The term Zettelkasten (German for slip box) is nowadays used to refer to a specific implementation, that of Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann was a sociologist and used his Zettelkasten to note down and interconnect his own ideas. These ideas may have either been truly original, or derived from things he read, rephrased from his point of view.

Many digital tools, books, and “influencers” promote Zettelkasten as the panacea of note taking, suggesting that if you just used Zettelkasten, you could be as successful as Luhmann, who was a very prolific writer. They neglect to consider other factors, such as Luhmann being gifted, his Zettelkasten being tailored to his specific needs, and the fact that his Zettelkasten was designed to aid in the act of writing about new ideas in the soft sciences.

We have determined that for our own needs it’s not a perfect fit. We don’t want to come up with new, subjective ideas. Instead, we are interested in hard facts and a record of knowledge, usually related to concrete software projects. As such, we’re not concerned about Luhmann’s “atomic notes” (i.e. one note per idea), or spending 3 years to amass a “critical mass” of notes to find an interesting topic to write about.

Nevertheless, the book “How to Take Smart Notes” [1], while focussing on the Zettelkasten method, contains some advice that applies to note taking in general, and isn’t a complete waste of time.

The system of the Zettelkasten is for writers, to stumble upon connections between ideas and topics to write about. It is distinctly different from an archive or an encyclopedia,

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