#zettlekasten — Public Fediverse posts

New recurring feature: Flotsam and Jetsam, random bits I find interesting but not enough to do a whole post right now. Check it out. Like, comment, boost, donate if you are able. Trying to make 10 regular supports this year. Thank you.

https://ko-fi.com/post/Flotsam-and-Jetsom--August-30-2026-Y5Q5261Z0E

#History
#Histodons
#Royalty
#Norway
#Europe
#CivilWar
#Navy
#Zettlekasten
#Organizing

My philosophy with newbies learning how to use #Obsidian and organize their #PKM is just start simple and come up with your own system bit by bit and tweak along the way. (I don't like following other people's systems.)

Yesterday I wondered if there was a better way 🤣. Thanks to the core plugin Bases and the community plug-in Notebook Navigator, I managed to organize my tag sprawl into something more manageable. Tags are such a pain - I have no idea how to use them before, so I simply tagged stuff randomly in the past. So, Notebook navigator revealed that I had hundreds of tags, with many of them only used once 🫠
So, yesterday I spent a long time getting rid of them.

Fortunately, organizing my vault is one of those activities I love, so I had a lot of fun doing it but it was still tedious nitpicky work.

My next step is to come up with a way to catalog and org my PKM. I've used Obsidian mostly as a word processor cum research base to write drafts for posts and journals, but each of these drafts can be knowledge docs. I may have to finally apply the #Zettlekasten system 😆

Although most of my work-time has been spent on #Zettlekasten¹ and related work, I am still doing research on the Republic of Letters with an aim of reimplementing it.²

I discover other people also inspired by the Rep. Letters: "This project […] proposes to reënact this concept for the purposes of exchange of visions of the future of Europe.”³ They're more about broadcast than point-to-point, it seems.

¹ https://blog.oddly-influenced.dev/2025/10/30/hypertext-zettelkasten.html
² https://blog.oddly-influenced.dev/2025/09/06/a-proposal-to-resurrect-the.html
³ https://www.republic-of-letters.eu/about/

7 must-have Obsidian plug-ins for Zettelkasten https://www.xda-developers.com/zettelkasten-essential-obsidian-plugins/

Does anyone else use these plugins for #obsidian #zettlekasten? I am kind of torn, on one hand, I like the idea of the digital, on the other, I got a bunch of note cards already made in the real world, and don't really want to copy everything.

Searching for org-mode ideas, I've spent ~19 minutes watching this video about how searching for the next great note-taking system/app is procrastinating (time wasted). I feel I wasted ~19 minutes watching this video.

Here it is in case you want to waste that time yourself.

https://youtu.be/baKCC2uTbRc

#orgmode #productivity #zettlekasten

@Ashedryden #Zettlekasten method used with @obsidian software.

The full workflow is a bit huge (for instance, for references : Zotero for bibliography and "raw" citations taking, then export to Obsidian and organizing all my datas/citations into notes I will be able to find out whenever necessary), and I still adapt it to my needs. It works great.
I wish I had know these method (Zettlekasten) and tools (Obsidian - it didn't exist at this moment) when I prepared my PhD dissertation...

Small question to the fellow mastodon members:
Do you use #anki ? If so, what do you use it for ?

I’m trying to use anki alongside obsidian (#zettlekasten) and I’m not at school anymore. I would want some ides on how people use it in their day to day lives

I've been using a PARA + ZETTELKASTEN hybrid method for the past few days and so far this seems to be going great. Everything is organized with more notes to be written or transferred over in time.

#obsidian #obsidianmd #linux #linuxmint #notetaking #zettlekasten #para #markdown

#Notion just made #backlinks almost invisible. They're Still there but hidden behind a hover-button that needs the mouse to be visible.

Does anyone have a #recommendation for a similar app for my #zettlekasten? I'm looking for something that
* shows backlinks by default
* has web, ios and android apps
* can import from notion
* let's you link notes (@ or [[ or similar)

Nothing puts me in a more zen place than watching yet another video trying to explain how #zettlekasten is implemented 🤪

#PKM

Fuck #javascript, #windows, #rust, #nixos, #vscode, #kubernetes, #serverless, #secondbrains, #zettlekasten, #obsidian, #neonlityoutubevideos, #kubernetes and...

#kubernetes

What's on your #fucklist?

Y hoy volvemos al #obsidian, ahora con la pregunta de ¿cómo demonios me organizo para lo que se me viene? (un doctorado). Estoy mirando cosas de #zettlekasten pero aún me tengo que aclarar. También creo que tengo que tunear el propio obsidian.

After a few months with @obsidian (and linking it a ton) I'm very curious to get back into #emacs and #orgmode, things I tried 5-10 years ago when I was at university. I did find many resources on the matter, but if there are some people on Mastodon with recommandations, I'm interested!

I'm not a programmer, but a #linux user who likes to write in a #zettlekasten fashion about ethics and politics, so my usecase is really focused on prose, though I may like to use orgmode to organize my stuff instead of relying on #todoist and #obsidian. I may also want to play with configs files on Linux with emacs.

For me, the #maintakeaway
from the dialogue here suggests that "normalization" is not congruent with #Zettlekasten
Which is at least most of what I was trying to accomplish by addressing the topic.

judging by the discourse that ensued, i tend to believe I may be mistaken about the true meaning of the [ Zettle Kasten ] method.

I assimilated something abbreviated, or what's here:
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/how-to-program-yourself-productivity/ (1)

Since the idea was to think less of software-- in that article(1)-- i was trying to break it down conceptually.

The article lends insight, but whether to adopt the implementation advised therein. it seems quite like what I already use in #CherryTree
https://github.com/guispen

So I transferred my existing notes to #Logseq, but building a #zettlekasten is much easier for me using #Obsidian.

Obsidian makes it easy to split windows to see multiple notes at the same time and extract text to new or existing notes.

In Logseq, I have to copy and paste everything and constantly navigate back and forth. To be honest, it feels a bit like working with sticks and stones!

Though I guess I _could_ open multiple windows...

@rebeccawb there are many tools in the #Zettlekasten space, like #obsidian - but really the best advice I can give is to get away from Google and the other AI scrapers ASAP.

is freeform posting on social media a form of #zettlekasten? in this essay-

I’ve been slowly putting my engineering knowledge into an Obsidian vault, with the hope that eventually I’ll be able to be approached with a problem and find a solution by just looking at my vault graph. I think this is a pretty common goal for engineers/software developers who use Obsidian but I haven’t gotten there yet. Can anybody share any stories of this goal being realized?

#obsidianmd #zettlekasten #engineering

my #secondbrain grows...

https://garden.birdcat.cafe

#logseq #pkm #zettlekasten

https://www.cozodb.org/ - I don't know what this thing is yet, but it ticks enough curiosity boxes that I'm creating a loose thread -- #cozodb -- for me to later grab hold of and follow to insight. Eventually. It's located somewhere in my brain space that also houses other barely-to-not-understood things like graph networks (#git), databases (#sqlite), outline editors (#leoeditor, #logseq), note taking (#onenote), and general personal knowledge systems (#wiki, #zettlekasten). And hashtag salads.

I've seen #Obsidian while I was going through #Notion videos and other journal/note taking content. It's local so I didn't pay much attention. Accessing it on many devices is a deciding factor for me.

But my husband found an easy way to sync Obsidian between his phone and computer, so I set it up. And I'm losing my darn mind over how lovely it is. Simple until you don't want it to be. So easily #zettlekasten -able. No internet needed. And I love #markdown.

Imma set it up for work next.

People who use #zettlekasten (or something close to it) for note taking, how do you deal with the scope what you decide to include?

My understanding is that it is designed for more research related note taking. I have been using it for all aspects of my life recently though. If I think a thought that I believe I may want to recall in the future, I try to write it in my notes even if I think I will be able to remember it without taking note of it.

I have been spending a lot of time taking notes because of this, but I like it. I don’t think I’ll change how I take notes, but I’m curious how other people deal with deciding what to include / exclude. Do you have a particular subject in your life that you orient your notes around? Or several subjects? Or do you brain dump everything like I do?

@starchturrets I've certainly taken inspiration from many places, and can point to specific sources for leads that are ... unnorthodox. One was a comment I'd received on a dating profile that turned me on to an author and seminal work within a field. (I tend to disagree, strongly, with the author's views on the domain and corporate boosterism within it, but they'd assembled a spectacular history).

Another was a mumbled reference in a YouTube video (itself of a seminar presentation at the University of Vermont) which turned me on to another author, William Ophuls (a/k/a Patrick Ophuls). I'd ... probably have found him through other avenues, but his work itself is excellent and his bibliographies (one of which I'd copied out in its entierty and posted to my subreddit) are works of art themselves. (As noted, he cites both confirming and contradicting / counterargumentative sources and authors.)

I pick up a fair number of references through podcasts, and was made aware of Oreskes & Conway's latest book from an interview I'd stumbled across in my own (extensive) subscriptions.

I try to keep a somewhat broad net cast in areas outside my specific interests to see what turns up. Terry Gross's "Fresh Air" is lefty, yes, but includes a lot of cultural stuff I'd otherwise be missing. I try to catch at least some conservative/centrist viewpoints as well, without getting firehosed with refuse and filth. (That One Time I accidentally tuned in to a Sean Hannity radio broadcast was ... scarring. Especially the listening to this complete fucking idiot ranting for 15 or 20 minutes before a break came and I realised who I'd been listening to.)

What I've increasingly noticed online is that there seems to be a solidifying of camps, often vanishingly shallow depth to understanding or references (always with exceptions, mind, but in the bulk of cases), and the annoying and intrusive idiots most prone to engage frequently not even knowing the origins and provenance of their own talking points. ("Monopoly on violence" being one trope I've declared war upon, as an example.)

Another useful concept is #Zettlekasten, or just simply taking notes on index cards of salient concepts. They're a great information-capture device, offer random-sequence access, and store reasonably compactly (at the human scales you'd be using them).

I'll also recommend, strongly, Mortimer Adler's #HowToReadABook, a venerable classic.

Okay, I actually managed to make something not useless in sort-of javascript, in an afternoon. Mind you, there's not much javascript, but it's more than I knew this morning.

At any rate, if anyone else wants a way to save Mastodon posts to their Obsidian MD notes, I made some templates: https://github.com/not-napoleon/Obsidian-Mastodon-Templates

#ObsidianMD #pkm #personalKnowledgeManagement #zettlekasten

@webframp I've been using #orgroam and #zettlekasten to organize my notes for school, but I don't think my setup or organization is the greatest...

One of the things that I have started doing was adding a related to field to my standard note document. This makes organizing and having things link together a lot easier.

I also recommend throwing org-roam-ui into the mix because having the ability to visualize your note network can be really cool to see at times.

Another thing, part of the whole concept is to have really short, atomic notes, I disregard that at times, because sometimes I want the note more fleshed out. Do what you want, the notes are for you and you alone, not the whole world.

I would also recommend backing your notes up to a #git repo. You might as well since it's all plain text anyways.

#obsidian est l'un des outils qui me sert le plus pour gérer la prise de notes. Je l'utilise en utilisant la méthode #zettlekasten. Des ressources utiles : 10 plugins communautaires (par Nicole Van Der Hoeven) : https://youtu.be/wlt5lUvZv8U et l'infolettre de (1/2)

@tedcurran @AriT93 @davew this is great stuff. I just started writing a note-taking tool for all my plain-text notes and hadn’t run across #zettlekasten until now. I might borrow some of these ideas. https://unfit-for.work/posts/2023/nve-editor/

Still setting my #obsidiannotes up. The #Zettlekasten method is interesting. I'm going to try it out so I can see the connections that form between my notes and not impose any superstructure #productivity

My current thinking is my best bet is a #PersonalWiki with file syncing but not otherwise online. There are several options, but I'm most thinking of Zim Wiki or Zettlr. There are a couple of other popular ones but people are oddly cultish about them. I've read a bit about #zettlekasten which seems to be trendy but has apparently been used for a century by scholars and writers, so it's worth taking seriously. It seems more my style than #MindMapping.

👋 Another #introduction in the form of hashtags

🔤 An ABC of what matters to me: 🔤

#amwriting
#books
#Decolonisation
#DigitalGarden
#Education
#Environment
#Equity
#JoinAUnion
#Learning
#LearningMastodon
#Literature
#Notebook
#NoteTaking
#Pedagogy
#PKM
#Podcast
#Poetry
#Politics
#Reading
#Research
#RetrievalPractice
#SecondBrain
#Sheffield
#ShortStories
#Teachers
#Teaching
#Writing
#Writingcommunity
#Zettlekasten