Get Everything Done

I got really excited about Zettelkasten for a little bit, as I was exploring lots of information organization systems. However, over time I've found that I've gone the other way. I'm already a borderline hyper-organized person, both mentally and physically. Using even *more* organization on top of that just ends up as a distraction, and I lose sight of make real internal insights. I've taken a more intuitive approach now, where I emphasize extreme focus and engagement with materials, which tends to put them into my head very strongly, and leaves good trails that allows me to identify the information without as structured an external system. I find that I am able to make better insights that way, and I use free association journaling to clarify those things when I need to.

Other people, like Brandon Sanderson, have made great success from a hyperlinked information management system (he uses a wiki), which is essentially what a Zettelkasten is. I think for people who are self-aware enough to actually make use of such systems and leverage them, they can be really useful, but I think a lot of people who talk about the productivity gains are potentially speaking from confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacies, and a lack of a control group. That is, they feel better, and they feel like they are doing something, and they can point to an externalized artifact that they produced, so it makes them feel like they've accomplished something, especially if they "find" something in their system. But just because all of that is true doesn't mean that they are actually more productive because of that. It is very possible that they are less productive, but just feel better about it, whereas if they spent more time pondering ideas and less time structuring the information, they might actually produce more, as their energy could potentially have been more efficiently applied.

That isn't to say that the system isn't a good one, but only that when engaging with such complex systems, it's very easy to confuse feeling productive with actually being productive. Thus, if it were me, and I wanted to pursue it, I would first establish objective measurements that would allow me to determine whether such an investment was worth it, at least if I were doing something like this for the sake of productivity. On the other hand, if it's just a matter of feeling good because you have a system that you like to fiddle with and that is aesthetically or emotionally satisfactory to you, then I'd say, go for it. I think there are lots of emotionally attractive things about a Zettelkasten that might be worth it even if it doesn't make you more productive. It's a very neat idea and system.

For myself, I like bound notebooks too much to go this route.

Mark:

I have no doubt that what you are talking about for your own books and process is perfectly accurate, but if I can be totally blunt, without any offense, your books and writings are rather unsophisticated, and often intentionally so. You're organically growing and morphing your ideas over time. You play with them, experiment, and change them. A critical element to your process, IMO, is non-commitment.

This allows you to refine ideas over time, and gives you freedom to explore those ideas intuitively. If you logically contradict yourself at some point along the timeline, that's fine. If you say something that makes sense in one context, but might be contradicted in another context, that's fine. In other words, there's a lack of inherent internal consistency or formal coherence in your efforts, and you don't make any attempt to suggest that you're aiming for that.

In such a world, the human brain is very good at helping to find the sorts of connections that you're after. However, a Z'n is meant to provide a more stable and scalable ideation and record generation system than what the human brain is capable of. In particular, it enables a more coherent and long lived development of ideas that must be critically preserved and coherent across long periods of time.

I think Brandon Sanderson is one of the best examples of this with his Wiki (which I take to be a type of Z'n). Tolkien made "a world". It's considered somewhat complex. Robert Jordan made another world, also considered somewhat complex. Brandon Sanderson has created a Universe, and from the very beginning his intention was to create an interwoven pattern of connection, overlap, subtle references, and foreshadowing that not only had all of that structure, but also satisfied the creative requirements of a high-fantasy universe.

The two patterns are *entirely* different. Brandon likes to talk about the metaphor of gardeners and architects. Your modern is much more gardener, and is very popular for a lot of authors. Kim Harisson, for instance, is another fantasy writer, who has a cabinet of "ideas" that sit around and germinate. But she's happy to allow things to evolve over time. Brandon Sanderson, on the other hand, has constraints on his writing because he's writing many books in many different story lines across decades worth of writing which all must remain internally consistent with one another throughout time, despite new ideas needing to be created and generated within that framework.

For someone like him creating his types of stories, it's critical to be able to not only generate new ideas, but generate new ideas within a consistent and coherent framework over time that you wouldn't possibly be able to verify as consistent using only your own mental revision and examination. He has to be able to say something in one book and 10 years down the road make sure that he never contradicts that idea, while still talking about something new and exciting and evolving the world. That sort of complexity in his world designs and story arcs means that something like an external Z'n style system is very important.

I think the original Z'n creator was also dealing with this, because the sociological world at the time was grappling with lots of complex ideas, and there was a need to try to organize it all and try to account for lots of things that were little details that could easily be forgotten. That's the sort of thing that I think a Z'n could be very good for. However, it also requires a certain sort of personality to want to do that kind of work. It's not just dependent on the tool.

Starting a Z'n isn't going to magically turn you into Brandon Sanderson or the like. However, I strongly suspect that the sort of people who need a Z'n type of system develop something like it at some point because they, well, need it. For them, the Z'n model might be a more optimized version of what they are already doing, or it might enable people who aren't quite sure where to start to get something going, but it's only a tool that requires the person running it to have a clear vision for its use to make it worthwhile.

Or at least, that's my opinion on it.

Mark

Sanderson's current publications surrounding the "Cosmere" world that he writes in account for well over 3 million words at this point, often with tiny and subtle references to underlying themes that aren't explicitly mentioned in the books. You've been seriously holding out on us if you have the ability to keep all of that straight when writing just by re-reading all the time! Many of his larger books are on the order of 30 - 60 hours of narrative on Audible. I'm certainly not able to process that level of complexity and minutia simply by rereading all the time, though I am sure that he does that as well.

To all:

I think there's something that people are also missing around ZeKa. Its fame comes largely from being a technique for hyperlinked topic-based publication in analog form. Arguably two of the most popular trends in publishing and information management today are simply digital forms of this: Wiki's and Topic-based documentation/publishing.

Wikipedia is, in many ways, simply a large ZeKa that is community-driven, and in fact, it serves many people, including those in academic research in the same way that the ZeKa originally did.

Additionally, many people who need to publish on an idea over time (especially corporate or technical groups) have gravitated to topics-based publishing, which is a type of ZeKa in many ways.

So, really, I think what seems novel about the ZeKa is the analog element of it. Digital tools have long since incorporated the core ideas of a ZeKa, and we arguably have a grand giant ZeKa publicly created (and many people argue this explicitly without saying ZeKa) in the WWW.

However, being a big fan of analog, I think there's still something to spending the time to build analog materials for review or as a part of your thinking process.

Mark:

<<Even if you had thought it all out and written it yourself in the first place? Doing that leaves patterns in the brain which are much more easily resurrected than when reading something written by another person.>>

That's actually part of the problem. Those patterns are what allows us to often overlook errors when we do things like reread, and having the information in separate structures can help us to break those patterns...but...

<<And what about the people who are going to nit-pick about some obscure detail? Are they feeding the whole opus into a ZeKa so they can spot whenever a character is described as right-handed when they were described as left-handed two million words ago?>>

Actually, in the realm of Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels, often times, the answer is...yes! There are multiple layers here, but there are the professionals and team that someone like Sanderson uses to read his books beforehand and catch issues, which may include continuity issues, and I'm sure they have notes and the like, but the important part is actually having multiple people read it to find breaks and inconsistencies that Sanderson might have missed himself.

However, even then, such projects can often be too big for just people to read through them, so what fans often do is create a shared library/database/encyclopedia of all the information they collect about the books. They will reverse engineer plots, arcs, characters, timelines, &c. They'll hyperlink all of this information, and generally put together a giant database of all the information they collect in summary or alternative forms. Often this will include large maps and visualizations of people, genealogies, and so forth. Things like whether a character has blue yes, a certain type of hair, or is left or right handed are often among the first things for people to start gathering.

In some long lived books, people will go through and link together how a specific concept is used throughout the entire set of books. They're often highly detailed about this, so they'll find a list of all the words in the books that are ever used to describe someone's hair, for instance. They'll document each place in the books where this is mentioned, and come up with the list, and then look for inconsistencies (using raven and obsidian as terms, for instance).

Some people will go through and identify exact numerical information stated across the books. So, for instance, if one book lists a certain population distribution one way, but another book says something else casually, they'll find and reference all this data.

When enough people are reading your books and doing this, you end up with a lot of cross examination of minutiae, often in ways that are hard to remember with additional reference materials, of which a digital form of Zettelkasten just happens to be one of the more popular ones used these days.

And yes, this information is used to spawn new ideas, thoughts, and do "thinking." People spend a lot of time exploring these digital Zettelkasten as a part of their love for the books, and then start to formulate ideas around them, share them, and a whole little community arises thinking about this stuff, often with those thoughts going back into the Zettelkasten.

Mike:

That's a really interesting anecdote about James Ellroy. As a writer, especially published like that, I think it would take a lot for me to say something like that, but that certainly adds some unique character to his books. :-)

Mark:

You're too busy getting stuff done! :-)