How to Take Smart Notes (2017), Sönke Ahrens
Audiobook listened in 2022
Paperback version read in 2025
Description of how to use the Zettelkasten system created by prolific German sociologist Niklas Luhmann in the 60's, and how and why it can be set up as a productive writing workflow.
The target audience is students, academics, and non-fiction writers whose aim is to publish written work.
- How might the zettlekasten/slip box be useful for practitioners, leaders and people just wanting to get their shit together?
Fleeting notes
For capturing ideas in the moment, intended to be the basis of permanent notes and to then be discarded. Capture every idea in one place, like an inbox.
“Don’t let good ideas go to waste”
“Read with a pen in hand”
Literature notes
- short and meant to help getting to permanent notes
- Summaries in your own words of the content of a text
- How could this work for other media e.g. artwork, audio?
- Can include sparing quotes, ideally with some context
- Reduces or eliminates the need to read the original material again, once added to permanent notes
- Re-reading can add to confirmation bias, which can hinder real understanding
Whenever you read something, make notes about the content.
Keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place - your reference system. p23
Permanent notes
- Don’t just collect - use these to develop ideas, arguments and discussions
- Add to or combine with existing notes
- Use 1 note for each idea
- Write as if for someone else - since it will be used by your future self. Use full sentences and be precise, so you know what you mean later
- Use a standardised format
- Should not be reminders of ideas, but the idea itself in written form
The idea is not to collect, but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions.
Filing permanent notes in the slip box
- Luhman added a note behind an existing, related note (like a thread)
- For digital, we can use keywords
- Choose keywords based on how you might want to retrieve it, not to store it
Under what circumstances would I want to stumble across this note, even if I forget about it
In which context will I want to stumble upon it again? p38
- This becomes an external scaffold to think within
- Connect ideas to generate insight
- “Critical mass of inter-connected ideas”
- “Generating insight by letting ideas mingle”
- Notice clusters
- Should not become a “graveyard for ideas”
Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking 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 the index. p24
Just follow your interest and always take the path that promises the most insight. p24
Project notes
Notes for a particular project, which might draw from existing permanent notes. Should be archived after the project is complete.
Read with a pen in hand
Take smart, intentional notes when reading, and Don’t let good ideas go to waste. Memory is fallible and ideas from reading can stretch beyond their original context.
Read with a pen in your hand.
Take smart notes.
Develop connections between them.
We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts. We will not be guided by a blindly made-up plan picked from our unreliable brains, but by our interest, curiosity and intuition, which is formed and informed by the actual work of reading, thinking, discussing, writing and developing ideas - and is something that continuously grows and reflects our knowledge and understanding externally. p46
Psychology
Dunning-Kruger effect
Where you don't know enough to know that you actually don't know much at all, and so overestimate what you know. You know.
Poor students lack insight into their own limitations - as they would have to know the vast amount of knowledge out there to be able to see how little they know in comparison. That means that those who are not very good at something tend to be overly confident, while those who have made an effort tend to underestimate their abilities. p7
Environments that set you up for success
Grit is overrated - success is more tied to creating a smart working environment where resistance is not needed at all.
Studies on highly successful people have proven again and again that success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place. p16
Simple ideas can be underestimated
Intuitively, most people do not expect much from simple ideas. They assume that impressive results must have equally impressively complicated means. p17
Growth vs Fixed mindset
Having a growth mindset is linked to long-term success. This means being open to, even seeking, feedback to continually improve. Being afraid of negative feedback to preserve ego can stunt learning.
the most reliable predictor of long-term success is having a "growth mindset". To actively seek and welcome feedback, be it positive or negative, is one of the most important factors for success (and happiness) in the long run. Conversely , nothing is a bigger hindrance to personal growth than having a "fixed mindset". Those who fear and avoid feedback because it might damage their cherished positive self-image might feel better in the short term, but will quickly fall behind in actual performance. p51
Ironically, it is therefore often the highly gifted and talented students, who receive a lot of praise, who are more in danger of developing a fixed mindset and getting stuck. p51