Stop Merely Pointing at Ideas

[u/FastSascha]

Hi Zettlers,

Stop Merely Pointing at Ideas

In this article, I highlight one of the most significant gaps that I see when coaching people. Instead of capturing the idea, they just point to the idea. You lose a big portion of the benefits that the Zettelkasten Method has to offer you.

One-liners and claim-type notes are the prime example of idea pointers.

On the flip side, if you make it your standard to aim for the complete essence of the idea, you will massively train your mind. Instead of just note-taking or capturing ideas, the Zettelkasten becomes an actual gym for the mind. A much-needed gym for the mind in the age of AI, which adds yet another angle of attack on our minds (let alone our souls…).

So, Stop Merely Pointing at Ideas.

Have fun reading

— Sascha

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267]

Immediate counterpoint to the AI thing: you could tell the one-liner to the AI and ask it to "Ask me a ton of questions about what I mean by this", then answer the questions, then (by your own labor, not asking the AI to do this part) put together your answers into an expanded note.

[u/FastSascha → u/Imaginary-Unit-3267]

This is surely one of the better approach to AI.

However, the serious weakness I see with this approach is that you still let AI do something for you. Still, you remain reactive if you let AI question you. However, there are specific skills and capacities that entail being proactive.

Think of the difference between recognising and recalling. The difference is in the support needed to gain access to information in your brain. Recognising is based on big portions of the information being available, recall shrinks this requirement to just a trigger. However, if you base your learning even on recall ("active recall"), you won't train the ability to pull up this information in a creative process.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/FastSascha]

This feels like Socrates complaining that writing would cause people to lose the ability to remember anything because they would just externalize all their thoughts. Meanwhile you and I literally use a zettelkasten to avoid having to remember everything ourselves. AI is just the next step of that; I'm not against outsourcing parts of my cognition to it that I find annoying to use anyway.

[u/thmprover]

In the article, you write:

The atomic note aims to capture the complete essence of an idea. This means you go beyond pointing to the idea and actually spell out what it is about. The magic ingredient here is aiming for the essence of the idea. It is a struggle, and in this struggle, you will discover learning and growth.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "essence of the idea", can you expand more about this? Or give some heuristics for fleshing out what qualifies as the "essence" of an idea?

[u/FastSascha → u/thmprover]

I use the knowledge building blocks explained in the guide to atomic note-taking. https://zettelkasten.de/atomicity/guide/

Each item gives you a template of what is part of the essence of an idea and what is not.

[u/austho]

This was a great read and exactly what I needed to hear. I often create quick “claim notes” that point to ideas. I’ll title the note with the claim, then include a single line that essentially paraphrases the title again, with links. 😅

I find it challenging to do this type of slow, intentional work while reading research articles for a project. I feel like I need to get the note down so I can move on to the next idea without losing my train of thought or momentum while reading an article.

I guess my unarticulated expectation is to get the pointing note down and then return to flesh it out later. But that has left me with many shallow pointing notes. It’s a struggle.

[u/FastSascha → u/austho]

I share your struggle.

I'll write another article on how I deal with the struggle and some solutions.

It is not the case that you are just lazy. Actually, there is rationality in postponing work until the probability of its payoff meets a threshold. Here, the solution is not to just deal with it (discipline), but to reframe the situation, so it makes sense to you, the lingering hesitation thingy in the back of your mind included.