There are hundreds of articles on Medium about building a Zettelkasten, using Obsidian or RoamResearch, or Notion, to create your “second brain;” hundreds of writers who’ve read How to Take Smart Notes[1] and have been inspired by the implications.
And so many people wonder: which app do I choose to start building? How do I know which one is right for me?
Tiago Forte talks about Evernote, RoamResearch, and Notion with the metaphor of a librarian, an architect, and a librarian, and encourages you to choose based on which one you identify with.
But what if none of them work for you?
I’ve been using a Zettelkasten for about 18 months now, and I’ve used the same “app” the entire time. It hasn’t suffered any software glitches or bugs, and it costs me about $1 per 100 notes.
That’s because the app I use isn’t an app. It isn’t digital. It isn’t software.
It’s the original slip-box method.
Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash. Ironically, many Medium authors use these images in their articles, evoking the idea of a paper slip-box. However, they’re never about paper zettelkastens or slip-boxes. They’re always about Obsidian, RoamResearch, or some other digital software or platform. There’s this interesting disconnect between the aesthetics of a zettelkasten made on paper (we seem to be drawn to this type of photograph, displaying lots of little ideas neatly organized in drawers etc.) but very few seem to actually believe that this sort of system could work, that this analog alternative (though chronologically the digital software is the true alternative to the original!) could actually work. However, this is where it originally worked for Luhmann, and where it worked for those before him who used a similar system for centuries. This exposes, then, not the limitations of the analog method that we read about in Ahrens’ book (fn1) but rather our own limitations: our absolute dependence on digital technology. We cannot fathom a world where our ideas do not live on our screen, do not come with us everywhere we go, do not get uploaded to the cloud where they can live forever. But the question we must ask ourselves is “do our ideas really exist if they only exist digitally?” John Mayer found himself asking this question about his song lyrics: he would type them in the Notes app on his phone, usually. But then he would walk through the famous recording studios and record label hallways, and see the handwritten lyrics from the Eagles and other bands that he looked up to. And this confronted him. Where would his lyrics live on? Where would they be? Where are they now? And so he started writing his lyrics on a typewriter, where they could actually exist. We experience the very same thing with our Zettels: when you are confronted with the non-reality of their digital existence, what will you choose?
I use flashcards.
I’ve tried every piece of software attempting to replicate this that I can find, but none of them ever come close to the connections I can build on paper.
