This large and interesting collection of books, writings, quotes and other artefacts on note making and personal knowledge management, tools for thought in short, through the ages is something to explore at leisure. It seems to have been put together by Chris Aldrich some two years ago. Great stuff. Came across it in Chris’s Hypothes.is stream, and didn’t immediately realise it was a reference to his own collection.
Obsidian has released a Webclipper for a variety of browsers. Making it easy to get stuff into your notes from your browser is a key thing to make as frictionless as possible. So this is a laudable step.
I’ve been using the Markdownload webclipper for 4 years.
Both allow you to precisely template what gets saved and in which way when you save a page or a selection on a page. That way I can ensure it ends up in my Obsidian notes tool in a shape that is immediately useful inside that environment.
A key difference is that Markdownload saves to the file system, it simply puts a text file with an .md file extension in a folder I designated, and that is the same folder Obsidian looks for my notes. It can also save through Obsidian though. It’s independent and useful regardless of Obsidian, because of it.
The Obsidian webclipper saves through Obsidian, I suspect so you can leverage whatever you have set up in Obsidian for incoming material. It brings Obsidian to the front and does the saving, and if you want opens the note to continue there. In my case it meant the default template for new notes got applied by the templater plugin, overwriting the material I tried to save. The settings of the Obsidian webclipper does not have the option to save to a folder, bypassing Obsidian.
This to me introduces an unneeded dependency (and the need to figure out suppressing my default template inside Obsidian so it doesn’t overwrite incoming webclippings). To me the fact that Obsidian is a viewer on top of regular text notes on my hard drive is valuable because I can use the files and manipulate them in other tools. I daily read and write those notes outside of Obsidian. It seems many others don’t realise this fully as there is the strong tendency to want and expect Obsidian to do everything (even though the dev team handily shifted that urge to the developers of plugins).
I will stick with the Markdownload webclipper for now.
During the September Dutch PKM Obsidian meet-up the topic of discussion was journaling. An interesting thing that stood out was how a participant demonstrated their use of named block references in Obsidian.
In Obsidian any phrase surrounded by double brackets is a link to another note. Adding an circumflex (accent circonflexe, ^) behind such a link allows you to reference a specific paragraph inside a note. On occasion I’ve used those, though not often.
If you add the circumflex and select a paragraph, Obsidian will add a random alphanumeric code behind the selected paragraph in the original note, and to the end of your link. Removing or altering either will break the link.
What I hadn’t seen before was that you can add your own block references. At the meet-up someone did that using templates so he new the block references in specific types of notes, and could always refer to them elsewhere, in this case establishing links between day notes and week notes in a predictable manner. These block references can then be human readable, and re-used (as long they’re unique within a single note).
In the past days I found myself using them to references reading / literature notes from my own notes. Especially I noticed that I use the block reference to point to the part inside a paragraph I’m mostly referring to.
Below is an example from this week.
First a reference link in one of my notes, with the block reference ‘sortboxes’. Then the original annotation. The reference ‘sortboxes’ points exactly to my words in the annotation I am referencing.
It’s interesting that after learning this possibility a month ago, I now see myself doing that in a different manner than I saw it, yet as emergent behaviour, as a new earned structure. A useful thing perhaps to also adopt in Latticework, as during sensemaking it is common that new thoughts or associations latch on to steadily shorter phrases or even single words of annotated material rather than full paragraphs, as you progress in thinking things through.
Reading Bob Doto’s recent book on his note making and writing practices, he explained how he uses his Luhmann-style alphanumeric numbering of notes as a way to spot where a richer grouping is emerging as a possible starting point for his writing. It made me ask, how to spot similar patterns in my digital notes without that numbering system?
The alphanumeric numbering basically works like this: When you start your notes collection, you number the notes from the very first one. Say you start with your first two notes on two different topics, A and B. For Topic A, the first note you give the number 1. Topic B’s first note 2. Then for each new note, you decide where to place it in the existing collection. If you think it’s connected to Topic A, it may become 1a. A few notes down the line on other topics you may make a note you place in 1b. Then some time later you have a note you want to place directly after 1a. but not after 1b, so you number it 1a1, etc. Key here is that the numbering system doesn’t give a premade structure where you need to slot a new note in an existing hole (unlike library numbering systems). The numbering system merely means you must choose a first place where you place a new note, intentionally making a first connection to an existing note and number it accordingly. For physical note making systems on index cards this is I think basically the only way to do it, if you don’t want to use a predefined structure (and you don’t because structure is emergent from working with your notes, a knowledge output, not an administrative tool), and do want a navigable and explorable system.
At the other end of his PKM system, where Doto creates writings using the material he collected over time, the alphanumeric system helps him in finding potential things to write about. Topics where there are lots of notes, accumulated over some period of time, will show up as denser parts of his alphanumeric system. Say in Topic B’s number 2 branch above, a year later there are just 1 or 2 new notes. 2.1 and 2.2. That is a signal Topic B wasn’t an interest that gained any depth that year. But say that note number 1a is now a grouping of a dozen notes, 1a1-1 and a further forking set below it, and 1a2 has some, and there’s 1a3 with no further notes attached. Clearly something happened there in the intervening time. Your attention attached a range of notes to that first starting point 1a, and perhaps it means you have something to write there to bring those notes together. It’s like a grape bunch on a vine. Vine 2 hasn’t grown any grapes let alone any bunches of them, but Vine 1a has. And there may be other grape bunches, bigger, smaller, elsewhere. You choose a bunch to make some wine, i.e. inspecting and reflecting on that grouping of notes and then writing.
My notes are not numbered that way, although they do contain a timestamp. They’re not numbered because I have a digital notes collection, in which it is easy to make links between notes. I add the time stamp both for unique titles (‘Some good summarising title 20241018125808’ is different from ‘Some good summarising title 20020424125820’ despite the same title text) and to glance from the title from which period in my activities something comes. My notes always have a link to another already existing note, like the alphanumeric system, I always intentionally choose a first connection. Without it, it is not really a navigable and explorable system. However, over time or at the time of first writing, I may add additional links from that note to others. It is not always visible which link was the first link, the equivalent of choosing the first position in the alphanumeric system.
On the output side this means I cannot easily spot where the density of my notes has grown to a budding grape bunch. I can see which notes are most heavily connected, using the Obsidian graph, but that’s equivalent to pointing a lot to a main branch, and the more I point to a single note the less meaningful it is, as it becomes more of a generic category essentially.
The alphanumeric grape bunch is basically a group of one or more short or longer lineages originating from a single point somewhere in the total.
Those lineages are present in my notes too, but not easy to spot. Sometimes I make deliberate chains (Note B linking to more abstract concept A, and to more tangible example C, making an A-B-C train of thought), but not often. Lineages would be easier to spot if links in notes had metadata, like the time of linking. This would both show in a note the first link (the first place it was put in), and allow across notes the exploration of the sequence in which notes x, y and z got connected by looking at note creation data and incoming linkages. Links are information objects in their own right, and have different aspects like direction(s), character, intensity, a time dimension and a versioning history, none of which is captured in my system (nor in those of others I saw). Links can also grow into new notes. A link between A and B over time and through reflection deepening in meaning, necessitating its own note to express it with enough atomicity.
The local graph of a note in my Obsidian tool can provide a bit of lineage, by looking at the vicinity of a single note limited to incoming links and set to a depth of 2 or higher. It’s not visually obvious though, it doesn’t jump out. In the following graph (incoming links, depth 2, with ‘Links as information object’ as the branching off point) I colored the different branches. Note that the title for each node/note has a timestamp showing how much time there was between one note and the following added to the lineage. Some notes have the same date, meaning they were written in the more or less the same sitting. Also note that some older notes link to some newer notes, indicating I edited the note to include a new link to a newer note)
What also emerges from this image is that several ‘lineages’ connect further ‘down’. Essentially they create a loop, a circle of notes. There are many more, and I think they are a sign of density (one that alphanumeric numbering doesn’t have), yet like lineages not easy to spot. Two examples are shown below. One circle based on a depth of 2, another with depth 3.
While this type of visualisation isn’t useless, it’s also not obviously useful in this case. Would there be other ways to search for things like “lines longer than 3 notes, with more than 1 branching off point with at least 2 notes depth”.
Do you have ways to spot emerging clusters outside of alphanumeric numbering and graphs in your notes? As a suggestion for your potential next writing?
There’s a whole bunch of publications and videos about note making systems, all too often taking Luhmann’s slip box as cue, singular example, or even as note making’s furthest historical horizon. So with some hesitation I approached Bob Doto‘s ‘A System for Writing’ as it joins that list of resources. I originally postponed buying it, but it came well recommended in my PKM network. I’m glad I did pick it up in the end as I do appreciate the work.
The book has three sections of three chapters. Part one about making notes, part two about making connections between them, and part three about writing various types of outputs. It’s this third section that provides the title for the book, and it’s also the part that I took the most from.
The first two parts about making notes and linking them, while providing me with little new insight, do make some valuable points that deserve more repetition. It puts emphasis on how your notes are centered on personal knowledge, on the meaning you yourself put into it and derive from it, by linking. Doto also does something that other works on this topic do very little of: showing actual notes in various stages of creation. When I read Ahrens’ Smart Notes book, I disliked it was all tell and no show. Doto weaves his showing and telling together, and that makes it a much more useful practice oriented text. Doto also made me for the first time see value in the alphanumeric system he uses in note titles (similar to Luhmann), as a good indicator of which parts of your collection are more developed than others. He uses that as potential points of entry for writing.
The part about writing is very useful I think. What is your Zettelkasten for? Most other works focus on getting stuff into a Zettelkasten, and often don’t bother to ask to what purpose. Bob Doto puts that purpose front and center.
He presents his writing system as an active practice, in parallel to and integrated with his note making. Writing includes all forms of it. Small messages on social media, answers on fora, blog posts, and longer texts like articles, essays and books. Seeing it as a spectrum where one type of text can inform the creation of another and can form a cycle, rather than as discrete standalone artefacts is connected to his perspective as written output being part of an ongoing conversation with different types of readership. Writing as inputs into conversation, with readers, other authors, historic authors. This chimes closely with how Kalir and Garcia in their book Annotation see annotation as conversation and social interaction just as much. This appeals to me, my blog has always been about conversation, but also provides a perspective to make the threshold for writing much lower. Writers block sounds hard to overcome, but who ever has conversation block? This section to me is stronger in comparison I think with Ahrens’ book, again beause of show not just tell, but also because it doesn’t wave away details where Smart Notes in my memory more suggests it’ll happen automagically.
In his system for writing the author’s emphasis on managing the writing process rather than the writing speaks to me. Also he shows how he scales the level of management with the scale of the writing (with tweets and books at opposite ends of the scale). Day logs and creative logs are his tools in doing that. Using those and his tasks oriented management approach allows him to work on multiple writing efforts in parallel, and spend time where his energy takes him. In contrast to how I may have multiple draft texts in parallel rather than writing efforts, and then usually have no way to enter any one of them easily to work on it. Doto’s described system provides a ratchet effect to his writing. Such ratcheting I have and experience in my note making and every day usage of my notes, but not yet in my writing. I will incorporate that in my own practice.
In the past 10 days after reading I found one suggestion extremely valuable already. Not in the context of writing, but in the context of following my energy and in switching tasks in my current burned-out state of mind. Interstitial journaling, a term and suggestion from Tony Stubblebine , is about writing down what you did after a task, how it felt or went, plus what you intend to do next.
I have done more things on more topics and feeling energy rather than losing it in the past week when using interstitial journaling to track and follow my energy. Making an entry facilitates the switch between tasks, because it is already part of that switch, rather than logging as the end of just the previous task. I have a habit already of adding to my Day log note after each task and appointment, and the Day log is my key jumping-off point for all my note making. Over time it has mostly become a pretty dry and sparse log however. Did this, 10 am meeting X etc. Interstitial journaling lets me pay more attention to what it means to me and what next. My Day logs in the past week have become more verbose, and provide more meaning as well as starting points and new branches. It reinforces the ratchet effect of my notes in a qualitative new way for me by incorporating my emotions and in the moment perceptions.
Working on a visual representation of the European data strategy landscape, integrated as well as alongside a textual representation this morning. It makes for a pleasant experience. The experience comes from what Zsolt Viczián’s Excalidraw plugin for Obsidian allows me to do, something I mentioned here earlier after the PKM Summit last March where Zsolt showed this.
Excalidraw drawings are basically text files describing the drawing, which are then rendered in the viewer. What the plugin supports is putting other text elements outside the drawing elements, and exclude them from the visual view. This creates two representations of the same file: one the drawing presented visually, one the text content outside the visual. Zsolt calls it the ‘flip side’ of a drawing, being a note accompanying the drawing. I see it more like two different views on the same thing. I have a hotkey (cmd arrow down) enabled to flip a note between both views.
Putting both views next to each other, and working in both at the same time, allows me a seamless mode of working, switching between visual material and text writing. As shown in the screenshot below.
Here you see the same note twice, opened in two tabs. The left side is the textual representation. It also contains an embedded auto-generated image from the visual representation but that is something I choose to do. Underneath that image you see some notes I wrote.
The right hand side shows the visual representation, a drawing of how I perceive the context of the European single market for data (at least, part of it).
I use the visual side as a Systems Convening landscape, to think about barriers, possible interventions, visibility etc. I use the text side to turn those thoughts into notes, potential actions, and links to other relevant material, or to write down things I think might be added to the visual.
Over the years my main problem with working more visually has been the lack of fluidity between the visual and the textual. Basically rendering them into two separate silos. Few tools solve that issue (Tinderbox is one). This means I usually favor the textual side of things. Where I use images, they are ‘frozen’ moments of the ever evolving textual side. The set-up this morning is not silo’d and here the creation of visual elements aids the text creation and vice versa, while I work on both in parallel in a single note. Both text and visual evolve together. Very nice.