Zettelkasten
I’ve written about the Zettelkasten method and note-taking since the early days of this blog, from working in Notational Velocity to building The Archive. The method itself has its own home at zettelkasten.de, with many of my early posts moved there; the posts here are where it meets writing, reading, programming, and the tools.
- MultiMarkdown + Notational Velocity – the humble origins;
- Custom Org mode links to open my external Zettelkasten app, tying together Emacs and my Zettelkasten;
- My Zettelkasten talk at EmacsConf 2025
Posts on the Zettelkasten
Watch My EmacsConf Talk: Zettelkasten for Regular Emacs Hackers
The recording of my EmacsConf 2025 talk on building a thinking environment in Emacs, plus the Q&A and the script to follow along.
CLI for Your Notes in The Archive – Automated Zettelkasten (Usage) for Programmers
Exposing your notes with a CLI can help LLM’s and you both to discover connections. The tool I wrote for The Archive essentially offers a YAML API for my Zettelkasten.
Zettelkasten Productivity: Books Written per Books Ingested
Edmund Gröpl reframes writing productivity: it is not the mere output of books-per-person. Instead we should ask the question “how many books have grown out of what I’ve read”?
Zettelkasten for Programmers: Documenting Confusing with Swift.SendableMetatype
I got terribly confused reading the API docs on the SendableMetatype protocol. Because I do not yet know the solution, I want to share how I store this in my Zettelkasten for future problem-solving and discussions.
What’s a Zettelkasten Good for in the Age of Affordable LLM’s?
Why spend time on your own knowledge and do so much manual labor when you could, you know, let the robots dance instead? I believe the answer lies in deep work and expertise.
Learning About Swift Concurrency (from Matt Massicotte’s Blog) with a Zettelkasten
Live video performance: Reading a post by Matthew Massicotte, and then integrating what I learned into my Zettelkasten. Suprises presented themselves, so as usual, it took a while!
Zettelkasten for Programmers: Pick a Title. It’s Okay to Change Later
Look over my shoulder and find out why my note title is suspiciously generous, maybe even vague, in a context where it’s obvious that this surely won’t be a good title forever.
Protesilaos Stavrou Asks (Me) About Indie Development, Art, Philosophy, Zettelkasten
Do you desperately want to hear my voice? Then watch this recording of a conversation with Protesilaos for 2.5 hours about a wide range of topics.
Zettelkasten for Programmers: Processing Swift Actor Usage Advice in Depth
Let us read an article by Matt Massicotte about Swift actor use and abuse, and extract from it as much as we can learn.
You Don’t Need to Remember Anything Meets LLM Fans
The Scam Called “You Don't Have to Remember Anything” – That post from Zettelkasten.de blew up on Hacker News yesterday to my surprise. We will discuss this in a couple of days and let the dust settle.
Getting Over Frustratingly New Topics (Swift Concurrency) with a Zettelkasten
I am learning to speak a new language: Swift Concurrency. It is densely packed with familiar-sounding concepts and details I am not aware of (yet). This is how I tackle it.
How Many Zettelkästen Should You Have?
The Zettelkasten is a tool for personal productivity and writing, first and foremost. So the answer is almost always ...
My Procedure to Create New Zettelkasten Notes Inline
Apply wishful programming to reserve things you want to research or write about later, so that you can keep up the writing flow now.
Start of a Zettel: Modern UICollectionView
A Zettelkasten is a tool for learning. How do I learn a new piece of a familiar API at the very start?
As the saying goes, if the title of a post is a question, the answer is “no”. So, do you, or don’t you need a Zettelkasten in your life?
Easing Into a Language and Environment: Week 3 with PHP
A short retrospective of learning a new-ish language and the programming environment.
Example of Object Tag vs Topic Tag in Programming Zettelkasten
A (hopefully instructive) example of topic vs object tags in a Zettel about programming topics.
I found ISO dates to be lacking in context in notes that represent timelines. So I am trying out something a tad different, like [2024-01-01 Mon].
11 or so Android Ebook Reader Apps for Academic Writing Workflows: Annotations are Hard
I tested a bunch of Android EPUB reader apps to see if annotations would work with my Zettelkasten workflow. The result: it’s not easy to improve the workflow.
Boox NeoReader Annotation Export Is Meh
The Onyx Boox e-reader is equipped with a good e-book reader app, but its export is almost useless to parse and use in an academic context.
Fetch Personalized Command Explanations with 'um' from Your Terminal
SwiftUI Isn't Easy to Get Into: My Road From Headache Towards Mastery
Digital Gardening: A Renaissance of Open Thinking and Curated Writing on the Web
Challenge: Apply the Knowledge Cycle to Reading a Single Book
Include Images in nvALT for a Multi-Media Zettelkasten Experience
Create a Zettelkasten for your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing
Bringing Notational Velocity to a new level of massive text editing
Notational Velocity fork with fullscreen mode, menubar app, and more
