General Impressions
This book was recommended to me by a friend as a great primer on how to organize and utilize a Zettelkasten (ZK). For that purpose, it did a fine job during the first third of the book. It especially helped to clarify what fleeting notes are, and how to take reference notes, literature notes, and how to translate all of those (if necessary) to permanent (main as he calls them) notes.
Interestingly enough, the title makes no mention of a ZK, but instead, of how to improve writing output and idea generation. I think he was sort of on point with this, but not in the way he would like to have been. For example, although I have started writing more since organizing my ZK and using it daily (even for work). However, I’d argue it’s not as a result of having implemented the writing strategies Doto recommends, but rather because I was already craving a way to better organize and improve my note-taking, that it mostly fell out of the result of having accomplished that rather than employing the (often) unhelpful writing strategies Doto mentions in his book.
An Annoying Preoccupation
One slight annoyance was his continued reference to ideas that were obviously post-modern and Marxist in origin. In every example there was some (often times laughable in its absurdity) example demonstrating how Doto thinks about the world: everything is a power dynamic and power struggle, even with something as mundane as apples. It was kind of ironic in the sense that the author, with an obvious critical view and skepticism of corporate interest and anything capitalist, would predictably vent his concerns about subliminal messaging in advertising and media. And yet I felt he was subliminally peppering in his own messaging in a book intended to be about a mostly neutral subject: writing and note-taking. In one example, he talks about how notes on apples could lead to “commercial interests co-opt subculture symbols and turn them into branding”. Which is not only demonstrative about the pernicious nature of this sort of noxious pattern of thought, but also bizarre to think how a person could consider every instance of anything in life as some sort of covert plot to “screw the little guy”. What an exhausting way to live.
It’s not that I’m opposed to someone sharing their passions about post-modernism or power dynamics or Marxism, it’s just a bit sneaky when they do it disguised as exposition on something entirely unrelated and unconcerned with the lesson at hand. And it would be one thing if it were just a one off occurrence, but it was literally every example. Each time, a seemingly innocuous subject was somehow spun into the evils of Capitalism or the plight of natives or the pillaging of nature. Again, I’m not opposed to encounters with ideas of this sort, but it begins to feel a bit suspect (and preachy) when in a book on writing and note-taking, it’s literally given in every example. It’s distracting, and detracts from what would otherwise have been a decent how-to book on ZK construction and idea generation.
Pathological Productivity
One other note of criticism is it seems like Doto really admired Niklas Luhmann (the originator of the ZK), in such a way that he went on to read everything about him and his method, and a type of purism emerged from this admiration in how he recommends to go about implementing such a system. It begins to read as a sort of all or nothing proposition with some of the suggestions he makes. Consequently, he spends a lot of time describing productivity sucking strategies like semantic IDing between notes, and then all sorts of other similar busywork.
It reminded me of when I first started coding, I got stuck on the nostalgia of the days of old. Like you’re only a real coder if you can use make files, code in vi and write assembly. I remember spending hours configuring vim (a command line text editor in most Linux/Unix shells that’s notorious for its learning curve). And at the end of the day, I noticed that although yes I got my text editor to perform like an IDE, I’d wasted so much time on configuring and perfecting my familiarity with the tool, that I forgot it was a tool, and my obsession backfired by making me less efficient by virtue of writing less code and focusing so much on configuring the stupid tool.
Tools are tools. That is all. They are intended to help us get work done. The moment they become the object of focus, is the moment they lose their efficacy as a tool, and are now a distraction. I feel Doto has gotten to that point with his obsession with this productivity tool. Indeed, he mentions groups he attends on productivity. Which again, seems counterproductive to that end: if you’re attending groups on productivity, you’re not being very productive by virtue of being there and acquiring ever more “productive strategies” each time you participate.
Conclusion
So overall I would say, the first third of the book is decent, where he describes the ZK system and has some nice suggestions. But the part where he starts recommending how to use it for better writing and so on, it’s just not worth it. I’ll keep it around for reference when it comes to the ZK stuff, but for everything else, I’m good.
Some other ideas I found interesting were:
- The work on rhizome networks. Although I feel he missed an opportunity by only relating it to classical anarchist sentiment. I think the important thing to note here was that nodes in the ZK (an idea) only gains their meaning from what they’re linked to.
- Structure notes were interesting, but seemed a bit redundant. However, I could see their utility when trying to generate ideas for writing.
- Atomic notes are a thing I still struggle with implementing. But I’m not sure I see their value, and I’ve read enough skeptical critiques on them to think I’m right about that. I’ll be revisiting this in a future blog post after I’ve refined my view on it a bit more.
- I’ve found the mentioning of interstitial journaling to be very interesting. I’ve since incorporated it in my own daily tasks, and so far am really finding it to be useful. Particularly for its ability to “empty the brain” of previous tasks, and hold me accountable for the next one.
- I like his distinction between “do” dates and “due” dates when approaching projects with a deadline.
- One thing I wish he would’ve elaborated on, was a brief mention of task-focused systems, and how when using them, it’s best to “resist the urge to go ahead and, as often as possible, only do todays’ tasks”. This is something I struggle with a lot: going ahead and doing more thinking it’ll get me ahead. But I find it just burns me out. He mentions how resisting the urge to do so can actually make you more productive by allowing you to more effectively work on multiple projects at once. And I think he’s right about that.
I’ll leave with a quote by his I liked:
The value of your slip box is determined by its ability to help you do the things you want to do.