How I organise my notes with the Zettelkasten and Obsidian method

I've always liked to take notes (mainly on paper), but then I like to digitise the important and/or essential part. When they are simpler concepts, I write them directly in digital format and I find it quite comfortable.

I have tried all kinds of apps: apple notes (which I love), Notion, markdown files.... each app has its good and bad things. The common factor of all of them for me was that I ended up stopping using them after a while, as none of them allowed me to sort out all the ideas and concepts in my head 🧠.

I have drawn some conclusions from this:

• I like to own my data. I want to have the files on my computer and decide whether or not to sync them to the cloud and to which one.
• The markdown format is very convenient for writing.
• Notes and concepts are related to each other.

A couple of weeks ago, working on my side-projects, I came across the term "Zettelkasten". I found it curious as it clearly looked like a German term, which is not common to see.

When I researched it I found a method of organising notes and a world of new applications, which I have been using non-stop for the last few weeks. It has allowed me to sort out my ideas, "empty" everything I had in my head... and have a sense of order.

What works for me, doesn't have to work for you.

Before going deeper into these concepts, I want to make it clear that what works for one person may not work for another. The way of thinking, understanding and relating concepts may be different for different people. Therefore, I encourage you to try. Yes, try different applications, leave things half-finished, explore the mess until you find your order.

The Zettelkasten method

The Zettelkasten method (German for "note box"), is a system of knowledge management through note-taking. The peculiarity is that each note must contain a single concept, expressed in your own words, and it forces you to create relationships between notes. It is often used in research and study.

This has several points that favour creativity, information retrieval, better understanding of the concepts, understanding relationships and patterns between them...

These relationships between notes, which can also contain tags that relate them, allow you to have a dynamic network of knowledge that can change over time.

Note-taking applications

In relation to the previous concept, there are a large number of applications, both open-source and private, that allow you to create and organise your notes following this method.

In my case, I have decided to start using Obsidian. Let me explain why: - You own your data. - It uses markdown format. - It allows you to create relationships between notes. - From these relationships, it draws a graph of relationships between them that you can also customize. I love it. - It has a javascript plugin system. I've tried to develop one for myself and it's great.

The only downside:

It's closed-source, but who cares? In the end, the application is a markdown editor, which paints a graph and lets you run plugins. You are in control of the data. If they stopped developing it, you could keep using it locally for a long time.