Massimo Curatella

Tag: zettelkasten

  • Contextual Paraphrasing Must Be Done Early

    Paraphrasing a concept is a way to extract knowledge while interpreting its meaning. It promotes understanding, memorization, and thus learning. The rewriting should happen immediately after the annotation to maximize leveraging the freshly acquired context. It becomes less efficient and practical to collect highlights first and then trying to make sense of them and finally rewriting them. That means reading much slower than just going over the text while quickly taking notes. But it means also saving time in rereading and reinterpreting the context after the superficial first iteration. Further rereading is still useful, by understanding better and better the concept expressed by the author we open up the possibilities for connection and even deeper understanding.

    Paraphrasing contextually requires a change of habit if you are used to reading quickly and highlight what interests you. You still have to reread the source but it makes you more effective and efficient when you stop, make an effort to interpret what caught your attention, and rewrite it with your words into notes to add to your archive.

    Article 324.

  • Note-Taking is Personal

    Summarizing an article means compressing information. If I am able to reduce an article to a summary, annotated and I can efficiently remember what’s in it, I should be able to read my summary and throw away the source. But besides filler words or elaborated ways of conveys meaning, when I am summarizing I am interpreting that content. So I need an intention. I should have clarified the reason why I am reading that source and what I want to do with the knowledge I can extract from it. So a summary can never be universal, each reader will do their own version of their summary and their notes. That’s also why the value of personal notes is limited unless you are annotating for specific public and you are curating the readability and the consistency of your notes.

  • Networked Thinking: an update on my Second Brain / Zettelkasten / Mental Garden

    Networked Thinking: an update on my Second Brain / Zettelkasten / Mental Garden

    Metaphorically speaking, a person’s ideas must be the building he lives in – otherwise, there is something terribly wrong.

    ― Søren Kierkegaard in Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

    This is my Zettelkasten, my Digital Second Brain, my Mental Garden as it appears now:

    A Network Graph rendering the notes in my Zettelkasten. Done in Obsidian.

    I’ve been feeding it with notes for about eight months now. While I am not still leveraging on it for writing a full essay, I am quite satisfied with almost having built a habit of feeding it.

    Feeding a Zettelkasten means adding your ideas to your Slip-Box, which is your Note Archive.  ‘‘Feeding’ is an exciting word since you are supposed to think while you are creating those notes, and since you need to write notes in a specific way, you are expected to develop novel and useful ideas when working with your notes.

    Because you’re writing to your future self, you can consider them a third person. To do that effectively, you should write in clear terms, providing as much contest as possible to make the note/concept self-containing. So, to do that, you need to explain your ideas in a way comprehensible to a six-year-old.

    These kinds of notes called ‘zettels’ (don’t worry, it’s just ‘notes’ in German) are the neurons of your second brain. And so, now you will have guessed, the ‘synapses’ are materialized when you connect those notes in every possible way to create something new and useful.

    What I find interesting is the scalability of the Zettelkasten Method. The more zettels you add to it, the greater is the network and the potential connections between its nodes.

    More notes = more ideas = more potential new ideas connecting them.

    Unfortunately, I have no problem whatsoever in capturing and collecting snippets of knowledge. What I need to improve on is the connection between them.

    I am a young Zettelkastener, a shy Second Brainer, and a Toddler Mental Gardner.

    I just need to have the patience to keep on doing it.

    And to make more connections.

  • Connect ideas now

    Connect ideas now

    Writing every day for 365 days, I’ve learned that Information hoarding is too easy.

    If you don’t make an effort in connecting thoughts to grow your network of knowledge, you are just moving things from a container to another.

    Writing does good to you, but it’s not enough. If you dump your brain to paper and then digitize it into a Note-Taking App, If you don’t curate your thoughts, it is just moving things around with a lot of extra logistical work to do, additional time, more stress, and very little added value.

    Instead, you should focus on the real value of the piece of information you’ve produced, and you should connect it now, not tomorrow or in 10 years. If you do it now, you will have a fresh memory of it, you’ll be motivated to find connections, and you will have given a positive contribution to your network of ideas.

    Fluid Networked Thinking requires the willpower to do the entire workflow at once: capture new ideas, connect them with existing ones, construct new knowledge.

    If you save-it-to-read-later, you will risk contributing to the cognitive mess you are trying to fight with your Personal Knowledge Management system.

    Capture and connect your new ideas now. There’s no other time to do it.

    This is Essay 7 of 30 in the my challenge One Year Writing: 30 Lessons Learned in 30 Days

    1. The Journey is the Purpose (16 Nov 2020)
    2. Writing is Thinking (17 Nov 2020)
    3. Write a Lot to Write Well (18 Nov 2020)
    4. Creative Loneliness (19 Nov 2020)
    5. Be Less Ambitious, Be More Consistent (20 Nov 2020)
    6. Writing builds your networks (21 Nov 2020)
    7. Connect ideas now (22 Nov 2020)
    8. Writing improves your memory (23 Nov 2020)
    9. Writing makes you a better observer (24 Nov 2020)
    10. Writing sets the focus on yourself (25 Nov 2020)
    11. Dissolve your distractions (26 Nov 2020)
    12. Writing reduces your jargon and slang (27 Nov 2020)
    13. Walking generates ideas (28 Nov 2020)
    14. Writing is like drinking coffee (29 Nov 2020)
    15. Creativity makes you happy (30 Nov 2020)
    16. Be smart, let it go (1 Dec 2020)
    17. Writing is a process (2 Dec 2020)
    18. Automate repetitive tasks (3 Dec 2020)
    19. Publish text as digital text, not images (4 Dec 2020)
    20. Why asking questions? (5 Dec 2020)
    21. Facilitate growth by tracking habits (6 Dec 2020)
    22. Type more, type faster, type better (7 Dec 2020)
    23. Transcribe your thoughts to become an effective communicator (8 Dec 2020)
    24. Write daily to become a better manager (9 Dec 2020)
    25. Do it small to do it better (10 Dec 2020)
    26. Don’t lose your mind. Back it up (11 Dec 2020)
    27. Write daily to enhance your reality (12 Dec 2020)
    28. If only I could be ten, again (13 Dec 2020)
    29. Writing compounds despite everything (14 Dec 2020)
    30. The habit of building habits (15 Dec 2020)