Zettelkasten

A Zettelkasten (german: "slip box") is a method knowledge curation that was – contrary to popular belief – not popularised by the german sociologist Niklas Luhmann, but by Sönke Ahrens and with his book How to Take Smart Notes, which is about Luhmanns method.

I will not explain what a Zettelkasten is here (maybe later), but my personal history with it. In my journalism studies in the mid 2000s, the term kept popping up, mostly from academic nerds close to the social sciences. I was mildly interested, but didn't do much about it. More than a decade later, it must have been 2017 or 2018 I started to get interested in the method and I wanted to find good resources online – and it was almost impossible. I found one Youtube video by a german sociologist who seems really smart and really nice, but he did not do a good job providing a hands on explanation of what a Zettelkasten is that would be useful for anybody who's interested in starting one themselvees.

Fast forward a few years later and it's basically impossible to read about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) without the term Zettelkasten mentioned. A big role played, as I mentioned, the book How to Take Smart Notes, or more accurately, how enthusiastically it was read and talked about by the PKM coummunity. I suspect it has to do with The Note Taking Renaissance around that time with software that enabled the method to reach its full potential – something that Luhmans little Zettel (slips) never could. I think it's super cool.