It sounds like you could really benefit from using the Canvas tool in Obsidian. You can think both linearly and nonlinearly. I also I think maybe you should create annotated bibliographies with your notes. Rather than forcing your notes to be directional, you can make them directional using an annotated bibliography in obsidian (embed the notes into the annotated bibliography; don't rewrite them.) This reminds me of some of the issues I had when I wrote my dissertation. I think you're conflating drafting, revising, and thinking. These are all separate activities. Your note-making helps with thinking. Then draft without trying to make it sound good (zero draft or crap draft). Revise it so that it makes sense. Revise in waves, focusing on one things at a time (pacing, paragraphing, structure, argument, flow, etc.) If you haven't done so already, I recommend looking into Tara Brabazon. Her RUclips channel was a game changer for me.
Ugh, yes, that RUclips channel is so so helpful! And yes, this is what I do mostly, I think then draft then revise. However, writing for me and for my zettelkasten does largely happen through writing. And that writing becomes the draft... And revising often means I have to go back to the thinking then drafting, etc. So, for me anyway, sometimes they are separated tasks and that's always a good prompt to remember and keep things focused. But on the other hand, especially with a zettelkasten, they're not aaalways separate. Drafting and revising can be acts of thinking. But maybe I do things in a way that is more difficult than it needs to be. I'm still learning as I write my dissertation. I'll probably make more chatty videos about these ideas as I think through them because I am very fascinated by the writing process in general.
And I think I will have to check out the Canvas tool, thanks! Revise in waves is also a great tip, I'm kind of going through that now with my first chapter. Stressful work. But rewarding! What was your dissertation on??
@@morganeua so excited to see how you work through all of this! My dissertation was on how organizational reputation influences expectations about their performance, which we can moderate by focusing on a shared value. It was mostly survey experiments and theory building. I love how you've been doing interdisciplinary research for your literature review (according to my binge watching of your videos). I wish I had done more of that for my dissertation.
Can really say that the canvas feature is a life saver! it helped me to write , order and visualize the flow of my art dissertation using my notes. The graph view is not that helpful in that matter. Thanks for the channel recommenation, Jourdan ! :D
@@saramartinez8747 Yes!!! Canvas is a game changer! And yes Tara Brabazon is incredible. She retweeted me once and it felt like Britney Spears pulled me on stage at a concert. She's so brilliant.
I totally understand how this can be an issue. A big part of the solution, for me, lies in the very start of your research, it's all about the "approach" and "methodology" of the research. I'm not sure if academic research the way you do it takes up the same methodology as we do where I live, but normally at the beginning of every academic research you start with a proposal that defines the "problem" you are researching and the exact approach you take to reach the solution, and then as you read you collect information and create the connections, then you decide which piece/s of information to start your writing with, which one is your "entrance" to this subject, in accordance to your approach as defined in the initial proposal. So the approach decides "the hierarchy" of your notes, if I may say. I hope what I'm saying is making sense!
Yes, absolutely. I do think I find more clarity in my zettelkasten when I am putting notes in for a particular research project, so everything is building off each other!
So the following is mainly based on videos of Luhmann talking in German and people re-iterating on conversations with him. The original Zettelkasten had index notes (some Obsidian people call this MOCs or Hub pages). Luhmann used those index cards (about a topic) as a starting point for an outline to a text he wanted to write. Based on how you structured your obsidian, you might need tags, tag notes or MOC files to group your thought to something similar to an index card. The next thing that happened is he pulled out the referenced starting point note and all the Folgezettel to an outlined bullet point (from the index note). That is something a little bit harder to get by if you did not plan for it in the beginning of your note taking journey, but I know of two ways. A) Darin Suthapong showed that in a video, where a nested tag (like follows #thought0001/01/13) was used to annotate the notes connected to specific train of thoughts. You then can search for the sub parts of the tag to find the train of thoughts B) You create a search query that represents your thought and sort the result by creation date. So you know which notes came first and create linearity this way. In Summary: Find yourself a way (or already existing note) to index thoughts on your overarching topic. Create your outline with it and then find a way to query all notes related to each bullet point and get them in some form of a timely order. Alternatively If you have the time and want to do the effort, create a metadata field using a Luhmann like indexing approach and use the custom sort plugin by SebastianMC to create the linear order for your notes.
Thanks for this, I really appreciate your explorations--it expresses a lot of my own struggle and challenges. I'm in a similar boat--writing a dissertation with my ZK. I use an analog system, so my use case is a little different, but I've had (and have!) very similar difficulties. But I'm starting to think they're good problems. It really is a dialog between my present sentence-making self and my prior one. So there's plenty that I'll say in the draft that my past self has said, but there's always more to say that I want to add in the present. I've also leaned in to drafts being a form of communication and teaching--I'm sharing something that I've learned with others who either don't know it, or might think differently about it but could benefit from it. So this shifts my present focus to order of teaching and presentation rather than order of discovery or non-linear order of connection. I also try to think in terms of inferential relationships--what logically follows from what, what is presupposed by what, etc. This helps me order things at least according to some thesis-driven rationale even though that can and does change. I also think assembling your notes in one continuous stream as a zero draft but writing the fair draft separately makes perfect sense. You have something to reference and engage with as you write, but you're encouraged to write something more linear. Finally, I sometimes will write in what Martinich calls "successive elaborations." Basically, with some thesis and very broad outline, write within successively larger word limits. I typically start with 500. The aim is for something that explains and defends the thesis within that limit. With each successive draft, you can expand, edit, cut, etc, but each time you're done you have a cohesive draft. This helps me be more concise but also focused on what I really need--including when I rifling through my file as I'm drafting. (An Obsidian note: I think you can use an exclamation mark in front of the brackets to display the contents of a note rather than having to manually copy and paste.)
One thing that helps me when notes can go in any order is to flesh out "the story of the context" - what I mean by that is to think hierarchically (or like an outline) about the context of your notes - so not the content of the notes themselves but the question of "Where did this idea come from?", "Who laid the groundwork for this idea to exist?" or perhaps even, "How did I even get interested in this idea in the first place? What sparked the curiosity?". Does the origin of this idea come before the origin of another? If there's certain context that needs to be included as part of being able to understand a note, then lay out the context and then decide (after laying out all the context of all the notes), which comes first? What's fundamental information, and what builds on it from there? So, in essence, you're thinking about a taxonomy or hierarchy of the context behind your notes, but not the notes themselves. Then you can fit the actual notes into that order according to where they belong among that context. You're building the story behind the notes. It's not about what's related to what, but "How did we get from nothing to here?" - this also helps when trying to understand the information or trying to teach the information in a kind of "Feynman-esque" way.
I use lists linking to notes in a logical order. I don’t copy and paste in one note because I don’t like my notes to be too long and it helps me to see the bigger picture. At The beginning of a chapter I give a sort of conclusion and then start to explain everything in detail in the sections. In the conclusion i give a hint to the discussion at the very end. I do the actual book writing from scratch like you but I use my obsidian structure to remind myself whats supposed to be in chapters and sections in general so I don‘t lose focus.
I've been writing in Obsidian pretty much in linear format, and just doing a lot of brain dumps rather than writing articles or blog posts. But I have written on specific topics in Obsidian and generally only give myself a rough outline with no text or references in it because like you, the voice of my note taking is not the voice I use for anything I would want anyone else reading. So I really understand that problem. I remember from years ago looking at my handwritten notes and trying to rewrite the same information in a voice suitable for the book I was working on. It was hard. Many times, since I was using a computer to write with, I would put in two dotted lines and between them put "this needs to have something about xyz being blah" and leave it. Then come back to it in the editing process and I'd find I could fill it in much easier because ... that note I wrote wasn't in front of my eyes but I could still remember what it was about. There is nothing wrong with "coming back to it". Sometimes time, a walk, a few days, etc. gives your brain a chance to percolate on it without you actively trying to work on it and force things. When you were describing your way of creating an outline and moving things around, I could honestly imagine a juggler juggling concepts. Which comes first? Which comes next? Well it varies - as she tosses concept #5 into the spot where concept #3 was meant to be... And if your thesis is on juggling, I think taking this into account somewhere in the 'front matter' may be the way to go? I don't know anything about juggling aside from some things I read several years ago in the Robert Silverberg's "Lord Valentine's Castle" - an excellent SciFi book (part of a series) which happens to feature a juggler as the main character. Anyway, sorry this is so long. Love your videos!
Thanks again for an engaging and thoughtful discussion. Your observations helped me to appreciate important distinctions between atomic/short form 'captured' thoughts, on the one hand, and extended/long form writing, whether essay, article, dissertation, or book, on the other hand. You demonstrate that a 'captured thought' stands alone inherently--in a sense. An 'atomic' book note, for example, captures the interface between the author's idea and your response/reflection/connections. Your note links (implicitly) to all the other reading, thinking, and experiencing you've done that resonates with *this* book's idea. And in obsidian, your note links (explicitly) to the book reference, to the concept title you provide, and to any other obsidian note you chose. But when we re-purpose that thought for a specific academic article or fictional narrative, we switch 'frames of reference'. Now the issue is not where that thought 'fits' in the obsidian 'graph globe' of ideas, but where that thought fits in the fictional narrative (which will be determined by plot or characterization) or in the essay/article/dissertation (which will be determined by the shape of the argument you are making). You reminded me of Sheridan Baker, author of The Practical Stylist: for an essay, article, or dissertation, a thesis sentence needs to have an 'argumentative edge.' Or as John Stackhouse puts it, "A topic just sits there, inert, like a brick. A thesis picks up the brick and throws it in a particular direction. ... You know you have formulated a thesis sentence when you have come up with something someone else can dispute." The way I resonate with the long form dilemma, obsidian helps us tremendously by keeping tabs on all those thoughts and sources in a form we can recollect. But obsidian can't know the *purpose* of your dissertation or the *audience* for which you intend it, still less *the academic argument* you--rightly--intend to make. But you do--you know your purpose, your audience, and your argument better than anyone. And the order of your ideas--in that particular paper or dissertation--follows logically (or emotively) from that argumentative edge. What's the strongest counter-argument to your thesis? Start there, stating that case fairly and clearly. And then refute that counter-argument fairly and clearly. What's the second strongest counter-argument to your thesis? That's next. And so on, until you have demonstrated your considered understanding of the alternatives to your thesis--and the humble but clear case for your own idea. Then, having established your thesis, help your readers build on that insight. Since that idea is so, what follows, and where might that idea lead us? Hope this helps. Thanks again for all *your* help.
hi Morgan, I think your dissertation will be fantastic. You put so much thought and meta-thought into it, it's awesome. I have a few small suggestions that I hope might be useful. I think p2 is not really a problem because as long as you write your thoughts somewhere, you don't need to integrate them into Obsidian right away but can do that later, just as you described how you process your notes from *reading* into Obsidian. So you don't need to interrupt your writing flow. (unless you are making a novel finding that you are not integrating into your text, then I think it would be actually useful to include it in Obsidian in order to not lose it - I have a 'braindump' folder (from BuJo) but you can also use the daily notes or some other way of temporarily storing ideas that need to be properly sorted later). As for p3, personally I had the problem of linearity years before I knew Obsidian existed. I think this is because KNOWLEDGE itself is interconnected and not linear. In that sense Obsidian is not causing the problem, it is simply a reflection of how knowledge works (and that's its strongest benefit after all, right! it mimics how knowledge works!). The hard part about papers - and you mention that in the video - is that they contain a lot less than we actually know, and this makes it very hard to shape them as standalone, complete pieces making sense to external readers who have no access to our personal, private context of surrounding knowledge and even the history of how we got to this idea. Again, I think that is not a problem of Obsidian (or of your thinking process) but a general problem that holds for everyone. We have all collected and produced much more knowledge than we can synthesize or convey, respectively, in a paper (or even a book/dissertation etc). It's just that you have it documented (in Obsidian), while normal scholars simply forget some of the ideas they had :-) So, if Obsidian (or your thinking) is not the problem, but could it be the solution? I think for me, one great benefit of Obsidian is that it allows storing information about what others say. To me this is life saving because it allows me to keep track of how to present the value of a new thought - what problem it solves, what literature it is relevant to, etc. So in my system I keep track - separately - of both what others say (often with the precise quotes) and my thoughts, and how it relates to my thoughts. I think in your videos you mostly talk about your own thoughts and writing in your own words (which is fair ofc). For me the value is not only in keeping track of the interconnectedness of your thoughts, but also of the literature and what has already been done on the topic. So, what it can't give you is the research question. But once you decide that on your own, you can pull out the interconnected literature that addresses that question, identify the gap, and pull out your interconnected thoughts on the solution you would propose in the paper. I hope that makes some sense. (your point1 surprised me - do different pieces of writing in your field really require a totally different 'voice'?). Your videos are always helpful to me and I would be delighted if this comment is even a tiny bit helpful back to you!
I really like the conversation you are starting here! Especially the problems incorporating pre-work with discovery writing is something I have, and am still, struggling with myself. And the 'going off outline' experience is one I have, at this point, embraced as part of my process. Outlines are not meant to be followed zelously, if you ask me - they are a lifebelt in case one gets overwhelmed by the ocean of thoughts. As for my personal experience with drafting in Obsidian, I am coming at this topic as someone who writes and edits prose in Obsidian. And I have found that for me, the greatest asset has been using the split panel screen. Especially for editing (which is closer to academic work than just drafting fiction), I rely a lot on having different stages of my project side by side. As a thought experiment, applying my method to academic writing with a Zettelkasten, I would *not* copy-paste the atomic thoughts into a zero draft. I would read them during the outlining phase and make note of where which thought goes in the outline (likely using the title only). For the actual drafting (and discovery writing), I would have split panels with an empty draft file on one side and the outline on the other - and I would only open the actual atomic notes from the outline if I got stuck drafting from the blank page. Checking up on how accurate my information is can wait for the editing phase. The goal of the drafting phase (at least in my own academic writing, sadly before discovering Obsidian) is to get a well flowing, nicely structured piece of writing. By not copying in your atomic thought, you may gain distance from your original way of phrasing it. I would also second the recommendation of Obsidian Canvas that another commenter made - especially for the outlining/ putting thoughts in order phase. The ability to move thoughts around has really helped me work through chronology issues for my fiction writing, at least. (also, thanks for shouting out the non-linear book project - I am so excited to check that out! I've been playing with the thought of doing something like that myself, but haven't dared to take that step yet. It will be fascinating to see how another creator approaches this concept!)
I'm VERY new to this but something that's working for me on an honors undergrad thesis in History is doing the "voice change" earlier, and kind of "nesting" my slips/notes. I'm calling this the Atom-Molecule-Organism system. I've only been using Obsidian for a few months, as I've always loved paper-based systems. The tactile, multi-sensory experience of pencil or pen on paper, and touching and feeling the "slips", always added a certain level of engagement for me (I do have ADHD, and I think the tangibility is helpful). I've been a minimalist Bullet Journaler in my professional life the past many years, as a point of reference. But returning to college in midlife, writing an undergrad honors thesis while I am solo-parenting and working, it was clear I needed a tech-based system. I so appreciate your Obsidian videos, which helped me enfold Obsidian into my thesis process a few months ago, midway through my thesis. Your "title the note as the thesis statement of the note" step was a groundbreaking step for me. My notes in Obsidian are a mishmash of single-thought notes, older undergrad assignments from which I borrow thoughts I worked out for other purposes, reading notes on an entire article, etc. As I reached the point where my work had to become a 30-page seminar paper and a 50-page thesis draft on the same topic, I copied and pasted and also rewrote new notes, specific to this effort, each titled with their thesis statement, with backlinks to the original note(s), and a word count on the title. Then I organized them into a MOC/Outline note, and used Obsidian as my word processor. I'm starting to revise my thesis right now, and it needs a lot of revision, so I'm thinking about using this process: - Break things back down into "slips" similar to the system you model, with the one paragraph or so of my own thought and its supporting evidence. Include the citation in Author-Date format (because reasons, which I'll get to). I think this is what you refer to as the "atomic" level, so I'll call these Atoms. - Build another layer of notes, and for the sake of the metaphor I'll call these Molecules :). I envision a "Molecule" as a note with 1) A title that is its thesis statement, 2) The links at the top back to the "atoms" which outline that larger thought, 3) This is where I begin to rewrite it in my own voice, with connecting sentences. 4) I'll also put the word count in the title and include whatever is helpful for Bibliography/Footnotes. - I'm not a STEM major and I haven't thought this out very well prior to writing this comment to you, so I'm going to call the next level the Organism! This is another MOC/Outline note in which I organize my Molecules. I won't do any writing in this layer, it's just an outline. I'll check that the Outline makes sense, and the word count is correct. - As I keep working on my writing, I do all that at the "molecule" level, checking that my transitions flow well from Molecule to Molecule. Writing within Obsidian in small pieces is, for me, so very helpful with the ways ADHD "likes" seeing small bits at one time. - The reason I use author-date citations, even though I'm a History major and will shift to Chicago Style footnotes, is because Grammarly doesn't eat them. I'll put each "molecule" through Grammarly at certain points, and proofread and such within the "molecule" note. - When the "Organism" note appears to make sense and guide my reader through linearly, and each "Molecule" is well-written and has effective transitions to the next Molecule, I'll start pasting those into Word or Pages, and replacing the (author-date, page number) placeholders with a proper footnote. - I suspect that that point I'll do minor adjustments in the main document but I think it'd be best to hold myself to doing most proofreading/rewriting in Obsidian so I can keep checking: Do my Atoms support the Molecule, do the Molecules make a sensible Organism? - A helpful thing for future (because I aim for a PhD and professorship, with more writing and publishing) is that each "atom" has backlinks to things I've used it on, each molecule has backlinks to Organisms (papers), so someday when something is published I'll be able to avoid plagiarizing myself. That's the plan anyway, but it's hard to say if I'll use it! For one, I'm not positive I have time to go all the way back to the "Atomic" level when my finished thesis is due in about 6 weeks :) I suspect the most likely path will be that I concentrate on my molecules, and in some instances I'll create atoms that support the molecule after the molecule itself, and sometimes the other way. (And, hey, maybe this is a feature not a flaw). FWIW Canvas, mind-mapping, etc. don't work for me. All I see and create with those methods are chaos. I like letting Obsidian map my thoughts for me in the graph view, but my strength is making unlikely connections and holding those in my head, and my weakness is wrangling it into something finite and compact and linear. (My thesis advisor keeps telling me I'm being "ambitious" which I think means "You're trying to cram too many thoughts into 50 pages").
Thanks for offering so much insight into this approach, and also your honesty around the struggles with this aspect. I've found as I explored you great advice and dived in, that I prefer "retelling in your own words" using a more bullet-point style, than fully writing out. I group quotes together and add a bullet-point header, or jot down ideas in phrases rather then full sentences. Writing full out, gets me lost in finding the right words, and I have a feeling I might hit a similar snag to you that I'd struggle to then rewrite the thoughts (I'm only starting out on my PhD after a long break from academia, so take this with a grain of salt). Keeping it short and succinct, gives me my own thoughts *and* start from there when fleshing out paragraphs, ideas, experiments, essays and so on.
Oh, I love the way you've described your notes and how different they are from mine! It makes me think I should do a video where I collect images of other people's notes and discuss them on the channel! :P
@@morganeua I'm starting out so that could still change. But yes, it would be a wonderful insight to see how different minds (perhaps also different subject matters) are reflected in this approach, as well as how they can shape it. It's always amazing to learn from other (researchers, fields …).
Hi I am one of the people who asked you about writing with atomized notes. Firstly, thank you so much for talking about this it's good to know I am not the only one thinking about this obstacle. And coincidentally your method of pasting notes linearly as a zero draft is exactly how I was writing. Since others have mentioned Canvas too, I wanted to share some thoughts: What I do now is instead of creating a zero draft I take a bunch of notes and throw them in a canvas. Then I kind of move them order in a sort of grid which groups them up without forcing one linear flow because for me many notes work horizontally instead of vertically In Canvas, I make new "direcitonal" notes on the side, this way my ZK notes are in my view while writing freely in larger chunks. I use the arrows in canvas as a way to link arguments Then I take those larger notes and throw them in Word. This way Canvas serves as a transitional space and the ability to visually organize notes feels more natural and tactile. It feels easier to write from scratch when I have a bundle of slipnotes in my peripheral vision. You also mentioned chatgpt and I believe some people are experimenting with plugins that let you use your vault to search using natural language so that might help with the discoverable aspect. Right now I use local graph in obsidian with few degrees of depth to make sure I am not missing any note. I recently finished a conference paper and was able to write more comfortably using the canvas-as-transitional-writing system. Looking forward to more videos on this from you!
I ended up using canvas after someone commented about it and used my outline there to re-draft a paper I was writing! I'll have to make a video soon. Reading your process is useful. I love the idea of looking at the local graph to ensure you didn't miss anything, good use for that!
Thank you Morgan for sharing your insights. One of my learnings is that Zettelkasten is a useful element to improve juggling. I’ve started with note-taking, added sketchnoting as a second level. Zettelkasten was even harder. But now on level 4 I need some more experience to grow my skills.
Now my question to you: once you have many, many notes, how do you make sure that you don't lose good thoughts in the sheer volume of it all? I remember you saying that sometimes you go back to old notes and make fresh connections that you weren't aware of when you first wrote those notes. But how do you even find those old notes in the first place? I am scared that most of my thoughts will end up gathering dust in some distant corner of Obsidian, forever unconnected to newer stuff... and that many pieces of writing (say of fairly decent quality) will end up undeservingly never used at all. And THAT would defeat the purpose of the system.
I believe there's a plug-in in obsidian that shows you random note when opening the app. So that's maybe one way. I've been using the Zettlekasten methor in notion so far, and I've been taking notes on art, d&d, camping and learning. I also keep track of protect/painting ideas there. I've got them automatically classified as such (I sort them while creating them, I don't trust my self to do it later). I've also used the Zettlekasten method for almost a year now. So far so good. I've been pretty good at remembering kind of what I wrote so I can look for it typing just that. If that doesn't work, I try to remember my train of thought that sparked the note. And look for relating ones. I usually think of notes as I'm writing another, so most of the time I have at least one note that relates to it. And if everything fails. I can see my notes in chronological order of creation. I've got around 400, so far (some juicier than others hehehe) but a quick scan through them serves the purpose of reminding me what I've written about. Also! I'm using a template that allows me to relate my notes to sources. So normally I'm on the data base of my book and I generate my notes about it there. So every time I need my notes about that book I know all are in there. I believe you can do something similar on obsidian. Hope that made sense. Also hope it helps.
Don't worry you'll find if it linked to a note just pull all the notes linked to that note if not check the graphview for non linked ideas also create an index or map of content you can also use yaml with data view plugin also the canva feature is helpful there are many ways to make your notes future proof personally I mix zettle with tiago forte's para with nick nilo's pkm
Thanks for sharing this. I can really relate with the struggle of being a "discovery" writer. I do my reading, make my notes, construct a clear logical flow that builds layers of evidence. Then, when I start writing, I find my mind digging deeper into each point, discovering new questions that may need to be addressed with fresh evidence. I'm still trying to work out how to use the way my mind works this way to my advantage and I'm leaning towards similar conclusions to you. I think I need to start the writing process very early, when I still have only fragments of my complete argument, use that writing to open my mind to the next layer down, perform that research, and then take your advice and start again with a new draft.
Big congrats on the 20k. Nicely done, very nice. A good vid - on the day-to-day problems of turning notes/quotes/thoughts into a 'readable' piece. [more later, I hope.]
It is huge problem in part due to the atomic nature... and the time span over which you might have collected to produce 'this' piece of content. Nice find of the 'place to hang' of part-planned outlines, BUT I also think your issue of which bit of ten ideas that come to make the argument may bear fruit too... if you have a part-formed outline... and in effect multiple flavours of them. But if you are making the notes for an active project - then perhaps you have a constraint that guides the tone and linking, etc. If it is open-ended reading then - the act of reviewing the notes, refactoring and reviewing in relation to other similar notes helps. Especially in the searchable electronic version. When reading a new source - I have found the thing to watch is new terms being used for previous concepts - and rather than have to 'force' a conversion whilst reading - I deal with it by using the alias function. So the 'current' tranch of notes are consistent with the language of the source author. And whilst tags can easily get overwhelming, they too can help here - as possible "other" link words, that don't divert the flow of reading and note-making - too much - so the notes and thoughts stay relatively in sync.
What most people miss about Luhmann's system is that his boxes of cards imposed a linear organization onto his notes. The notes followed each other in a linear sequence. The equivalent in Obsidian is an Index of Claims organized topically. I use that to organize all the claims and in the process, discover "outlines" that eventually become articles. Think of grounded analysis (which this process resembles): you have to start from what you have, not try to fit what you have into a different structure. Here is an example. I have a topic in my Index of Claims called "Moral surveillance," a subtopic of the field "Surveillance" which interests me. As I generate claims (in the form of atomic notes) pertaining to moral surveillance, I file them under "Moral surveillance" in my index. When I file them, I start noticing the contours of an argument, so I reorganize them to follow a logical structure. As I keep reading and generating claims, at some point I have a sufficiently developed outline (admittedly, with gaps) and I can start my writing there.
How do you organize your Index of Claims files in Obsidian specifically? I'm just getting the hang of it and wondering if you use a tag like moral surveillance or folders?
@@stickylittleleaves Hi! I am using very few tags. My topical tags are only for the big areas of interest (right now I have about five: #surveillance, #privacy, #capitalism, #autonomy, and #AI). I also have a tag that identifies concepts (#concept). I have project tags depending on the manuscripts I am working on, and that's about it. For most of the notes I take, the title is a "claim" (a declarative sentence about one idea only). I file these claims in my Index of Claims as I produce them. Every claim is filed under its appropriate subheading. For example, Under "moral surveillance," I have notes such as: [[moral surveillance is about excising or cultivating a trait within a community]]; [[those with moral authority over others use surveillance as a precondition for ensuring compliance to the moral norm]]; [[the public-private distinction in the 19th and 20th century starts to define the limits of the nation-state's moral authority to retrain its populace]] etc. I also include the notes that are concepts in the Index of Claims. At the end of the week, I review the notes (claims) I produced in my Index of Claims and arrange them in a way that starts building toward an argument. Hope this helps.
Thank you for this video, it was great! And very timely for me. I've been coming up against some of the same issues. I have not been as diligent at writing atomically, so there's a distinction there, where I'm finding a lot of my really good ideas are buried in long literature notes that I then have to somehow 'fish out' when I want to actually write something proper. It's basically meant that every time I work on a serious writing project (e.g. a PhD chapter), I have to spend AGES trawling through old notes before I feel I can do anything. I was thinking the solution was just trying really hard to be better at keeping atomic notes. You've inspired me to do this too now, but I think that's only part of the solution, I think really leaning into structure notes/outlines/MOCs or whatever you want to call them to provide more structure to these units of knowledge is the key.
Yes, sometimes when I add notes to my system, I don't actually turn them into permanent notes, they just sit in one note dedicated to the book itself because I'm lazy. And turning those into atomic, permanent notes definitely helps as a first step in writing for me. And the canvas plugin helps me with that because you can use actual notes to flesh out your outline - but only if those notes exist! I'll make a video on the canvas plugin for writing sometime soon...
On writing books in obsidian - I am currently producing a series of interconnected short stories where the reader can go in depth on certain aspects if they choose, while cutting out on others, each is autonomous but with the option of enriching! Would never have thought that possible without obsidian
I've started focusing my note input around processes. My notes are still atomic notes, but from the start, they exist in a process of some kind. And where possible, the brief notes take the form of questions. The notes can still be rearranged into new structures, but they didn't begin as random bits. I've constructed several note collections over the years. The majority were abandoned and not missed. Among other things, I'm a creative writer, and I've collected catalogs of notes about what's required for characters, plots, etc. These random notes didn't help my writing until I connected them into an ordered process. I created a hub note in Obsidian to link my character creation notes in the order I'd need to address them when creating a character. This helped, but it wasn't great. What made it click was turning my outline requirement statements into questions. So, _"Characters should have traits that conflict."_ became, _"Which internal parts are opposites or could be used to mitigate each other?"_ The first is a dead-end statement to either agree with or not. The second instantly opens that mind and has the subconscious digging through the character's traits and backstory, looking for clues to answer the question. Since turning my random collection of notes into a question-focused process guide, I've never failed to create a character that worked for a role. Even if I know nothing about the character going in, I'll have them locked in coming out of this process. Something to think about.
Really Appreciate this video and process, ... I use Notion instead of Obsidean, but the process translates. Thank You. The 2nd half of the video really with Direct and Indirect notes was helpful, .... It made me think about how I use "Save to Notion" plugin. Previously I had really attached content to Knowledge and Projects, ... you helped me realize I should also give myself the ability directly link it to Content Production as a directional note.
Morgan, as always, love your work. It’s changed how I critically think. A request for a video: finding the joy in writing notes. Now that I work at a computer full-time, the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is create notes and make connections, and so now I end up with a bunch of random quotes and ideas in my Notes app, in photos and emails. How do I find the joy in batch processing on a weekend? Thanks, Kat
I have many of these same issues, but I will add on that I also have the issue of having too many notes. When I put together a loose outline of a literature review halfway through the PhD, it was 30,000 words of notes, and I'm not convinced I included everything. In one sense, it's good because I know that my reading and notetaking hasn't been in vain (and I also know that I can knock up a paper much more quickly than if I had to go back to scratch) but it is a small mountain that has to be dealt with before I can start writing. My solution, in some regards, to what you've mentioned is to make that zero draft of notes and use the ![[note name]] function to preview each note in the outline. That helps me arrange them better based on contents, rather than the title of the note (which is not comprehensive). From there, I do a major culling stage until I get to first draft length (maybe twice the word count of the final chapter/paper?) and write those thinking ideas into the spaces in the outline. One option here is to then turn each of those new ideas into a note and put it away into Obsidian (it probably won't quote anything, so I tend to call these 'fleeting notes' - ideas that don't have any direct reference to a text.) But then, as you said, I'd be moving from that zero draft into a linear editing by copying wholesale. I take all the texts from all the notes in order (usually I just export this outline as a PDF and copy paste the output into a word document) and then I take away all of the exclamation points before ![[note]] so my Obsidian has a note which is a draft of the paper/chapter as a list of notes and nothing more. Then, on publication, I would create a bibliographic note for that published paper which contains the entire published texts and bibliography, and at the bottom of the note, I'd add the list of notes that were in the outline under a section called 'Foundation notes'. Alternatively, you could delete all the notes you've turned into published work, since you don't want to reuse them when you could cite their publication. But it's far from perfect. I guess that's the problem with trying to contain production in management software.
I will also add that I had a tendency to think rhizomatically before finding Obsidian (and think it might have to do with neurodiversity) and one method of dealing with that, in terms of productivity is list making, and breaking things down into their absolutely smallest piece. To give you a sense, my literature review has 5 sub-chapters which each have 4 sub-points. Each of the sub-points has multiple notes, but by having 20 subdivisions in my literature review outline, I don't get overwhelmed by 'oh so much content' because I'm dealing with bite sized. Then it's a matter of reducing to the essential on a micro level all the way up to a macro.
So good to see you in the comments, Samuel!! Yes, I also find myself wanting to create lots of sub and sub-sub headings in my dissertation. I find it helps manage the writing in my brain.
I have the same issue. A core aspect of what I was trained to do through design school was to boil information down to the simples, easiest and most clear form - atomic I guess. And when something is boiled down like that it's not easy to make changes to it because it makes it more complex, less clear etc. That is of cours what you want in a more complex piece of text but it's a big challenge to go from atomic to higher degrees of complexity! I go about it in two ways. One similar to the approach you use, I'd call it top down. And one bottom up, where I either make my notes less atomic in phrasing or adding a couple expansive, and directional bullets below the atomic note. This is a bit outside of the atomic-box, but I wanted to share it as it's at least easy for me to get stuck within the box (and continually work on strategies to challenge it).
I can confirm that the problem is real :-) It's what brought me to Zettelkasten and via a friend's Obsidian recommendation to your PhD video. I don't (yet) have a solution but I could discuss the problem for hours. My only advice is that Word (or any WP) is the wrong tool. You already have a collection of MarkDown files that represent your ideas. Your problem is to sequence and style the ideas. Having the same idea in another 'source file', when you can change both versions is a well known computing black hole of life-suckage. Ideally we would separate content, structure and presentation. I'd look for a tool that can build books out of MarkDown, as a starting point.
btw The word 'hypertext' was coined by Ted Nelson in the 1960s. He was thinking about this problem too. He hasn't finished his tool yet. Computists talk about 'data serialisation' when describing a structured database transmitted over a wire. I think that's what we do when we talk or write too. I've discovered that the 'directional' idea may be flawed. There are (at least) 2 reasons for directed links, chronology (can be in parallel) and dependency. There are 'Directed Acyclic Graphs' in stories without time-loops (and 'causality' in reality.)
@@morganeua I had the same reaction about Word. It's insufficiently flexible. There are likely a number of ways out of that corner between collecting a basic scaffolding of ideas and the actual writing: where, at about 13:30, you talk about starting from scratch. My tool of preference after jumping that chasm is Scrivener, which I find blends the ability to shape an outline with incredible flexibility in changing the sequence as my thoughts come together--the right balance for me between linear and nonlinear thought pathways. The Obsidian long form plug-in may offer similar capabilities. I'm about to go look at it. (Looks useful, although not more useful to me than Scrivener.) I've worked in Scrivener since . . . 2008, using about 5 percent of its functions, happily. Throughout I'm totally focused on "what's the least I need to know or do about a tool to accomplish my task?" Admittedly it takes some time, research, and trial-and-error to figure out what "least I need to know" consists of and which tool(s) work for me. Love your videos and have recommended them to friends. Thanks.
Could you show yout process from obsidian to word? I've been doing precisely that, and i've also encounter the problem of finding ideas while writing, aaaaand having trouble with joining complete ideas in a linear way,. Maybe my problem is that in the midst of me writing my dissertation I encountered Obsidian and the canvas feature, that made me want to move my zettlekasten to obsidian. So now I'm juggling Notion, Obsidian and Word. Also I really want to see the someone using their zettlekasten for managing knowledge about stuff not zettlekasten related. Mine mainly revolves about artistic appretiation, creativity and art fundamentals. I've been wanting to make a video series about it, just havent find the time. Your videos serve much as inspiration and as example of how may I go about it. So many thanks for your work!!!
Hi Morgan, thank you for sharing both tips and issues! Have you considered/tried scrivener, the writing program? I am currently in the midst of my PhD-writing process (in social anthropology), and in my head, I was hoping that scrivener could solve some of the problems that I am also facing regarding outline/linearity/chronology (on the other hand, I was hoping that obsidian could, too, and that's why I downloaded the app and how I stumbled upon your videos - well done creating great and relevant content to fellow PhD students!). I wanted to try it because they make it so much easier to move content around (in the sidebar, you maintain overview of what you're writing, while easily being able to move stuff up or down if it ends up not fitting the order in your argument). I haven't bought the full scrivener version yet, but perhaps it could be useful for you! Kind wishes from Denmark
Thank you! Yes, I have tried Scrivener, that's what I used for my comps/qualifying exams, actually. I didn't get really into it. Another PhD candidate in my program uses it to great effect, though!
This isn't necessarily a sole issue of writing with a zettelkasten, but this made me curious as to how you time manage your academic note-taking. Using the zettelkasten system has helped me in numerous ways, but the issue I am seeing is balancing my time between reading, note-taking (I usually put my literature notes in Obsidian too), zettelkastening ideas, and writing or completing assignments. Similarly, I am a discovery writer (and reader) and often catch myself going off on tangents that derail not just my outlines but also my time! So how do you manage your time when using a zettelkasten system? And what tips do you have for keeping the time you put into using this system manageable?
Haha, I'm a bad person to ask, maybe! I don't have a time management system with it. My system is: it's fun to connect notes, so I do it whenever I feel like it, and that is enough. My biggest improvement in time management came when I started filling my time with things I ENJOY doing, because then I didn't worry about having the time to get things done. They got done because I wanted to do them. So, I also have issues with time management 😅 But I prefer this problem to my old problem, which was not enjoying the time I was putting in.
I use similar method @14:22 basically I create a outline/placeholders as my content page in OneNotes and subsequent pages to hold the ideas. Also I will review my outline to see if I need merge or unmerge certain points. By the way I like your videos 👍
I've been using it for a month. And I feel like its more work to take notes from the ipad or using any web highlighting too. I rather just write it chapter by chapter. You have to form your thoughts anyways, might as well skip the middleman, and just start writing and researching directly. Read a paragraph, and if you have a question, ANSWER it cuz we have the internet, form the thought, write it down, finish the chapter, and then move on. Incredibly hard to split it the collection phase and thinking phase. Collect and think mini cycles
I appreciate your work, and especially sharing challenges. I'm just thinking out loud, so this is my shitty first draft ;-) . Historically I've had the habit of having conversations that feel like five minutes of groundwork before I actually say the thing I want to say, just to be sure we are on the same page (in that sense, I resonate with the outlines folder idea). Over time, I started thinking about "groundwork" as a "place" in itself rather than just a collection of facts, so how I introduce someone to the fact that there is an issue to begin with, let alone the aspect of the issue that has caught my attention, how I introduce is a different project, one of orienting rather than explaining. I'm wondering if sections of your linear arrangement might be notes connecting a collection of other notes, like the "stance" or "groundwork" being something greater than the sum of its parts, and seeing how one set of notes sets the stage for appreciating the next set of notes. In that sense, a unifying theme connecting many notes is still a single theme that can be captured in a single note, but it can be directional in that it leads to another theme which is itself implied in a collection of other thoughts. Just a thought. I look forward to your next video.
Thanks. I like Excalibrain and Strange New Worlds plugins for handling the many notes I'm creating while plotting a fantasy novel. As an extreme plotter, I need a way to represent a myriad of data. My current way of thinking is to have a workspace for each scene. On my ultrawide, have the scene outline on the left, the character, setting, and plot sheets and arcs on the right, and the middle for writing. A canvas of character relationship connections on my second monitor. Moving between scenes replaces all the documents with the new set.
Interesting. Come to think of it, I had this issue of linearity less when writing a fiction novel because it was more clear to me what order things had to go in. I didn't use obsidian for it though, that's something I still need to try. Maybe. Although I am a pantser. But having the info I might need easily available in Obsidian could still be good... Hm, I'll keep thinking about this and check out those plugins!
A great program to write in is Scrivener. It doesn’t require you to write linearly but allows you to write an entire paper/book in a bunch of note-cards, then move the order around to see how it would read best. It would probably work well with obsidian.
I tried Scrivener before I found Obsidian, actually! I think maybe at the time I didn't have a good way of using Scrivener, but that's probably different now that I know about zettelkasten.
That’s really interesting about the linear vs. Non-linear writing! I never thought about that before. But yes, I can definitely see how this issue has emerged for you. I don’t have any answers other than to watch Ryan Holiday’s overview of his Courage is Calling book he wrote (or maybe it was Ego is the Enemy?). But it’s also interesting that you have trouble rewriting something you’ve already written. Maybe you’ve written it so well, you can’t imagine saying it any other way. But I would think you went through college like most of us where getting through writing papers is all about taking quotes and trying to rephrase them to not have to directly quote them. I became a master paraphraser after college, but now I see that that’s not the point of what college is getting you to do. But because I didn’t really have enough information to synthesize or experience to integrate them, it was difficult to come up with anything original. Maybe making each atomic note a “support for a given belief/fact” approach might help. Because then you could actually write a thesis, and then you plug in the notes as the points underneath that thesis. Anyway, I wish you the best and always appreciate your thoughts. Keep it up! 🎪
For me the issue is yeah, just rephrasing. It's already in my own words, but I want it to be in different, more beautiful words for the thing I'm writing :P I do like the editing process, I like trying to choose the perfect sentence structure and word choice for each thought. And sometimes when I've worded something poorly in my notes it's hard to think of the beautiful version of that sentence! I've seen the Ryan Holiday video actually and love it. I will rewatch it whenever I need motivation!
Probably you already know that but you don’t have to copy past the text from each individual note. 11:20 You can just go 
It sounds like you could really benefit from using the Canvas tool in Obsidian. You can think both linearly and nonlinearly. I also I think maybe you should create annotated bibliographies with your notes. Rather than forcing your notes to be directional, you can make them directional using an annotated bibliography in obsidian (embed the notes into the annotated bibliography; don't rewrite them.)
This reminds me of some of the issues I had when I wrote my dissertation. I think you're conflating drafting, revising, and thinking. These are all separate activities. Your note-making helps with thinking. Then draft without trying to make it sound good (zero draft or crap draft). Revise it so that it makes sense. Revise in waves, focusing on one things at a time (pacing, paragraphing, structure, argument, flow, etc.)
If you haven't done so already, I recommend looking into Tara Brabazon. Her RUclips channel was a game changer for me.
Ugh, yes, that RUclips channel is so so helpful!
And yes, this is what I do mostly, I think then draft then revise. However, writing for me and for my zettelkasten does largely happen through writing. And that writing becomes the draft... And revising often means I have to go back to the thinking then drafting, etc. So, for me anyway, sometimes they are separated tasks and that's always a good prompt to remember and keep things focused. But on the other hand, especially with a zettelkasten, they're not aaalways separate. Drafting and revising can be acts of thinking. But maybe I do things in a way that is more difficult than it needs to be. I'm still learning as I write my dissertation. I'll probably make more chatty videos about these ideas as I think through them because I am very fascinated by the writing process in general.
And I think I will have to check out the Canvas tool, thanks! Revise in waves is also a great tip, I'm kind of going through that now with my first chapter. Stressful work. But rewarding! What was your dissertation on??
@@morganeua so excited to see how you work through all of this! My dissertation was on how organizational reputation influences expectations about their performance, which we can moderate by focusing on a shared value. It was mostly survey experiments and theory building. I love how you've been doing interdisciplinary research for your literature review (according to my binge watching of your videos). I wish I had done more of that for my dissertation.
Can really say that the canvas feature is a life saver! it helped me to write , order and visualize the flow of my art dissertation using my notes. The graph view is not that helpful in that matter. Thanks for the channel recommenation, Jourdan ! :D
@@saramartinez8747
Yes!!! Canvas is a game changer! And yes Tara Brabazon is incredible. She retweeted me once and it felt like Britney Spears pulled me on stage at a concert. She's so brilliant.
I totally understand how this can be an issue. A big part of the solution, for me, lies in the very start of your research, it's all about the "approach" and "methodology" of the research. I'm not sure if academic research the way you do it takes up the same methodology as we do where I live, but normally at the beginning of every academic research you start with a proposal that defines the "problem" you are researching and the exact approach you take to reach the solution, and then as you read you collect information and create the connections, then you decide which piece/s of information to start your writing with, which one is your "entrance" to this subject, in accordance to your approach as defined in the initial proposal. So the approach decides "the hierarchy" of your notes, if I may say. I hope what I'm saying is making sense!
Yes, absolutely. I do think I find more clarity in my zettelkasten when I am putting notes in for a particular research project, so everything is building off each other!
So the following is mainly based on videos of Luhmann talking in German and people re-iterating on conversations with him.
The original Zettelkasten had index notes (some Obsidian people call this MOCs or Hub pages). Luhmann used those index cards (about a topic) as a starting point for an outline to a text he wanted to write. Based on how you structured your obsidian, you might need tags, tag notes or MOC files to group your thought to something similar to an index card.
The next thing that happened is he pulled out the referenced starting point note and all the Folgezettel to an outlined bullet point (from the index note). That is something a little bit harder to get by if you did not plan for it in the beginning of your note taking journey, but I know of two ways.
A) Darin Suthapong showed that in a video, where a nested tag (like follows #thought0001/01/13) was used to annotate the notes connected to specific train of thoughts. You then can search for the sub parts of the tag to find the train of thoughts
B) You create a search query that represents your thought and sort the result by creation date. So you know which notes came first and create linearity this way.
In Summary:
Find yourself a way (or already existing note) to index thoughts on your overarching topic. Create your outline with it and then find a way to query all notes related to each bullet point and get them in some form of a timely order.
Alternatively If you have the time and want to do the effort, create a metadata field using a Luhmann like indexing approach and use the custom sort plugin by SebastianMC to create the linear order for your notes.
Thanks for this, I really appreciate your explorations--it expresses a lot of my own struggle and challenges. I'm in a similar boat--writing a dissertation with my ZK. I use an analog system, so my use case is a little different, but I've had (and have!) very similar difficulties. But I'm starting to think they're good problems. It really is a dialog between my present sentence-making self and my prior one. So there's plenty that I'll say in the draft that my past self has said, but there's always more to say that I want to add in the present.
I've also leaned in to drafts being a form of communication and teaching--I'm sharing something that I've learned with others who either don't know it, or might think differently about it but could benefit from it. So this shifts my present focus to order of teaching and presentation rather than order of discovery or non-linear order of connection.
I also try to think in terms of inferential relationships--what logically follows from what, what is presupposed by what, etc. This helps me order things at least according to some thesis-driven rationale even though that can and does change.
I also think assembling your notes in one continuous stream as a zero draft but writing the fair draft separately makes perfect sense. You have something to reference and engage with as you write, but you're encouraged to write something more linear.
Finally, I sometimes will write in what Martinich calls "successive elaborations." Basically, with some thesis and very broad outline, write within successively larger word limits. I typically start with 500. The aim is for something that explains and defends the thesis within that limit. With each successive draft, you can expand, edit, cut, etc, but each time you're done you have a cohesive draft. This helps me be more concise but also focused on what I really need--including when I rifling through my file as I'm drafting.
(An Obsidian note: I think you can use an exclamation mark in front of the brackets to display the contents of a note rather than having to manually copy and paste.)
One thing that helps me when notes can go in any order is to flesh out "the story of the context" - what I mean by that is to think hierarchically (or like an outline) about the context of your notes - so not the content of the notes themselves but the question of "Where did this idea come from?", "Who laid the groundwork for this idea to exist?" or perhaps even, "How did I even get interested in this idea in the first place? What sparked the curiosity?". Does the origin of this idea come before the origin of another? If there's certain context that needs to be included as part of being able to understand a note, then lay out the context and then decide (after laying out all the context of all the notes), which comes first? What's fundamental information, and what builds on it from there? So, in essence, you're thinking about a taxonomy or hierarchy of the context behind your notes, but not the notes themselves. Then you can fit the actual notes into that order according to where they belong among that context. You're building the story behind the notes. It's not about what's related to what, but "How did we get from nothing to here?" - this also helps when trying to understand the information or trying to teach the information in a kind of "Feynman-esque" way.
Very helpful. Thanks!
I use lists linking to notes in a logical order. I don’t copy and paste in one note because I don’t like my notes to be too long and it helps me to see the bigger picture.
At The beginning of a chapter I give a sort of conclusion and then start to explain everything in detail in the sections. In the conclusion i give a hint to the discussion at the very end.
I do the actual book writing from scratch like you but I use my obsidian structure to remind myself whats supposed to be in chapters and sections in general so I don‘t lose focus.
I've been writing in Obsidian pretty much in linear format, and just doing a lot of brain dumps rather than writing articles or blog posts. But I have written on specific topics in Obsidian and generally only give myself a rough outline with no text or references in it because like you, the voice of my note taking is not the voice I use for anything I would want anyone else reading. So I really understand that problem. I remember from years ago looking at my handwritten notes and trying to rewrite the same information in a voice suitable for the book I was working on. It was hard. Many times, since I was using a computer to write with, I would put in two dotted lines and between them put "this needs to have something about xyz being blah" and leave it. Then come back to it in the editing process and I'd find I could fill it in much easier because ... that note I wrote wasn't in front of my eyes but I could still remember what it was about. There is nothing wrong with "coming back to it". Sometimes time, a walk, a few days, etc. gives your brain a chance to percolate on it without you actively trying to work on it and force things. When you were describing your way of creating an outline and moving things around, I could honestly imagine a juggler juggling concepts. Which comes first? Which comes next? Well it varies - as she tosses concept #5 into the spot where concept #3 was meant to be... And if your thesis is on juggling, I think taking this into account somewhere in the 'front matter' may be the way to go?
I don't know anything about juggling aside from some things I read several years ago in the Robert Silverberg's "Lord Valentine's Castle" - an excellent SciFi book (part of a series) which happens to feature a juggler as the main character. Anyway, sorry this is so long. Love your videos!
Thanks again for an engaging and thoughtful discussion. Your observations helped me to appreciate important distinctions between atomic/short form 'captured' thoughts, on the one hand, and extended/long form writing, whether essay, article, dissertation, or book, on the other hand.
You demonstrate that a 'captured thought' stands alone inherently--in a sense. An 'atomic' book note, for example, captures the interface between the author's idea and your response/reflection/connections. Your note links (implicitly) to all the other reading, thinking, and experiencing you've done that resonates with *this* book's idea. And in obsidian, your note links (explicitly) to the book reference, to the concept title you provide, and to any other obsidian note you chose. But when we re-purpose that thought for a specific academic article or fictional narrative, we switch 'frames of reference'. Now the issue is not where that thought 'fits' in the obsidian 'graph globe' of ideas, but where that thought fits in the fictional narrative (which will be determined by plot or characterization) or in the essay/article/dissertation (which will be determined by the shape of the argument you are making).
You reminded me of Sheridan Baker, author of The Practical Stylist: for an essay, article, or dissertation, a thesis sentence needs to have an 'argumentative edge.' Or as John Stackhouse puts it, "A topic just sits there, inert, like a brick. A thesis picks up the brick and throws it in a particular direction. ... You know you have formulated a thesis sentence when you have come up with something someone else can dispute."
The way I resonate with the long form dilemma, obsidian helps us tremendously by keeping tabs on all those thoughts and sources in a form we can recollect. But obsidian can't know the *purpose* of your dissertation or the *audience* for which you intend it, still less *the academic argument* you--rightly--intend to make. But you do--you know your purpose, your audience, and your argument better than anyone. And the order of your ideas--in that particular paper or dissertation--follows logically (or emotively) from that argumentative edge.
What's the strongest counter-argument to your thesis? Start there, stating that case fairly and clearly. And then refute that counter-argument fairly and clearly.
What's the second strongest counter-argument to your thesis? That's next. And so on, until you have demonstrated your considered understanding of the alternatives to your thesis--and the humble but clear case for your own idea. Then, having established your thesis, help your readers build on that insight. Since that idea is so, what follows, and where might that idea lead us?
Hope this helps. Thanks again for all *your* help.
hi Morgan, I think your dissertation will be fantastic. You put so much thought and meta-thought into it, it's awesome. I have a few small suggestions that I hope might be useful. I think p2 is not really a problem because as long as you write your thoughts somewhere, you don't need to integrate them into Obsidian right away but can do that later, just as you described how you process your notes from *reading* into Obsidian. So you don't need to interrupt your writing flow. (unless you are making a novel finding that you are not integrating into your text, then I think it would be actually useful to include it in Obsidian in order to not lose it - I have a 'braindump' folder (from BuJo) but you can also use the daily notes or some other way of temporarily storing ideas that need to be properly sorted later). As for p3, personally I had the problem of linearity years before I knew Obsidian existed. I think this is because KNOWLEDGE itself is interconnected and not linear. In that sense Obsidian is not causing the problem, it is simply a reflection of how knowledge works (and that's its strongest benefit after all, right! it mimics how knowledge works!). The hard part about papers - and you mention that in the video - is that they contain a lot less than we actually know, and this makes it very hard to shape them as standalone, complete pieces making sense to external readers who have no access to our personal, private context of surrounding knowledge and even the history of how we got to this idea. Again, I think that is not a problem of Obsidian (or of your thinking process) but a general problem that holds for everyone. We have all collected and produced much more knowledge than we can synthesize or convey, respectively, in a paper (or even a book/dissertation etc). It's just that you have it documented (in Obsidian), while normal scholars simply forget some of the ideas they had :-) So, if Obsidian (or your thinking) is not the problem, but could it be the solution? I think for me, one great benefit of Obsidian is that it allows storing information about what others say. To me this is life saving because it allows me to keep track of how to present the value of a new thought - what problem it solves, what literature it is relevant to, etc. So in my system I keep track - separately - of both what others say (often with the precise quotes) and my thoughts, and how it relates to my thoughts. I think in your videos you mostly talk about your own thoughts and writing in your own words (which is fair ofc). For me the value is not only in keeping track of the interconnectedness of your thoughts, but also of the literature and what has already been done on the topic. So, what it can't give you is the research question. But once you decide that on your own, you can pull out the interconnected literature that addresses that question, identify the gap, and pull out your interconnected thoughts on the solution you would propose in the paper. I hope that makes some sense. (your point1 surprised me - do different pieces of writing in your field really require a totally different 'voice'?). Your videos are always helpful to me and I would be delighted if this comment is even a tiny bit helpful back to you!
I really like the conversation you are starting here! Especially the problems incorporating pre-work with discovery writing is something I have, and am still, struggling with myself. And the 'going off outline' experience is one I have, at this point, embraced as part of my process. Outlines are not meant to be followed zelously, if you ask me - they are a lifebelt in case one gets overwhelmed by the ocean of thoughts.
As for my personal experience with drafting in Obsidian, I am coming at this topic as someone who writes and edits prose in Obsidian. And I have found that for me, the greatest asset has been using the split panel screen. Especially for editing (which is closer to academic work than just drafting fiction), I rely a lot on having different stages of my project side by side.
As a thought experiment, applying my method to academic writing with a Zettelkasten, I would *not* copy-paste the atomic thoughts into a zero draft. I would read them during the outlining phase and make note of where which thought goes in the outline (likely using the title only). For the actual drafting (and discovery writing), I would have split panels with an empty draft file on one side and the outline on the other - and I would only open the actual atomic notes from the outline if I got stuck drafting from the blank page. Checking up on how accurate my information is can wait for the editing phase. The goal of the drafting phase (at least in my own academic writing, sadly before discovering Obsidian) is to get a well flowing, nicely structured piece of writing.
By not copying in your atomic thought, you may gain distance from your original way of phrasing it.
I would also second the recommendation of Obsidian Canvas that another commenter made - especially for the outlining/ putting thoughts in order phase. The ability to move thoughts around has really helped me work through chronology issues for my fiction writing, at least.
(also, thanks for shouting out the non-linear book project - I am so excited to check that out! I've been playing with the thought of doing something like that myself, but haven't dared to take that step yet. It will be fascinating to see how another creator approaches this concept!)
You've been a great inspiration to use zettelkasten. Thanks a lot for sharing such insightful content. 🎉
I'm VERY new to this but something that's working for me on an honors undergrad thesis in History is doing the "voice change" earlier, and kind of "nesting" my slips/notes. I'm calling this the Atom-Molecule-Organism system.
I've only been using Obsidian for a few months, as I've always loved paper-based systems. The tactile, multi-sensory experience of pencil or pen on paper, and touching and feeling the "slips", always added a certain level of engagement for me (I do have ADHD, and I think the tangibility is helpful). I've been a minimalist Bullet Journaler in my professional life the past many years, as a point of reference. But returning to college in midlife, writing an undergrad honors thesis while I am solo-parenting and working, it was clear I needed a tech-based system. I so appreciate your Obsidian videos, which helped me enfold Obsidian into my thesis process a few months ago, midway through my thesis.
Your "title the note as the thesis statement of the note" step was a groundbreaking step for me. My notes in Obsidian are a mishmash of single-thought notes, older undergrad assignments from which I borrow thoughts I worked out for other purposes, reading notes on an entire article, etc.
As I reached the point where my work had to become a 30-page seminar paper and a 50-page thesis draft on the same topic, I copied and pasted and also rewrote new notes, specific to this effort, each titled with their thesis statement, with backlinks to the original note(s), and a word count on the title. Then I organized them into a MOC/Outline note, and used Obsidian as my word processor.
I'm starting to revise my thesis right now, and it needs a lot of revision, so I'm thinking about using this process:
- Break things back down into "slips" similar to the system you model, with the one paragraph or so of my own thought and its supporting evidence. Include the citation in Author-Date format (because reasons, which I'll get to). I think this is what you refer to as the "atomic" level, so I'll call these Atoms.
- Build another layer of notes, and for the sake of the metaphor I'll call these Molecules :). I envision a "Molecule" as a note with 1) A title that is its thesis statement, 2) The links at the top back to the "atoms" which outline that larger thought, 3) This is where I begin to rewrite it in my own voice, with connecting sentences. 4) I'll also put the word count in the title and include whatever is helpful for Bibliography/Footnotes.
- I'm not a STEM major and I haven't thought this out very well prior to writing this comment to you, so I'm going to call the next level the Organism! This is another MOC/Outline note in which I organize my Molecules. I won't do any writing in this layer, it's just an outline. I'll check that the Outline makes sense, and the word count is correct.
- As I keep working on my writing, I do all that at the "molecule" level, checking that my transitions flow well from Molecule to Molecule. Writing within Obsidian in small pieces is, for me, so very helpful with the ways ADHD "likes" seeing small bits at one time.
- The reason I use author-date citations, even though I'm a History major and will shift to Chicago Style footnotes, is because Grammarly doesn't eat them. I'll put each "molecule" through Grammarly at certain points, and proofread and such within the "molecule" note.
- When the "Organism" note appears to make sense and guide my reader through linearly, and each "Molecule" is well-written and has effective transitions to the next Molecule, I'll start pasting those into Word or Pages, and replacing the (author-date, page number) placeholders with a proper footnote.
- I suspect that that point I'll do minor adjustments in the main document but I think it'd be best to hold myself to doing most proofreading/rewriting in Obsidian so I can keep checking: Do my Atoms support the Molecule, do the Molecules make a sensible Organism?
- A helpful thing for future (because I aim for a PhD and professorship, with more writing and publishing) is that each "atom" has backlinks to things I've used it on, each molecule has backlinks to Organisms (papers), so someday when something is published I'll be able to avoid plagiarizing myself.
That's the plan anyway, but it's hard to say if I'll use it! For one, I'm not positive I have time to go all the way back to the "Atomic" level when my finished thesis is due in about 6 weeks :) I suspect the most likely path will be that I concentrate on my molecules, and in some instances I'll create atoms that support the molecule after the molecule itself, and sometimes the other way. (And, hey, maybe this is a feature not a flaw).
FWIW Canvas, mind-mapping, etc. don't work for me. All I see and create with those methods are chaos. I like letting Obsidian map my thoughts for me in the graph view, but my strength is making unlikely connections and holding those in my head, and my weakness is wrangling it into something finite and compact and linear. (My thesis advisor keeps telling me I'm being "ambitious" which I think means "You're trying to cram too many thoughts into 50 pages").
Oh my gosh, no way! So creative! Kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, but it's choose-your-own-depth-of-engagement :P
It's working very well so far, @@morganeua, to combine a lot of what you've suggested with MOCs (outlines).
Great video. Thanks for giving me a lot to think about. I liked the idea you shared of filling in outlines.
Thanks for offering so much insight into this approach, and also your honesty around the struggles with this aspect. I've found as I explored you great advice and dived in, that I prefer "retelling in your own words" using a more bullet-point style, than fully writing out. I group quotes together and add a bullet-point header, or jot down ideas in phrases rather then full sentences. Writing full out, gets me lost in finding the right words, and I have a feeling I might hit a similar snag to you that I'd struggle to then rewrite the thoughts (I'm only starting out on my PhD after a long break from academia, so take this with a grain of salt). Keeping it short and succinct, gives me my own thoughts *and* start from there when fleshing out paragraphs, ideas, experiments, essays and so on.
Oh, I love the way you've described your notes and how different they are from mine! It makes me think I should do a video where I collect images of other people's notes and discuss them on the channel! :P
@@morganeua I'm starting out so that could still change. But yes, it would be a wonderful insight to see how different minds (perhaps also different subject matters) are reflected in this approach, as well as how they can shape it. It's always amazing to learn from other (researchers, fields …).
Thank you, amazing! interesting observations about the linear thinking :)
Hi I am one of the people who asked you about writing with atomized notes. Firstly, thank you so much for talking about this it's good to know I am not the only one thinking about this obstacle. And coincidentally your method of pasting notes linearly as a zero draft is exactly how I was writing. Since others have mentioned Canvas too, I wanted to share some thoughts:
What I do now is instead of creating a zero draft I take a bunch of notes and throw them in a canvas.
Then I kind of move them order in a sort of grid which groups them up without forcing one linear flow because for me many notes work horizontally instead of vertically
In Canvas, I make new "direcitonal" notes on the side, this way my ZK notes are in my view while writing freely in larger chunks. I use the arrows in canvas as a way to link arguments
Then I take those larger notes and throw them in Word. This way Canvas serves as a transitional space and the ability to visually organize notes feels more natural and tactile. It feels easier to write from scratch when I have a bundle of slipnotes in my peripheral vision.
You also mentioned chatgpt and I believe some people are experimenting with plugins that let you use your vault to search using natural language so that might help with the discoverable aspect. Right now I use local graph in obsidian with few degrees of depth to make sure I am not missing any note.
I recently finished a conference paper and was able to write more comfortably using the canvas-as-transitional-writing system.
Looking forward to more videos on this from you!
I ended up using canvas after someone commented about it and used my outline there to re-draft a paper I was writing! I'll have to make a video soon. Reading your process is useful. I love the idea of looking at the local graph to ensure you didn't miss anything, good use for that!
Thank you Morgan for sharing your insights. One of my learnings is that Zettelkasten is a useful element to improve juggling. I’ve started with note-taking, added sketchnoting as a second level. Zettelkasten was even harder. But now on level 4 I need some more experience to grow my skills.
Now my question to you: once you have many, many notes, how do you make sure that you don't lose good thoughts in the sheer volume of it all? I remember you saying that sometimes you go back to old notes and make fresh connections that you weren't aware of when you first wrote those notes. But how do you even find those old notes in the first place? I am scared that most of my thoughts will end up gathering dust in some distant corner of Obsidian, forever unconnected to newer stuff... and that many pieces of writing (say of fairly decent quality) will end up undeservingly never used at all. And THAT would defeat the purpose of the system.
I believe there's a plug-in in obsidian that shows you random note when opening the app. So that's maybe one way. I've been using the Zettlekasten methor in notion so far, and I've been taking notes on art, d&d, camping and learning. I also keep track of protect/painting ideas there. I've got them automatically classified as such (I sort them while creating them, I don't trust my self to do it later). I've also used the Zettlekasten method for almost a year now. So far so good. I've been pretty good at remembering kind of what I wrote so I can look for it typing just that. If that doesn't work, I try to remember my train of thought that sparked the note. And look for relating ones. I usually think of notes as I'm writing another, so most of the time I have at least one note that relates to it. And if everything fails. I can see my notes in chronological order of creation. I've got around 400, so far (some juicier than others hehehe) but a quick scan through them serves the purpose of reminding me what I've written about.
Also! I'm using a template that allows me to relate my notes to sources. So normally I'm on the data base of my book and I generate my notes about it there. So every time I need my notes about that book I know all are in there.
I believe you can do something similar on obsidian.
Hope that made sense. Also hope it helps.
Don't worry you'll find if it linked to a note just pull all the notes linked to that note if not check the graphview for non linked ideas also create an index or map of content you can also use yaml with data view plugin also the canva feature is helpful there are many ways to make your notes future proof personally I mix zettle with tiago forte's para with nick nilo's pkm
ruclips.net/video/vS-b_RUtL1A/видео.html
Use the random note feature, you can turn it on from the settings
Thanks for sharing this. I can really relate with the struggle of being a "discovery" writer. I do my reading, make my notes, construct a clear logical flow that builds layers of evidence. Then, when I start writing, I find my mind digging deeper into each point, discovering new questions that may need to be addressed with fresh evidence. I'm still trying to work out how to use the way my mind works this way to my advantage and I'm leaning towards similar conclusions to you. I think I need to start the writing process very early, when I still have only fragments of my complete argument, use that writing to open my mind to the next layer down, perform that research, and then take your advice and start again with a new draft.
Thank you for sharing your experience, it helps to hear how others are thinking about this!
Big congrats on the 20k. Nicely done, very nice.
A good vid - on the day-to-day problems of turning notes/quotes/thoughts into a 'readable' piece. [more later, I hope.]
It is huge problem in part due to the atomic nature... and the time span over which you might have collected to produce 'this' piece of content. Nice find of the 'place to hang' of part-planned outlines, BUT I also think your issue of which bit of ten ideas that come to make the argument may bear fruit too... if you have a part-formed outline... and in effect multiple flavours of them.
But if you are making the notes for an active project - then perhaps you have a constraint that guides the tone and linking, etc. If it is open-ended reading then - the act of reviewing the notes, refactoring and reviewing in relation to other similar notes helps. Especially in the searchable electronic version. When reading a new source - I have found the thing to watch is new terms being used for previous concepts - and rather than have to 'force' a conversion whilst reading - I deal with it by using the alias function. So the 'current' tranch of notes are consistent with the language of the source author. And whilst tags can easily get overwhelming, they too can help here - as possible "other" link words, that don't divert the flow of reading and note-making - too much - so the notes and thoughts stay relatively in sync.
What most people miss about Luhmann's system is that his boxes of cards imposed a linear organization onto his notes. The notes followed each other in a linear sequence. The equivalent in Obsidian is an Index of Claims organized topically. I use that to organize all the claims and in the process, discover "outlines" that eventually become articles. Think of grounded analysis (which this process resembles): you have to start from what you have, not try to fit what you have into a different structure.
Here is an example. I have a topic in my Index of Claims called "Moral surveillance," a subtopic of the field "Surveillance" which interests me. As I generate claims (in the form of atomic notes) pertaining to moral surveillance, I file them under "Moral surveillance" in my index. When I file them, I start noticing the contours of an argument, so I reorganize them to follow a logical structure. As I keep reading and generating claims, at some point I have a sufficiently developed outline (admittedly, with gaps) and I can start my writing there.
Ah, quite smart, and a great example; thank you!
How do you organize your Index of Claims files in Obsidian specifically? I'm just getting the hang of it and wondering if you use a tag like moral surveillance or folders?
@@stickylittleleaves Hi! I am using very few tags. My topical tags are only for the big areas of interest (right now I have about five: #surveillance, #privacy, #capitalism, #autonomy, and #AI). I also have a tag that identifies concepts (#concept). I have project tags depending on the manuscripts I am working on, and that's about it.
For most of the notes I take, the title is a "claim" (a declarative sentence about one idea only). I file these claims in my Index of Claims as I produce them. Every claim is filed under its appropriate subheading. For example, Under "moral surveillance," I have notes such as: [[moral surveillance is about excising or cultivating a trait within a community]]; [[those with moral authority over others use surveillance as a precondition for ensuring compliance to the moral norm]]; [[the public-private distinction in the 19th and 20th century starts to define the limits of the nation-state's moral authority to retrain its populace]] etc. I also include the notes that are concepts in the Index of Claims.
At the end of the week, I review the notes (claims) I produced in my Index of Claims and arrange them in a way that starts building toward an argument. Hope this helps.
@@mihaelapopescu50 Thanks! This is very helpful.
Thank you for this video, it was great! And very timely for me. I've been coming up against some of the same issues. I have not been as diligent at writing atomically, so there's a distinction there, where I'm finding a lot of my really good ideas are buried in long literature notes that I then have to somehow 'fish out' when I want to actually write something proper. It's basically meant that every time I work on a serious writing project (e.g. a PhD chapter), I have to spend AGES trawling through old notes before I feel I can do anything. I was thinking the solution was just trying really hard to be better at keeping atomic notes. You've inspired me to do this too now, but I think that's only part of the solution, I think really leaning into structure notes/outlines/MOCs or whatever you want to call them to provide more structure to these units of knowledge is the key.
Yes, sometimes when I add notes to my system, I don't actually turn them into permanent notes, they just sit in one note dedicated to the book itself because I'm lazy. And turning those into atomic, permanent notes definitely helps as a first step in writing for me. And the canvas plugin helps me with that because you can use actual notes to flesh out your outline - but only if those notes exist! I'll make a video on the canvas plugin for writing sometime soon...
On writing books in obsidian - I am currently producing a series of interconnected short stories where the reader can go in depth on certain aspects if they choose, while cutting out on others, each is autonomous but with the option of enriching! Would never have thought that possible without obsidian
I've started focusing my note input around processes. My notes are still atomic notes, but from the start, they exist in a process of some kind. And where possible, the brief notes take the form of questions. The notes can still be rearranged into new structures, but they didn't begin as random bits. I've constructed several note collections over the years. The majority were abandoned and not missed. Among other things, I'm a creative writer, and I've collected catalogs of notes about what's required for characters, plots, etc. These random notes didn't help my writing until I connected them into an ordered process. I created a hub note in Obsidian to link my character creation notes in the order I'd need to address them when creating a character. This helped, but it wasn't great. What made it click was turning my outline requirement statements into questions.
So, _"Characters should have traits that conflict."_ became, _"Which internal parts are opposites or could be used to mitigate each other?"_ The first is a dead-end statement to either agree with or not. The second instantly opens that mind and has the subconscious digging through the character's traits and backstory, looking for clues to answer the question.
Since turning my random collection of notes into a question-focused process guide, I've never failed to create a character that worked for a role. Even if I know nothing about the character going in, I'll have them locked in coming out of this process.
Something to think about.
Really Appreciate this video and process, ... I use Notion instead of Obsidean, but the process translates. Thank You. The 2nd half of the video really with Direct and Indirect notes was helpful, .... It made me think about how I use "Save to Notion" plugin. Previously I had really attached content to Knowledge and Projects, ... you helped me realize I should also give myself the ability directly link it to Content Production as a directional note.
Morgan, as always, love your work. It’s changed how I critically think.
A request for a video: finding the joy in writing notes. Now that I work at a computer full-time, the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is create notes and make connections, and so now I end up with a bunch of random quotes and ideas in my Notes app, in photos and emails. How do I find the joy in batch processing on a weekend? Thanks, Kat
I love that idea for a video, Kat! I'll try to analyze what brings ME joy about it and try to articulate that!
@@morganeua How wonderful! Looking forward to it.
I have many of these same issues, but I will add on that I also have the issue of having too many notes. When I put together a loose outline of a literature review halfway through the PhD, it was 30,000 words of notes, and I'm not convinced I included everything. In one sense, it's good because I know that my reading and notetaking hasn't been in vain (and I also know that I can knock up a paper much more quickly than if I had to go back to scratch) but it is a small mountain that has to be dealt with before I can start writing.
My solution, in some regards, to what you've mentioned is to make that zero draft of notes and use the ![[note name]] function to preview each note in the outline. That helps me arrange them better based on contents, rather than the title of the note (which is not comprehensive). From there, I do a major culling stage until I get to first draft length (maybe twice the word count of the final chapter/paper?) and write those thinking ideas into the spaces in the outline. One option here is to then turn each of those new ideas into a note and put it away into Obsidian (it probably won't quote anything, so I tend to call these 'fleeting notes' - ideas that don't have any direct reference to a text.) But then, as you said, I'd be moving from that zero draft into a linear editing by copying wholesale. I take all the texts from all the notes in order (usually I just export this outline as a PDF and copy paste the output into a word document) and then I take away all of the exclamation points before ![[note]] so my Obsidian has a note which is a draft of the paper/chapter as a list of notes and nothing more.
Then, on publication, I would create a bibliographic note for that published paper which contains the entire published texts and bibliography, and at the bottom of the note, I'd add the list of notes that were in the outline under a section called 'Foundation notes'. Alternatively, you could delete all the notes you've turned into published work, since you don't want to reuse them when you could cite their publication.
But it's far from perfect. I guess that's the problem with trying to contain production in management software.
I will also add that I had a tendency to think rhizomatically before finding Obsidian (and think it might have to do with neurodiversity) and one method of dealing with that, in terms of productivity is list making, and breaking things down into their absolutely smallest piece. To give you a sense, my literature review has 5 sub-chapters which each have 4 sub-points. Each of the sub-points has multiple notes, but by having 20 subdivisions in my literature review outline, I don't get overwhelmed by 'oh so much content' because I'm dealing with bite sized. Then it's a matter of reducing to the essential on a micro level all the way up to a macro.
So good to see you in the comments, Samuel!! Yes, I also find myself wanting to create lots of sub and sub-sub headings in my dissertation. I find it helps manage the writing in my brain.
I have the same issue. A core aspect of what I was trained to do through design school was to boil information down to the simples, easiest and most clear form - atomic I guess. And when something is boiled down like that it's not easy to make changes to it because it makes it more complex, less clear etc. That is of cours what you want in a more complex piece of text but it's a big challenge to go from atomic to higher degrees of complexity!
I go about it in two ways. One similar to the approach you use, I'd call it top down. And one bottom up, where I either make my notes less atomic in phrasing or adding a couple expansive, and directional bullets below the atomic note.
This is a bit outside of the atomic-box, but I wanted to share it as it's at least easy for me to get stuck within the box (and continually work on strategies to challenge it).
I can confirm that the problem is real :-) It's what brought me to Zettelkasten and via a friend's Obsidian recommendation to your PhD video. I don't (yet) have a solution but I could discuss the problem for hours. My only advice is that Word (or any WP) is the wrong tool. You already have a collection of MarkDown files that represent your ideas. Your problem is to sequence and style the ideas. Having the same idea in another 'source file', when you can change both versions is a well known computing black hole of life-suckage.
Ideally we would separate content, structure and presentation. I'd look for a tool that can build books out of MarkDown, as a starting point.
btw The word 'hypertext' was coined by Ted Nelson in the 1960s. He was thinking about this problem too. He hasn't finished his tool yet.
Computists talk about 'data serialisation' when describing a structured database transmitted over a wire. I think that's what we do when we talk or write too.
I've discovered that the 'directional' idea may be flawed. There are (at least) 2 reasons for directed links, chronology (can be in parallel) and dependency. There are 'Directed Acyclic Graphs' in stories without time-loops (and 'causality' in reality.)
Very good point. I'll think more about this and keep trying to avoid the "computing black hole of life-suckage"! Great phrase.
@@morganeua I had the same reaction about Word. It's insufficiently flexible. There are likely a number of ways out of that corner between collecting a basic scaffolding of ideas and the actual writing: where, at about 13:30, you talk about starting from scratch. My tool of preference after jumping that chasm is Scrivener, which I find blends the ability to shape an outline with incredible flexibility in changing the sequence as my thoughts come together--the right balance for me between linear and nonlinear thought pathways.
The Obsidian long form plug-in may offer similar capabilities. I'm about to go look at it. (Looks useful, although not more useful to me than Scrivener.)
I've worked in Scrivener since . . . 2008, using about 5 percent of its functions, happily. Throughout I'm totally focused on "what's the least I need to know or do about a tool to accomplish my task?" Admittedly it takes some time, research, and trial-and-error to figure out what "least I need to know" consists of and which tool(s) work for me.
Love your videos and have recommended them to friends. Thanks.
Could you show yout process from obsidian to word? I've been doing precisely that, and i've also encounter the problem of finding ideas while writing, aaaaand having trouble with joining complete ideas in a linear way,. Maybe my problem is that in the midst of me writing my dissertation I encountered Obsidian and the canvas feature, that made me want to move my zettlekasten to obsidian. So now I'm juggling Notion, Obsidian and Word.
Also I really want to see the someone using their zettlekasten for managing knowledge about stuff not zettlekasten related. Mine mainly revolves about artistic appretiation, creativity and art fundamentals. I've been wanting to make a video series about it, just havent find the time. Your videos serve much as inspiration and as example of how may I go about it.
So many thanks for your work!!!
Hi Morgan, thank you for sharing both tips and issues! Have you considered/tried scrivener, the writing program? I am currently in the midst of my PhD-writing process (in social anthropology), and in my head, I was hoping that scrivener could solve some of the problems that I am also facing regarding outline/linearity/chronology (on the other hand, I was hoping that obsidian could, too, and that's why I downloaded the app and how I stumbled upon your videos - well done creating great and relevant content to fellow PhD students!). I wanted to try it because they make it so much easier to move content around (in the sidebar, you maintain overview of what you're writing, while easily being able to move stuff up or down if it ends up not fitting the order in your argument). I haven't bought the full scrivener version yet, but perhaps it could be useful for you! Kind wishes from Denmark
Thank you! Yes, I have tried Scrivener, that's what I used for my comps/qualifying exams, actually. I didn't get really into it. Another PhD candidate in my program uses it to great effect, though!
This isn't necessarily a sole issue of writing with a zettelkasten, but this made me curious as to how you time manage your academic note-taking. Using the zettelkasten system has helped me in numerous ways, but the issue I am seeing is balancing my time between reading, note-taking (I usually put my literature notes in Obsidian too), zettelkastening ideas, and writing or completing assignments. Similarly, I am a discovery writer (and reader) and often catch myself going off on tangents that derail not just my outlines but also my time!
So how do you manage your time when using a zettelkasten system? And what tips do you have for keeping the time you put into using this system manageable?
Haha, I'm a bad person to ask, maybe! I don't have a time management system with it. My system is: it's fun to connect notes, so I do it whenever I feel like it, and that is enough. My biggest improvement in time management came when I started filling my time with things I ENJOY doing, because then I didn't worry about having the time to get things done. They got done because I wanted to do them. So, I also have issues with time management 😅 But I prefer this problem to my old problem, which was not enjoying the time I was putting in.
I use similar method @14:22 basically I create a outline/placeholders as my content page in OneNotes and subsequent pages to hold the ideas. Also I will review my outline to see if I need merge or unmerge certain points. By the way I like your videos 👍
I've been using it for a month. And I feel like its more work to take notes from the ipad or using any web highlighting too. I rather just write it chapter by chapter. You have to form your thoughts anyways, might as well skip the middleman, and just start writing and researching directly. Read a paragraph, and if you have a question, ANSWER it cuz we have the internet, form the thought, write it down, finish the chapter, and then move on.
Incredibly hard to split it the collection phase and thinking phase. Collect and think mini cycles
I appreciate your work, and especially sharing challenges.
I'm just thinking out loud, so this is my shitty first draft ;-) . Historically I've had the habit of having conversations that feel like five minutes of groundwork before I actually say the thing I want to say, just to be sure we are on the same page (in that sense, I resonate with the outlines folder idea). Over time, I started thinking about "groundwork" as a "place" in itself rather than just a collection of facts, so how I introduce someone to the fact that there is an issue to begin with, let alone the aspect of the issue that has caught my attention, how I introduce is a different project, one of orienting rather than explaining. I'm wondering if sections of your linear arrangement might be notes connecting a collection of other notes, like the "stance" or "groundwork" being something greater than the sum of its parts, and seeing how one set of notes sets the stage for appreciating the next set of notes. In that sense, a unifying theme connecting many notes is still a single theme that can be captured in a single note, but it can be directional in that it leads to another theme which is itself implied in a collection of other thoughts.
Just a thought. I look forward to your next video.
Thanks. I like Excalibrain and Strange New Worlds plugins for handling the many notes I'm creating while plotting a fantasy novel. As an extreme plotter, I need a way to represent a myriad of data. My current way of thinking is to have a workspace for each scene. On my ultrawide, have the scene outline on the left, the character, setting, and plot sheets and arcs on the right, and the middle for writing. A canvas of character relationship connections on my second monitor. Moving between scenes replaces all the documents with the new set.
Interesting. Come to think of it, I had this issue of linearity less when writing a fiction novel because it was more clear to me what order things had to go in. I didn't use obsidian for it though, that's something I still need to try. Maybe. Although I am a pantser. But having the info I might need easily available in Obsidian could still be good... Hm, I'll keep thinking about this and check out those plugins!
A great program to write in is Scrivener. It doesn’t require you to write linearly but allows you to write an entire paper/book in a bunch of note-cards, then move the order around to see how it would read best. It would probably work well with obsidian.
I tried Scrivener before I found Obsidian, actually! I think maybe at the time I didn't have a good way of using Scrivener, but that's probably different now that I know about zettelkasten.
That’s really interesting about the linear vs. Non-linear writing! I never thought about that before. But yes, I can definitely see how this issue has emerged for you. I don’t have any answers other than to watch Ryan Holiday’s overview of his Courage is Calling book he wrote (or maybe it was Ego is the Enemy?).
But it’s also interesting that you have trouble rewriting something you’ve already written. Maybe you’ve written it so well, you can’t imagine saying it any other way. But I would think you went through college like most of us where getting through writing papers is all about taking quotes and trying to rephrase them to not have to directly quote them. I became a master paraphraser after college, but now I see that that’s not the point of what college is getting you to do. But because I didn’t really have enough information to synthesize or experience to integrate them, it was difficult to come up with anything original.
Maybe making each atomic note a “support for a given belief/fact” approach might help. Because then you could actually write a thesis, and then you plug in the notes as the points underneath that thesis.
Anyway, I wish you the best and always appreciate your thoughts. Keep it up! 🎪
For me the issue is yeah, just rephrasing. It's already in my own words, but I want it to be in different, more beautiful words for the thing I'm writing :P I do like the editing process, I like trying to choose the perfect sentence structure and word choice for each thought. And sometimes when I've worded something poorly in my notes it's hard to think of the beautiful version of that sentence!
I've seen the Ryan Holiday video actually and love it. I will rewatch it whenever I need motivation!
Thank you thank you thank you!!!!
Probably you already know that but you don’t have to copy past the text from each individual note. 11:20
You can just go
![[titelofthenote#^
And then you can choose the paragraph you want to be copied into the “outline” note.
This is particularly helpful if you are planing the hole “outlines are going to write themselves” part. Because if you decide to edit a old er note it will be updated in the outline as well.
Yes yes, love it. I've used this before, but couldn't remember it exactly when I was filming. Thank you!!
I think most learning is linear. We build upon basics and add layers of complexity. Writing is the same. Children don't go from crawling to running. Mounting an argument is the same. I'm looking at Obsidian and zettelkasten for my thesis, which is due at the end of the year, but I'm wondering if it's worth the effort.
Interesting. I guess, when you first learn something it's sort of linear. I learn to crawl, then walk, then run. But then, when I learn to say, climb a mountain - I have to take ideas I learned from all three of those stages of learning. So, now I'm pulling information from all over my life experiences in order to learn something more complex. That's why it works for me, because of the complexity of thought. However, then when I want to simplify that thought back down into something linear - maybe I want to teach someone for the first time in that linear mode - I find it challenging to detangle the web.
I try to forego the rewriting problem by understanding the atomic note merely as the description of an idea. The way I write it is maybe a bit sloppy but after all I am the only reader who needs to understand its content. Once the note explained the idea to me again, I can rewrite it and adapt the style to the text I am working on. I try to avoid copy and paste, except I really like a formulation (similar to using quotes in atomic notes)
"Description of an idea" is a nice way to think about it!
I've watched dozens of videos of how to create the notes, but this is the first one I've seen about how to use those notes to create content. The difficulty you share here may have something to do with why it doesn't seem like content creators follow through on this topic.
Yep yep yep. Once I'm done my PhD I'll make a big "does zettelkasten work for writing" type video to demonstrate how I ended up using it for writing (or not)
The way i do it, which may be flawed idk, is to make a gradient of relevance. Just basically plop everything that is related into big mess blob in google docs, like a mass of limestone that's about ready to be carved. Than I spend most of the time shaping that blob into something coherent and usefull. This also allows for discovery , as you just find where that new piece of info fits.
I LOVE that sculpting metaphor!!! Do you mind if I use it in future writing? I'll definitely cite this comment if I do!
@@morganeua i dont mind at all
have you tried the longform plug in ? I am using it to write my dissertation in obsidian, and it’s been a lifesaver
Interestingggg, I will check it out!
@@morganeua btw great video! You summarised a lot of my issues with using obsidian as a writing tool 😂
So first of all... I saw one of your earlier zettelkasten videos a little over a year ago and it literally changed my life. I dropped everything and enrolled in uni, and haven't looked back since. So hopefully I can return the favour here! I've spent a lot of time on Obsidian now and am finding myself in the same predicament. I agree, Obsidian leans towards creative divergent thinking, and we spent a lot of time indulging that side of things, and are much less practiced at bringing all that back to some kind of linear order. Here's what I've come to:
- There are three basic types of notes. Subjective (Ideas), Objective (facts), and Organisational notes (MOCs, indexes, working notes and outlines... they're all basically organisational).
- I use hashtags to delineate between the three with the tag #referenced, #referenced/OBJECTIVE and #MOC. I have this baked into templates so I don't have to remember to type it out every time. Objective stuff can be very particular, eg. "In 1968 there were more protests on university campuses than any other year". This way I can search the local graph for related objective evidence to back up my subjective points.
- The use of the term "referenced" is to indicate that it's backed up by a referenced source. I don't bother tagging the free flowing ideas I have, eventually I'll find some evidence to back up whatever point I was making and then I will add the tag.
- Often these free "unreferenced" ideas will grow in links as I think about them over periods of time. Those can become pieces of writing once they start to have large amounts of notes attached. This way I don't need to worry about maintaining these "outline notes". I'll just tag them #potentialarticle and review them once in a while with a dataview query.
- Also, note how #referenced and #referenced/OBJECTIVE are the same tag, but some are a sub tag... this adds flexibility to local graph search.
Again, I'm still having the same problems as you with Obsidian/Zettlekasten, but this working is helping a lot recently.
I love this distinction between subjective and objective notes! Seems like a useful tool, especially when getting started in a topic.
Can you group the Obsidian graph by nodes with three or more child nodes? The idea being to eliminate nodes that do not have enough connected information for a first draft. With those nodes written down then look at all the nodes with two or fewer children to make sure any salient low children nodes are not excluded. Limiting by path length may be helpful. For example, all nodes connected to a single Obsidian node with three or more children and no more than five nodes away.
Ah, very smart. I'll give this a go. Not sure if obsidian has the feature, but I can just look manually in graph view. When thinking about writing something I typically already go into the local graph of notes to see what is sufficiently connected and this concept sounds similar!
Thanks for your videos; they are helping me learn about ZK. I’m not anywhere near the stage where I can create a paper from my ZK yet, but empathize with your conflicts and self-debate. The ZK promise of reuse from directional text appears less valuable in how you prefer to write for your various use cases. However the value of your system appears very strong in helping you formulate multiple sections of your paper.
It seems it’s the choice of what to include or not as well as the linearity path you want to take that are causing issues. You probably have multiple papers you can write with the material you are considering.
Rather than trying to print a draft from the notes you’ve written, why not just stop with your note titles before trying to use all of the notes for your draft? You’ve already written them in a manner such that they embody the essence of the note (one of your other videos). If they are not written in a style you want, your notes are simply reminding you of what you’ve already thought and know - but that is the greatest value!
Writing in any style is essentially story-telling. Based upon your outline and notes listed, what is the story you want to tell? Who is your audience? Based upon those, create your first draft. I suspect once you decide on your audience, what they will or will not know, what order you need to put things for that particular audience, the support they will want to see (and how), that your draft will come out much smoother and likely quickly. I never had a ZK before, but as I write, I always find my timeline for writing and imagining I’m reading the developing story to the particular audience helps me reduce all the many things I could throw into the story which are likely mostly distractions. There isn’t enough time to put in everything so what’s most important? I find I often make some of those choices as I write as I imagine that particular audience. All that stuff that doesn’t get in - there’s another paper (perhaps for a different audience).
Some of your other struggles also are not uncommon, such as the distraction of new thoughts you don’t want to lose. You could try to stay focused in the writing process and hope they come back (likely will). However, if you need to get them out of your head, perhaps create a “parking lot” file for stray thoughts - just jot down a few words there and you can look at them when you have more time.
Speaking from experience, there always comes the time for every Ph.D. candidate when you need to get the dissertation finished and defended. Use that to help drive you to completion.
Your 'hierarchical versus non-hierarchical thought' from the forum doesn't jump in a search - do you have a link for that section of discussion?
Possible solution: Print out all the notes so each note is on a single sheet (double sided if necessary). Think of each sheet as a "card" (maybe print them on smaller paper to reinforce that idea). Get a big table or area of floor and arrange the "cards" in the order that makes sense. Move them around. Play. Add in handwritten pages when you think of new connections or transition ideas or headings or subheadings. When you have the order right, gather the pages up in the order and use them as your physical prompts to write the article "from scratch" on your computer, putting a line through each page as you've included/dealt with it in the piece you're writing.
Um, yes, that sounds like so much fun. I love it!
@@morganeua it's like returning to the Luhrmann analogue Zettelkasten's use of index cards. With that system, you write by making a stack of cards and using them as writing prompts while working at your typewriter (or later, at your PC). Ideally, I'd print my notes out on A5 paper (about half of US letter, 5.8" x 8.3") to simulate 5" x 8" index cards and put them on a document stand between my keyboard and my screen....
Love this! and appreciate that you're sharing your process. It's been so so helpful for me, and I'm sure for many others too.
The idea you mentioned about having a folder for themes/outlines that you check when storing new (indirectional) notes reminded me a bit of Tiago Forte's PARA approach to organizing info, where P (Projects) is a space where you store notes relevant to your current projects. I like PARA because it encourages organizing for actionability - you store things not based on topic but rather by when you next think you'll use it.
I'm experimenting with using PARA folders in obsidian as a light way of creating structure on top of Obsidian's non-hierarchical model, and basically doing a similar thing to what you said - when reviewing notes i've taken, i'll see if they are relevant to any of my current writing pieces in P (Projects) before moving them elsewhere. maybe check out the PARA model to see if anything resonates with your workflow! Also, bob doto has some great pieces on how zettelkasten can combine with PARA for effective output :))
Thanks for these videos, really useful. With reference to your comments about whether Obsidian is a useful application for writing the paper/dissertation or book, have you come across Scrivener?
Yes, I have! I used it for my PhD comprehensive exams and I've been thinking about going back to it recently... Do you use it? I didn't get deep enough into it that I felt like I really "got it." Is it worth trying again?
@@morganeua Hi, yes I use Scrivener. I'm writing a history book and have started using Obsidian for managing my research, before I had notes everywhere, in Evernote, in notebooks and the thing I found most difficult was turning the research into the text for the book. I was always getting to the point of "I remember this fact but where did I come across it?" I'd read a reference document, make notes (like "this is important") but not manage the process of turning the idea into writing for the book. Now I do the research and writing sort of in parallel using the ZK approach. It has meant re-reading a lot of material but that has been good as it has developed new ideas.
I haven't tried obsidian, but I am curious to give it a whirl!
Just wanted to say that the books on your shelves speak to you having a super cool taste in books
Hahaha, thank yooou, too bad I haven't read many of them 😅
I was watching your video and one though crossed my mind regarding your problem.
You mentioned that you do not use the coded identification from the Zettelkasten system. Could your difficulty to link your thoughts come from that?? You are building your ideas from your literature notes. But given they are not linked with following thoughts they ended up floating in the space, with no connection with previous permanent notes. Which leads to a lack of connections between your various thoughts. Is that make sense to you??
Here for the zettelkasten info. Staying for the Metro 2033 and 2034 reviews. :D
Hahaha, oh geez, guess I better get to reading those! My brother read them first and really enjoyed them, so I look forward to it!
@@morganeua but more Kim Stanley Robinson too. : ))))) No pressure, we, no absolutely with pressure, get reading, writing and videoing, go, go, go ()()()()()()()()
It seems to me you would benefit of doing a physical Mind Map to organize your thoughs while diving in Obsidian. With that done it would be easier to juggle with the orders and hierarchies. Just a though.
Yes! I actually started using the Canvas tool in Obsidian after posting this video! Which is a mind map IN obsidian. And that has helped A LOT.
Do you write for yourself or for others ?
I think it makes it easier and make more sense to write for others. I mean you take note for yourself, but you write a book for other people.
Therefore, you could make 3 personae to represent your global readers, and then try to write for them. If you find this interesting, it is important to get how to make those personnae, otherwise it could be something not good at all. The process is meant to be very "emphatic".
Well, it is not "a solution", it is a tool. But it can be a very powerful tool.
I'm not that proficient in Obsidian, but isn't there a way you can imbed the entire note inside another one? this would make the outlining you've mentioned in the video a bit more straightforward
Yes, there absolutely is, someone else commented with the actual text to use. I couldn't remember what it was at the time of filming cause I've rarely used that feature in my Obsidian up till now. But now that I'm going to try creating and filling outlines, it will become more useful!
Hi, Morgan. Thanks for sharing. I think N. Luhman used the system of numbering (numbers and letters, e.g. 40a10b), which enabled him to be literally creating linear texts at all times because every Zettel (note) is placed linearly in his entire knowledge management system according to that unique identifier. It does take more time and effort if we want to give each new Zettel such unique identifier. But without it, I think it becomes extremely hard to produce linear texts from Zettelkasten. To give you my own example, the title of one of my Zettels is "401Linguistics/SFL/Grammatical-Metaphor/Nominalization/001a1 Grammaticalization." By using this system, I think I can always be writing something about 401Linguistics/SFL/Grammatical-Metaphor/Nominalization.
Thank you so much for this. I'm actually going to be helping my mom build a physical zettelkasten, so I'm going to be looking for ways to specifically work in that linear fashion and examples like yours are helpful! (Do you use this system in digital or physical?)
@@morganeua That's wonderful. I hope you will successfully help your mother set up the system. my zettelkasten is a digital system (I'm using MS Access database management program). Keep up the good work. I hope your dissertation is coming along well.
Another issue with zettelkasten is that it is much more difficult to teach using a zettelkasten system than a linear fashion.This issue seems to be related to one of the hardest things to do in education... which is to start with a foundation, and build up the knowledge from that foundation. For example, it makes no sense to teach a class on calculus prior to understanding basic algebra. We assume that our intended audience has some base of knowledge, and then we provide additional information, however, it is much much harder to assimilate new knowledge that has few or no associative connections than it does to take in knowledge that already has a well constructed base. This relates in some sense to the system you are trying to use. You are writing down "atomic" thoughts, and attempting to make associations, but you may not see or understand the connection of 1 thought to another, so you end up only connecting the thoughts that make sense. In reality, as your knowledge pool grows, more and more atomic thoughts will connect in various ways. But, it's impossible to keep track with it on a level that a human can handle. In other words, it is much more difficult to teach using a zettelkasten system than a linear fashion, and it is much more difficult to learn that way as well. It's hard to say exactly why, but I prefer category based information. Sometimes the categories overlap. And you have to play lumper / splitter games. But generally speaking I prefer linear, foundation building systems over other methods, at least for organizing. But as you know from past comments, I don't use Obsidian, instead I just put stuff into document files. Unfortunately, this means that searching thru all of those docs to find a certain fact or piece of information is much more difficult. But, searching thru 1 document is linear and more comprehensible. I guess its a tradeoff.
I am autistic, and like nothing more than the aerial view of the rubbish and junk from that might end up in one of my novels. True, I have to invent a story to accommodate it all, but that's just a tiny bit of the fun and doesn't get in the way of the patterns of detail. Being autistic is all about finding stuff that hasn't been seen before, perhaps by anyone. I love my Obsidian because it doesn't push me around. (though we carry on like drunken dancers at time).
@@Petertwohig1948 Well that is interesting. I wonder, does Obsidian have a feature that allows you to publish a "public" form of sorts? I am very curious how are able to use all the associations in a way that feels organized to you. So, if there was a way to look at it form a public view, I would be interested.
@@marcfruchtman9473 The paid version does let you publish, but I haven't got it. The associations don't feel organised - they just suggest that effect, rather like a poem. Morgan has got it, though the 'discovery' process is my pretty much instantaneous, despite being stepwise However, you definitely need the graphic view and its filters to do it. By the way, I am also an artist, and creating a 'painting' is the reverse process: you start with a brain state (new concept), abstract it to a neurological config (a confusion of unsafe sensories), then execute it to obtain (print) a graphic, poem, or the like. Hope that helps, Marc. PS. The teaching method you described doesn't work on autistics precisely because we make connections faster than you can teach them. I read somewhere that Einstein independently derived the Pythagorus theorem when he was 12, and was punished for doing so. Welcome to my school experience.
@@Petertwohig1948 Yes, there are a lot of nuances to how people learn. When teaching to a group, we can't always use the best method for an individual, but even then figuring out the best method is often a challenge.
I don´t have any advice, less so regarding Obsidian.
Just have to add that I recently read "How to take Smart Notes" by Ahrens, which boasts 100´000 copies sold, and is apparently a seminal work in this whole Zettelkasten business.
I found it to be a convoluted mess, repetitive, and void of actual substance.
The author claims throughout the text to have used notes from his Zettelkasten to construct the manuscript.
Quite telling...
Yes, this is actually an idea I didn't put in the video - which is that what I mean by "writing" is actually a creative, artistic act. It's not just communicating ideas. It's expressing those ideas in potentially poetic ways. So, you could just slap notes next to each other and call it a book - but what I want to do is WRITE!
Couldn’t you keep writing but add a tag on anything that will need a zettelkasten ? And come back to them later. Write the zettlekasten and remove the tag. Maybe at the link.
Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Or write new ideas as [[note]], but don't click into it, so I can actually create it later.
This comment may come too late, but I suggest that you not copy and paste. Open your notes beside your document, and write freehand based in the information in the note. If new ideas come up while you’re writing, extract them into a separate note and do the same as you’ve been doing with the other notes. There are a lot of other suggestions, but I think there’s a way to mix and match to take a non-linear note system and use it as input for linear output. Good luck.
Thank you for this advice! Good advice is never too late :)
How do you even think linearly anyway realise imightthink less linearly than others due to dyslexia but nobody really thinks hence how Mind maps and zettlekasren wouldn't work so well. Linear writing is making cpartificial choices anyway and any choice us a matter of opinian like gramer !
😆 "tons" tons"