Zettelkasten - Adam Cairns

How to Organise Your Notes in Obsidian

3 December 202115 May 2021 by Adam

Over the years, I’ve used many note-taking apps.

1.Bear:

I really like Bear . For a long time, this was my note app of choice. You can chuck lots of different things at it, including web clips. Bear also stores your notes as Markdown, so there’s no fear of losing them. The notes don’t really play that well with other apps, and you can’t use it alongside Obsidian because there’s no way I’ve been able to find to access Bear’s notes from Obsidian.

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Concept Oriented

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

What Should Notes Be About?

Note every note you take should end up in your Zettelkasten or your Note-Making System. Lists of errands to run, jobs to do are best organised elsewhere.

I separate the storage of documents (PDFs, web articles and so on) from where I store my notes. This is because I want to avoid the Collectors Fallacy, something I’ve been prone to in the past.

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Evergreen Notes

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

What Are Evergreen Notes?

The term ‘Evergreen Notes‘ is used by Andy Matushak to describe notes which are more than fleeting.

Evergreen Notes adhere to the Zettelkasten Principles which makes recording useful notes easier to do consistently.

I have developed my own terminology. Instead of Evergreen Notes, I use the term Cornerstone Note because I like the idea that they are building blocks of information.

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Lasting Value

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

Failing at Personal Knowledge Management

In previous attempts at creating and maintaining Personal Knowledge Management Systems (PKMSs), I have thrown lots of material into my storage facility DEVONthink. I was of course thereby demonstrating that I had fallen prey to the Collectors Fallacy.

Items which were stored in DEVONthink may have passed a threshold of interest, but they were prone to two problems:

I may have stored items which were of passing interest, but whose utility was ephemeral
there was no obvious retrieval method, or means of linking ideas together, even allowing for DEVONthink’s rather impressive AI.

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Information Flow Purpose

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

Definition

I designed a methodology called Information Flow that helps me manage what appears in my Note-Making System (NMS).

Information Flow Purpose

to deliver a means of sparking abundant creativity for my work as a poet and writer
to ensure that there is a system in place for recording insights, ideas, thoughts or feelings associated with an Item of Knowledge which has potential Lasting Value
by linking insights, ideas, thoughts or feelings together, I will provide fertile soil for Creativity Activation.

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Information Flow Methodology

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

Context

All information reaches my consciousness in one of these ways:

reading books, articles, news reports etc
visiting websites
receiving emails
listening to podcasts, radio, music
watching TV, opera, movies etc
other apps e.g. DailyArt

A Process

This process describes how an Item of Knowledge that has potential Lasting Value is identified, captured and processed in accordance with the criteria described in Information Flow Purpose.

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Evergreen Notes

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

What Are Evergreen Notes?

The term ‘Evergreen Notes’ is used by Andy Matushak to describe notes which are more than fleeting.

Evergreen notes adhere to the Zettelkasten Principles which makes it easier to do consistently.

I have developed my own terminology. Instead of Evergreen Notes, I use the term Cornerstone Note because I like the idea that they are building blocks of information.

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Definition of a Building Block Note

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

I use the word Building Block Note to describe a unique note that I have placed into my Note-Making System.

To get into the Note-Making System, a note must be of potential Lasting Value. Ascribing Lasting Value to a note is my way of cordoning off my attention from items which are merely ‘interesting’ but are likely of no Lasting Value.

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Atomic

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

Notes Should Be Atomic

The nature of a Note-Taking System is that it is an interconnected network of your ideas, concepts, thoughts or feelings.

Feelings are not normally mentioned, but because I want to test how a Note-Making System can help with Creativity Activation, I am also including feelings in the sorts of items that I collect.

I think it is quite likely that a piece of poetry or prose will engender a similar feeling when I see a great piece of art or when I hear or see something that evokes the same feeling.

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Cornerstone Notes

3 December 202129 April 2021 by Adam

Cornerstone notes are the term I use to describe Andy Matushak’s Evergreen Notes

Andy suggests evergreen notes are written to:

evolve
contribute
accumulate, over time
across projects.

Principles

A simple note adheres to the same principles defined for any note that finds its way into my Note-Making System:

a note should be Atomic
a note should be Concept Oriented
the combination of an Atomic note and the fact that it is Concept Oriented means it becomes more than an Item of Knowledge – it begins to communicate Actionable Information and transforms into an Item of Information
a note should be Densely Linked
a note should be organised using Associative Ontologies rather than hierarchical taxonomies.

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