ZettelKasten Method

ZettelKasten method is a very efficient method introduced by Niklas Luhmann in Germany. It is an extremely successful method of taking down notes. Even Niklas Luhmann used it to take down notes of various topics. He took down notes of things and gathered notes, this way he was able to publish 30 books in 15 years by using the Zettelkasten method, you can create a personalized knowledge management system that allows you to easily store, organize, and retrieve your ideas and information.

Uses of ZettelKasten

In this era, we have a lot of options to gather knowledge from, such as books, internet, podcasts, youtube etc. So to keep all important points and data at one place this ZettelKasten method can be used. Using this we can gather a lot of information from various sources at one place. 

Who was Niklas Luhmann And how did he use it?

Niklas Luhmann(8 December 1927 – 6 November 1998) was a German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory.Niklas Luhmann believed that ZettelKasten was necessary for him to create a bunch of data. His ZettelKasten consisted of 90,000 card divided in three categories such as “Society”, “Communication and “Evolution”. Each of the cards contained only 1 idea or concept. He used ZettelKasten as a tool for developing and refining his ideas over the course of time. He would write down ideas as they occurred to him and then linked them to related cards in his system. He also used it to publish his articles and books. In his success as a social theorist, and his approach to knowledge management continues to inspire scholars and researchers even today.

How does it work?

By using sticky notes or small pieces of paper, Boxes separated as per topics can allow anyone to gather notes the fastest allowing more efficiency. It involves creating individual notes on index cards or digital files and then linking them together to form a network of ideas

There are some steps which can help you all understand ZettelKasten more detailed, they are as follows,

• Create your Zettelkasten: Whether you choose to use physical index cards and divide it into categories or topics that are relevant to you work
• Whenever you come across an interesting idea or piece of information, write it down on a note card, each note or tag should contain only 1 piece of information with a unique tag.
• Once you have a collection of notes and tags, link them together as per your topics and categories.
• You can then organize them as per topics, dates, etc.
• These can be later used to revise as they are collection of data from many sources such as internet, books etc.