Unless I am missing something, this post never actually says what a slip-box is or how to make and use one. What then am I supposed to do with the advice that “to start the habit of using slip-boxes” I should “start by making literature notes”? I can make some literature notes … and what then? What do I do with them for them to be slip-box notes?
It seems like the single most important piece of information here is being wilfully withheld...
Apparently “slip box” is roughly equivalent to “card index” and Luhmann’s system is as follows:
Make notes on small cards / pieces of paper.
Don’t attempt to categorize them with things like alphabetical order of subject or Dewey decimal notion.
Give them all unique identifiers, and allow these to have a “nested” structure when one note leads to others which lead to others.
Cross-link them by adding to each note references (via those unique IDs) to other notes that you know are related to it.
Obviously something very similar could be done on a computer, with many practical advantages over the version made out of pieces of paper.
I have a suspicion that Luhmann’s alleged great productivity (“alleged” only because I haven’t verified for myself) is best ascribed either (1) to things other than his use of a card-index system or (2) to idiosyncratic things about _how_ he used it that are not captured by what I wrote above or by the contents of the post here...
You’re right, all this can be done on a computer just fine. And you even get full-text search and such quality of life improvements.
The “key” to his productivity was not just doing all the steps you mention mindlessly for 30 years and voila, you have tons of books. Have you ever contributed to a wiki, e.g. at work? When you know 10 things but none of them are on the wiki, you create pages for them, add cross links, then find opportunities to add more details, explain the connections a bit—you begin to work with the material, massage the existing pages, come up with new stuff in the process. Meanwhile, the rest of your life takes place, so you read, learn and hear about things outside of this hypothetical wiki, which may bring up more ideas to add to the existing knowledge base.
That’s how working with a Zettelkasten is. The “key” is to create structures over time that can solidify knowledge and aid in attaching new ideas, discovering holes in your knowledge, and such things. To find out what Luhmann really did in practice, you may want to read his short “Communicating with Slip Boxes” article: http://luhmann.surge.sh/
Unless I am missing something, this post never actually says what a slip-box is or how to make and use one. What then am I supposed to do with the advice that “to start the habit of using slip-boxes” I should “start by making literature notes”? I can make some literature notes … and what then? What do I do with them for them to be slip-box notes?
It seems like the single most important piece of information here is being wilfully withheld...
Apparently “slip box” is roughly equivalent to “card index” and Luhmann’s system is as follows:
Make notes on small cards / pieces of paper.
Don’t attempt to categorize them with things like alphabetical order of subject or Dewey decimal notion.
Give them all unique identifiers, and allow these to have a “nested” structure when one note leads to others which lead to others.
Cross-link them by adding to each note references (via those unique IDs) to other notes that you know are related to it.
Obviously something very similar could be done on a computer, with many practical advantages over the version made out of pieces of paper.
I have a suspicion that Luhmann’s alleged great productivity (“alleged” only because I haven’t verified for myself) is best ascribed either (1) to things other than his use of a card-index system or (2) to idiosyncratic things about _how_ he used it that are not captured by what I wrote above or by the contents of the post here...
Re: Luhmann’s productivity, see the list of published books (! not counting articles !): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann—he was a prolific producer of texts.
You’re right, all this can be done on a computer just fine. And you even get full-text search and such quality of life improvements.
The “key” to his productivity was not just doing all the steps you mention mindlessly for 30 years and voila, you have tons of books. Have you ever contributed to a wiki, e.g. at work? When you know 10 things but none of them are on the wiki, you create pages for them, add cross links, then find opportunities to add more details, explain the connections a bit—you begin to work with the material, massage the existing pages, come up with new stuff in the process. Meanwhile, the rest of your life takes place, so you read, learn and hear about things outside of this hypothetical wiki, which may bring up more ideas to add to the existing knowledge base.
That’s how working with a Zettelkasten is. The “key” is to create structures over time that can solidify knowledge and aid in attaching new ideas, discovering holes in your knowledge, and such things. To find out what Luhmann really did in practice, you may want to read his short “Communicating with Slip Boxes” article: http://luhmann.surge.sh/
Same thoughts