Praised by many online outlets as the solution to our knowledge problems, the existing tutorials and guides on how to actually make use of this idea tend to complicate matters a lot. Many people advertising their expertise on the Zettelkasten method are extremely unhelpful when it comes to actually realising a Zettelkasten that works for you.
After all, the question of “how do I manage my knowledge?” boils down to two components. The first thing you must respect when beginning to structure your knowledge is exactly that: a certain structure. This is what people like us can explain to you and help you with. But the second thing is where you are completely on your own: self reflection. To manage your knowledge, you have to know how you work. It does not help you to receive tips from people telling you what the contents of your knowledge management system should look like, because these vary between all users. Some people need to only write down thoughts as in a diary. Some people need to write down using bullet lists, while some need to write whole paragraphs. And some — mainly researchers managing a lot of texts they’ve read — need to preserve a lot of meta information such as the originating work, page numbers and cross-references.
Structure and Self-Reflection
The structure of a Zettelkasten is fairly easy described: It’s a database. It is simply a place where you file your knowledge in a semi-structured way. What you need to do is:
Conceive of a basic, but consistent structure of your notes. Elements that have to be present everywhere, such as an ID, some tags to categorise your thoughts, and the contents.
File them in one system, and one system only. Having your notes littered around in different systems (some in Word documents and some in plain text files) does not help and complicates matters.
Stick with these basic structural elements. They need to be stable; it confuses you if you switch from using, e.g., an ID in each file at the top to switching to an ID at the bottom of each file. If you change these underlying structures, you’ll have to change them everywhere.
Do not overdo the structure. Try to keep it really simple. And by “really” we really mean simple. If the stable structure of your Zettelkasten contains more properties than an ID, some tags (or categories, depending on the system) and internal cross-references to other notes, you will very soon find yourself adapting your Zettelkasten a lot in the early stages, which will drill down on your motivation so hard it is likely going to keep you from keeping up your work. The stable structural elements should be so generic they’ll fit to anything.
The more important part of a Zettelkasten therefore is self reflection. You need to be constantly on the watch for how you work. This is a habit that you’ll need to develop over time and nobody can ease this way with a tutorial. Whenever you are writing or reading a text, you need to develop a way of constantly thinking “what am I doing currently? Is this good?” Additionally, you need to anticipate the future: what problems are you likely going to run into in the future? Of course you shouldn’t overdo it with thinking about the future, because nobody can foresee the future; but you will soon spot some bottlenecks that are destined to become a problem. You need to realise these before you are halfway in a solid Zettelkasten. Because changing thousands of files can become a headache very soon.
In fact, the more you read on how to do a Zettelkasten, the less you’ll actually know, because a lot of it depends on intuition and self-observation. And this is something no tutorial can teach you. You will have to develop faith in yourself that what you do is not bad, but actually quite useful. Do not listen too much to too specific advises on how to start a Zettelkasten. Just start and use the structure you need. And stop reading tutorials on Zettelkästen.