~ Zettelkasten

A Zettelkasten is a method of note-taking pioneered by Conrad Gessner and famously used by Niklas Luhmann.¹ The concept revolves around gathering atomic notes in a slip box (or a digital equivalent), each uniquely described by an ID. These IDs can then be used as referrals or bi-directional links between notes. In its simplest form, a Zettelkasten is a graph where the nodes are notes and the connections are links. The appeal of this process is that connections between knowledge - often never found elsewhere - appear dynamically, allowing for a deeper connection with the topic at hand.

IDs

The IDs used to identify your notes can be whatever you prefer, as long as they are unique. The preferred method for a physical Zettelkasten is to use numbers based on the date and time (e.g. 202003202350). For software-based Zettelkasten, one could just use the title of the note or a randomly generated ID (like the one in the URL of this page).2022-10-15