# Zettelkasten A system that organize your [[Habits for effective thinking (The 5 elements)|thinking]], develop ideas. It stores your knowledge and enable creative work based on what interest you. It is not personal wikipedia - but more about generating insight by letting idea mingle. It is a source for you academic publication. Writing a paper from notes you collected over time and can be re-arrange and edit for manuscript is more effective way to write than to start from a blank page. It is your repository for your [[Smart notes (permanent note)|smart notes]]. Zettelkasten in English means "slip-box". It standardised the format of ideas summarization. While reading, you should recall your other lines of thought and search for ideas that can contribute to your projects. Then add a new note, and reflect on the ideas - compare it to related notes to understand the relations better, think how the new idea effect your understanding of older ideas. Related notes should be considered with your own line of thoughts. You go through your notes and look for relevant ideas and discussions. this is called [[Elaboration]]. The point is not to archive new information but to apply ideas to your ongoing discussion with your slipbox. What does this means to your own line of thoughts. This enrich our silpbox. Can you merge the new idea to existing ideas? extend it? What questions it raises? This generates sequences of notes over time. This sequences are a list of related ideas that can be transformed into new arguments and ideas. These are generated bottom-up as each note is a standalone abstract idea that contributes to some higher order idea. This is in contrast to top-bottom approach when you start by stating your topic and then looks for content to write about it. Use Zettelkasten as a [[Zettelkasten's creativity work flows|tool]] for doing creative work. It is THE basic tool to enable [[The intellectual life]] . It implements the key idea that [[Writing is the only thing that matters]]. ## Advantages - accidental encounters of previous ideas that related to current thinking can raise new ideas and connections. good ideas are hard to anticipate or plan for them. - Allowing the brain focus on thinking instead of remembering. no need to squeeze our ideas from the top of our head at that moment. Working with notes provoke thinking - by comparing and combining notes we see repetitions, inconsistencies and contradictions. This iterative polishing will improve your understanding and can generate new ideas. - Help to fight forgetting - it reminds you of ideas that interest you along the years. - Deepen your understanding and fight [[illusion of competence]] applying [[Deliberate practice]] by returning to old ideas, detecting gaps in your understanding, and updating notes with latest understanding. - Do not waste good ideas. We constantly encounter interesting ideas - even on topics we are currently not working on. why waste them? they might be helpful in future work. - No need to start writing a manuscript from scratch. - enable to separate tasks responsibilities for producing a manuscript: collecting interesting ideas, selecting ideas, outlining, editing, composing paragraphs to manuscript, proofreading. - it builds the habit of thinking on connecting ideas to your lines of thought , comparing ideas, taking decisions and raise thoughtful questions. - Support flow by given you the chance to switch from current project that is stuck with another project that was progressed before. References: [[@How to take smart notes]] section 12, page 121 ## Created 2022-04-01 10:50