How to measure the success of your Zettelkasten

While it might be a wrong question to ask, we will still need a yardstick to evaluate how our application of Zettelkasten is moving forward. Just evaluation will allows room for course correction and change process to make it fit more towards the end goal.

1. Luhmann averaged at around 6 permanent notes per day for his Zettelkasten. This figure is good to keep in mind. The worth of your Zettelkasten increases over as you add more Permanent Notes to it, provided the notes keep a high level of quality and can stand on its own as idea, without referring to context from which it was taken from. Similar view point is also taken by Andy Matusak. For him the yardstick is the number of ever green notes he takes per day.
2. Another way to look at success is how you take a peek into your Zettelkasten and find new questions that need answering. If your Zettelkasten does prompt new questions or research directions it can be called a success.
3. Over a long period of time, you can also think of success in terms of output from the Zettelkasten. Output can come in many ways: as an article, finished paper, solid thinking framework, or just the ability to co-relate and connect ideas.