Comment by kstrauser
2 days 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.
A few chapters in, this is a great how-to book: A System for Writing (Bob Doto)
https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten/
Glad you're enjoying it! Thanks for the mention. Hmu with any questions.
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.
I wanted to like Linking Your Thinking, but while I found the ACE concept novel and intriguing, it didn't really fit my brain. (And while certainly a point of style, Nick Milo's presentation method somewhat grated on me). I ended up with a combination of PARA and Jonny Decimal. I actually wrote a big long conversation with Claude to recommend a methodology. I talked about what I liked about Zettelkasten, ACE, PARA, and where I had issues implementing, adhering, and how I found myself using things, and it actually came up with a fairly decent starting point.