Top Highlights

• Unlike a card-catalog in an old library, the purpose of a Zettelkasten is not to find an individual note, but rather to explore the connections amongst notes. This can help you collect knowledge to write papers and books quickly, and find areas you may need to research further. Additionally, the act of organizing a Zettelkasten often leads to unexp...
• Literature Notes Literature notes are informal summaries you write about a piece of media you've consumed.
• The purpose of a fleeting note is to say, "here's something interesting I might want to remember or refer to some day." You need to record just enough information to later decide whether you want to turn your fleeting note into a literature note, permanent note, or someday/maybe.
• literature notes are in your own words. To write literature notes, you have to think about what you learned, and how you might explain it to a friend (or your future self). This helps you remember the material better than you would otherwise.
• Permanent notes are explanations of a single idea, annotated with metadata about the subject of the note, other notes that note is related to, and the source of the note. You usually write permanent notes using literature notes as your source. You take only the most important ideas from your literature notes, and turn them into singular notes you c...