1. Making Fleeting Notes
always have something at hand to write or capture every idea that pops into your mind. don’t worry too much about how you write it down or what you write it on. these are fleeting notes just a reminder of what is in your head should not cause any distraction put them into one place which you define as your inbox, and process them later.
2. Making Literature Notes
whenever you read something make notes about the content. write down what you don’t want to forget or things you might use in your own thing or writing. keep it very short but extremely selective and use your own words. be extra understanding what they mean keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place -your reference system.
3. Making Permanent Notes
In this step, you turn to your slip-box. Go through the notes you made in Literature or Fleeting (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how they relate to what is relevant to your own research, thinking, or interests. This can soon be done by looking into the slip-box it only contains what interests you anyway. The idea is not to collect but to develop ideas arguments and discussions. Does the new information contradicts, correct, support or add to what you already have (in your slip-box or in your mind)? can you combine ideas to generate something new?
take
my take here is that I don’t put literature note in the inbox as I deal with them as fully processed notes maybe that should be revised.
3.1 make atomic notes write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else, make references, and be as precise, clear, and brief as possible now you can archive your related fleeting notes and put the literature notes from step two into your reference system.
3.2 adding your atomic permanent note to the zettelkasten by filing each one behind one or more related notes look to which note the new one directly relates or if it does not relate directly to any other note yet just file it behind the last one in your train of thoughts add links to related notes make sure that you will able to find this note later by either link-ing to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to an index.
- develop your topics, questions, and research project bottom up from within the system. see what is there what is missing and what questions arise. read more to challenge, strengthen change, and develop your arguments according to the new information you are learning about. take more notes, develop ideas further and see the path that promises the most insight. build upon what you have even if you don’t have anything in your zettelkasten you never start from scratch you have already ideas on your mind to be tested opinions to be challenged and questions to be answered.
5 develop you will develop ideas far enough to decide on a topic to write about. your topics are now based on what you have not based on unfounded ideas about what the literature you are about to read might provide look through the connections and collect all the relevant notes on this topic copy them into an outliner (index) and bring them into order. Don’t wait until you have everything together rather try ideas out and give yourself enough time to go back to reading and note-taking to improve your ideas, arguments, and their structure.
6 publish turn your notes into a rough draft don’t simply copy your notes into a manuscript instead translate them into the context of your argument while you build your argument out of the notes and the same time detect holes in your argument fill them or change your argument edit and proofread your manuscript
since we are developing ideas constantly in different stages this system should help you to store and develop ideas that you are facing every time
a typical work day will contain many if not all of these steps you read and take ntotes you build connections wihtin the slip-box which in itself will spart new ideas. you write them down and add them to the discussion.
most people follow different lines of thought at the same time they might focus for a while on one idea but then leave it alone for another whule until they see how proceed further. it is helpful then to be able to puck up on another idea and go back to the earlier through later it is much more realistic to keep this flexibility and you don’t have to worry about starting all over.