Comment by kstrauser

11 hours ago

I bought Ahrens's book to learn how to take smart notes. It should've been called Why to Take Smart Notes. The book was more about how good and lifechanging it is to use Zettelkasten, which was a bummer because I was already interested enough in the idea to buy a book about it. I was looking for more of a how-to.

I wrote a bit about using Obsidian with bottom-up / smart notes.

My Obsidian Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault

All posts about Obsidian: https://bryanhogan.com/tags/obsidian

Maybe this helps?

  • I'll check it out, thanks!

    Edit: Upon a quick scan, this looks more like what I learned as "Linking Your Thinking", which resonates way more with me than a strict Zettelkasten format where you try to arrange notes linearly to match some artificial constraint.

    And I think that's a good thing, just not how Ahrens described Zettelkasten.

    • Yes that is fair, I adjusted and simplified the system for my usage. I didn't include any of the note "phases" / transitions, so e.g. no fleeting notes.