Niklas Luhmann published more than 70 books and nearly 400 academic articles-a measure of productivity that would make Stephen King blush (and George R.R. Martin cringe). He pioneered a productivity system he called Zettelkasten-German for “slip box.”
The Zettelkasten
It consisted of numbered index cards, or slips, filed in six large cabinets. Each slip contained a single and complete idea (a concept his followers call “atomicity”).
- Each card had a unique index number, or address, using numbers, letters, and occasional punctuation based on a branching hierarchy.
- At the bottom of each card, Luhmann would jot down the address of cards with related ideas but positioned under other topics.
- Following these links, he could jump across his sprawling note collection and make new connections among ideas.
Taking the Zettelkasten digital
For nearly two decades after Luhmann’s death, his method remained virtually unknown outside of a small circle of knowledge-management geeks.
- In 2017, Sönke Ahrens self-published a short book in English titled How to Take Smart Notes, and it is now ranked #2 in the “study skills” category on Amazon and #7 in “time management”
- Today, a Google search will return well over 200,000 results and hundreds of how-to videos have popped up on YouTube
Decisions, decisions
Choose a few different candidates, create a small sample of notes, and audition the apps, testing for key considerations
- Idea capture: Can I start a new note with a single click from any device?
- Linking
- Retrieval
- Portability
- Can I export the data and structure if I need to leave?
Use an existing app
Evernote, OneNote, and Notion all use Luhmann’s method
- You don’t need to learn new software
- Can build your own Zettelkasten with existing notes
- Some purists will point out that existing note taking apps miss functionality such as backlinking or atomicity
Overcome data silos
Zapier can send info to and from apps like Evernote and OneNote to bring it all together
- Whatever you can use to reduce the friction of getting ideas into your Zettelkasten will improve its utility-and your own productivity
Try a bespoke app
Bespoke apps like Zettlr, The Archive, and Roam offer users an experience that digitizes and extends Luhmann’s analog system.
- In a Roam document, any chunk of text in any note is a database entity which means that you can link and relate parts of notes to parts of other notes. Roam even offers a graph of your links, allowing you to visualize the connections between ideas.
Markdown and file systems
You can build a functional Zettelkasten using a cloud storage provider such as Google Drive or Dropbox and get 90 percent of the necessary features
- There’s no proprietary note format or database lock-in
- Any type of file you can save to the drive can serve as a note
- The drawback is that it’s nearly impossible to add note links to existing PDFs and image files
- Obsidian and nvUltra are two apps that aim to solve this issue
