What is a Zettelkasten
A Zettelkasten is a personal knowledge management and note-taking system used by the German Social Science professor Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann was a very prolific writer and is considered to be an important social theorist of the 20th century. He has left behind an insight-packed, high quality, body of work and attributes all his success as a scientist and an academic to his “Zettelkasten System”.
Zettelkasten is a combination of two German words translating to the word Slip Box. Beyond this point, different people describe the system on their terms. I am also working on Understanding Zettelkasten more. Luhmann’s slip-box is currently the object of a long-term research project at the University of Bielefeld.1
Zettelkasten can never be reduced as a simple note-taking system. Luhmann himself has noted2 that the Zettelkasten is his research partner and creating it is a much harder process than writing any one book. This statement has to be taken at face value because he created an interconnected network of notes physically without the marvel of modern computers. Maybe the analogue nature of his process has also played an important role in the success of his Zettelkasten.
Here is an overview of the Zettelkasten process followed by Luhmann.
Interesting questions that rose while writing this
Is it possible to measure the success of a Zettelkasten system?