Interview and Q&A with Sönke Ahrens on How to Take Smart Notes
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
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This is an interview with Sönke Ahrens, a Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the University of Duisburg-Essen who also coaches students, academics, and professionals with a focus on time management, decision-making, and personal growth. For a full description, show notes, and chat transcript, visit the Forte Labs blog: fortelabs.co/blog/interview-w...
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Sönke’s book on the Zettelkasten exploded my whole life, in a good way. It answered dozens of questions and challenges I wasn’t even aware I had.
Me too
11:00 do you teach ur students the zattlecasten
14:00 reverse engineering step
25:30 capture fleeting ideas
29:00 start with what u already know/ myth of starting from scratch
31:00 context over topic
34:00 writing new note in form of dialogue with existing notes
39:00 space repetition
I appreciate the comment on not obsessing over having a perfect note-taking system and giving yourself a hard time when you make a mistake. Treat it as a learning curve instead. That’s what I’ve been doing in the past two weeks. 😁
My copy of Sonke's book arrives this week. Thank you for hosting an interview with Sonke.
It should be noted that when Ahrens says "permanent notes" he is being descriptive-it's not a label per se. It means notes going into your slip boxes. I.e. both your literature notes and your main slip box notes (which I call main notes just to bring more clarity). Both literature notes and main notes are permanent notes. He focused most of the attention in the main notes and so he'll sometimes refer to them in the book as permanent notes and then when he is specifying literature notes alone, he'll call those out specifically. And thus he confused everyone.
Anyway. It took me a couple extra reads of a couple chapters for me to realize this. Everyone makes the same mistake, so it's really the only weak part of the book. This lack of clarity.
So. In those 8 steps you write those literature notes (permanent notes v1, if you will) and then you write main notes (permanent notes v2) and file them both in their respective slip boxes. :)
Great interview, by the way.
Very handy comment for someone who has just came across Ahrens, has yet to read the book and make a start on Zettelkasten. I've read a lot of reviews on How To Take Smart Notes that say it's more of a "why" than a "how", as in there aren't actual instructions and examples of note taking and the system. Would you agree or are those types of reviews baseless?
I teach at an IB school and I noticed Sonke really touched upon their teaching philosophies when reading his book, especially how taking content and seeing how it is relevant to me and conceptualizing it, I almost thought he was a teacher. Good to see that he's a literally PhD in Education and confirm that suspicion haha
Excellent interview! I'm currently reading How to Take Smart Notes and this is a great companion to the book.
I really love his work! I'm currently reading How to Take Smart Notes. Amazing 👏
Tiago, very good questions. Love it!
I think zettelkasten practices are an excellent help for problem solving.
There are several simple fundamental mechanisms to work on a problem "zettelkasten style" - here is one I find useful:
- First, I write down my present view of a problem topic.
- Then, I apply suitable thinking tools or "progress operators" to this view:
- I make a list of things I already know about the problem,
- I make a list of the aspects I find difficult or confusing,
- I ask questions,
- I collect criticism,
- I try to find out what parts are still missing for a solution of the problem,
- I generate ideas (often with a picture chart from the internet as a visual stimulus), etc.
(In my experience, making a list of things I find confusing is especially useful. )
- Then, I investigate the most promising of these approaches in follow-up notes.
- I write a new, modified view of the problem topic.
- Then I apply the next set of progress operators.
The basic zettelkasten logic of linking notes makes it pretty easy to follow different lines of reasoning, and then to combine insights.
I find it very useful to have a collection of simple but powerful thinking tools accessible inside my zettelkasten.
It’s a systematic process to ask better questions.
This was amazing. Thanks!!
A wonderful insightful interview. Thank you.
Nice interview, make the procces of taking smart notes more clear.
Thank you for this interview, Tiago
my understanding to zettelkasten method
- one idea one card
- add new card to existing system one by one
- new card only connect to one existing card that is mostly related or most similar(assign index number/ hard link)
- a card and it's connected cards had no parent/child relationship, they are just connected by similarity.
- multiple cards form a flow of story
- story cards are connected by internal link/ soft link
- each story card is indexed to existing system individually.
- a story now should contain the original cards, plus related cards connected to each story card but not directly related to the story itself, plus other stories come by related cards
Sorry for the poor wording and formatting. I am not practicing zettelkasten before, because I find it hard for my need. I just finally come up the above reversion after watching the interview. So here it come this long comment.
Walter Wong Hey Walter. Do you live in Malaysia? Did you at one time live in St. Catharines?
Bro, Zahir is asking you something
@@zahirvisram2749 no
Great talk. Got some value out of it! :)
Thank you so much for your video! I am suffering transferring my notes from another system to Obsidian. My notes were in the book's structure with the part-chapter-title-subtitle hierarchy. I've been spending a lot of time adjusting the system and format of my notes again and again just to see what works and what don't, but still don't have an idea if I should keep the author's structure...😂I don't want to lose the author's logic of argument, but I don't want the author's structure to limit my thinking either...I guess this video gives me some ideas. I mean I am not a PhD and I don't need to write papers. Notes or the frameworks I am learning are for practical use...maybe I shouldn't break the framework down into extremely small pieces😁
My interest in his work is more about the science of learning, rather than thinking
Took a lot of notes on these
So glad to see that my suggestion on twitter to bring Sönke Ahrens for an interview worked! Awesomee!!
yeah, we were all waiting for your special and valuable command
My god, this is a Mike Tyson in his prime ego level, thank you, Grand Master! The world would be lost without your immense wisdom
Suggestions to think about selecting software. Store your notes as plain text in UTF-8 on your computer, or at least be able to download as text on your local computer if you have it in the cloud. You don't want to store the notes in digital form in databases. Text is easy to transfer between systems.
I am using Org-roam in Emacs, but I am just a beginner.
Great talk 😊
Not taking notes on anything that’s part of our existing mental model caused me a rueful smile …….. validation is such a wonderful thing; it’s wonderful to be right!!!!!!!!😂
took some notes :D
It doesn't matter if you are watching this video in 2058..it's still gonna be great
No time stamps? haha. Thanks for the video!
This is the way.
31:43 how to file by context not by subject/topic
Spaced repetition is useful in language learning. I’m trying to figure out how taking smart notes would apply to language learning. Any thoughts or comments?
I want to start learning Obsidian. I want to ask when you make literature notes what does that mean? If I see an idea into a text, I would write that idea down or what captured my attention and the page number for references “put” this note aside and based on this note I must elaborate on the information and whilst continuing to read I will develop the fleeting notes which will contribute to the insight I got from the idea that I’ve put in literature note. OK. And then where do I put this literature note in ? a separate -“box”(folder) and just connect it to the Index card on which the topic that interests me resides behind.
I cannot figure out how to connect the literature notes the notes that I elaborated on (my permanent notes) and the “Index” ? Do I do the index as a note and put everything on a topic behind it ? When should I use the literature notes to reference, if I write about an idea drawn somewhere from behind the index card into the topic I am interested in and then if the permanent notes have a backlink or connection to then those ideas were written by this and that person and its worth mentioning where I took my ideas from.
It is just hard to imagine this and put it in my head. I cannot imagine the structure which is beyond the folder system. It sound like putting again everything “behind the same folder” and digging in by keywords and those key words connect different topics and insights from the topic inside this big bucket.
If I have a “database” and I want to explore “plants/herbs” but I want to explore “leadership development” but connect leadership/development with another interest Company organisation building, do I keep all the notes in the soup of things just separated behind index cards which identify the topic and connect the topics which I want to connect with keywords within the notes that I think can contribute into the idea in a different topic and how to connect them ?
Idk I am probably limited , because I cannot imagine it.
Thank you Elon
23:16 what do people misunderstand/get wrong about this system?
What are the 8 steps.
Systems therapy? 4:34, what is that? sounds interesting
This is a pretty good summary: thebowencenter.org/theory/
1.75 Speed Recommended
31:00
32:02
Starting with the canonical steps that worked for one person grounds you with a baseline methodology. That's why people clamor for it.
I've trained a lot of people on a lot of things for many years. They need a model that is crystal clear and they need to know the why. From there, they can adapt.
Very true...people hate thinking for themselves and just trying things out. They fear failure so much they lose the whole point of it just so they can feel they did it perfectly.
pronounce Sönke 1:12
Zotero non-hardwired hierarchy
If you find writing easy, you're either not applying yourself or you have too low expectations of yourself.
asian elon musk
Not far off considering his parents were immigrants from Brazil and the Philippines
I really miss a summary video on this. I can't spend more than 10 minutes to get advice on what way/app is best to take notes.
That is a very sad kind of poverty.
He looks like elon musk
(Sönke is, I guess, pronounced like it spelled, but "ö" is pronounced like English "a" in "a bottle", I guess. And yes, "ö" is not "o")
Sounds like "zoonkay", phonetically speaking.
Too much by the host ... not enough by the author!
Its a really nice interview but you can see how Americans always have this commercial attitude wanting to sell something instead of finding out what is true and good. That´s not a nice culture.