

Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples is short and to the point with no fluff, so it won’t keep you from what you want - to build your Zettelkasten!

Comes with a companion PDF with select examples described in the audiobook.

©2021 David Kadavy (P)2021 David Kadavy

Good ideas on note taking

A systematic approach to note taking for networking your ideas into a sharable pamphlet, recovery of what the book you read was about and maintaining your notes in an organized manner.

Streamlined version of “How to take Smart Notes”

I believe this is a great accessory to the book/audiobook “how to take smart notes” which gives much more detail of its origin and application. Initially I had never heard of the slip box method. I was trying to be proactive before entering my Masters program in Counseling Psychology knowing there will be many diverse treatment theories that have a parent theory in which they originated. The accompanying PDF is helpful too.

It’s an introduction

I thought it would be more of a primer, but sadly not. As an intro it’s fine.

Practical Information

This really could have been just a blog post, but I enjoyed listening to it and sometimes I have more time to listen to something that to sit down and read it.

A meager copycat

Meager rehashing of Ahren’s book on how to take smart notes, without even introducing much original despite the focus on compiling, using, and making connections between ideas. Many of the examples are exactly the same as in Ahren’s work. Just read that instead.

Not much info

Apparently, if you download a book titled Digital Zettelkasten, you don't need any info about what a Zettelkasten is or how you use it, because you wouldn't have downloaded a book on Zettelkasten if you didn't already know that. He tells you so. However, you do need to be told repeatedly how he can't recommend digital tools, apps, or features, because of how fast what's available changes. You also need a solid five minutes of being told why digital is better than paper, because of the two words in the title, "digital" is the one you obviously wanted more info on. Out of the whole thing, I found one diagram (Luhmann's card naming system) sort of useful, and I'm not sure the author fully understood it himself since most of his commentary on it was on how he doesn't use it. All in all, I would return the book if I could.