Building a second brain with Zettelkasten

"The brain is for having ideas, not for storing them."

But where do you store these ideas? I'm sure we all know and understand the difficulty of memorizing information (Of course, if you're in an academic setting and have to memorize these, you won't have a choice either). But is that really necessary? 

This is where the concept of a second brain comes in. While your own physical brain is for having ideas, this "second brain" is for storing them systematically. You can not only store ideas but also slowly build them up, add additional information and create links between ideas in this second brain. While you can have a paper-based second brain, updating it can be tedious, complicated, and sometimes even impossible. While the original Zettelkasten(we will get to what that is later) WAS actually paper-based, most people nowadays, myself included, prefer an online second brain, where you can store, update and find information quickly.

One of the most famous ways to have a second brain is the ZettelKasten method (meaning "slip box"). Here you store small bits of information in separate cards/files and link them together. This method was created by a German sociologic Niklas Luhmann (Zettelkasten. (2022, September 10). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten), who used index cards to store and connect different pieces of information. Presently various apps, such as RemNote, Nation, and Obsidian, are used instead of index cards. Today, we're going to be using my personal favorite out of these -Obsidian- to learn how to build a ZettelKasten.

Obsidian is quite similar to Notion (which I explain in this post). However, while Notion saves information within the app, Obsidian saves them as markdown files on your device. While this makes it harder for you to sync your files (you actually need the premium version to do so), it makes sure you don't lose your information even if you delete your account by mistake. Another factor that made me choose Obsidian over Notion is its map function, which shows you all ideas you have and all connections between them. This can come in handy when you don't want to follow many links to get to a specific idea.

 So how do you create a second brain online using the ZettelKasten method? First, you create different types of notes as follows.

Fleeting notes. - These are the notes you take when you get an idea and want to jot it down quickly. These should include the date created and links to other connecting ideas. Fleeting notes can also include unprocessed notes from various media such as videos, books, and podcasts. These should be marked as unprocessed so you can summarize these ideas later.

Literature notes. - These are the notes you take after watching a video, reading a book or an article, listening to a podcast, etc. These should include the source, author, date, and links to other connecting ideas.

Hub notes. - These notes include all the links for other notes of a specific category or topic. You can make these for any category or topic. Sometimes Hub notes can include links to other Hub notes as well.

Templates. - You can make templates of different types of Hub, Fleeting, or Literature notes and use them whenever you need them. For example, you can make a template for Literature notes of videos that includes a field to type in the name, link, creator of the video, and the date it was posted. With the use of Obsidian's template function, these templates make the process much quicker.

Apart from these, all Fleeting and Literature notes should include links to connecting ideas and tags to identify different groups of notes. Furthermore, all notes should have a unique identifier. This can be a number, date, or anything. These tags, links, and identifiers are the most important parts of ZettelKasten, as they help the user connect and identify ideas. 

Another important thing is that all notes should be in your words. If you directly type something into your notes, you should quote and cite it. While sometimes it can be hard to paraphrase, the method won't be effective unless you paraphrase because then you'll have original ideas that are easier to understand. 

Now, let's go through the process of making Zettel.

1. First, you pull up a video, book, article, or any piece of media and consume it. While doing so, you should create a Fleeting Note with a unique identifier and type anything you find important. You can create more than one note for different ideas, but I prefer to do everything in one and later separate them out. You should also tag these notes as unprocessed so you can even come back to them after a few days.
2. Then you create a new Literature note using a template and input the necessary details such as the media, author, and date. Here, you can put the words you took from the specific video, book, or podcast in quotation marks and explain them in your own words. This is where you separate out your ideas and make different notes for different ideas.
3. You should also link other related notes to this note by adding a link to keywords. At the end of the Literature note, you should add tags, a lot of them (don't be afraid to at tags as they're always helpful), of keywords of the Zettel.
4. Finally, you add the notes to one or more Hub notes. Make sure you write what the note is about in the Hub notes instead of simply typing in the identifier since identifiers often don't give enough information to figure that out.

And there you go. You now have a Zettel!

While the process can be tedious and confusing at first, building a second brain like it is worth it because your brain will have more space to think of ideas. As daunting as it is, I believe that this is something everyone should try at least once, even if it's to find out that it's not for them.