The word “zettelkasten” can be very polarizing.

On the one hand, you have the diehard fans of Niklas Luhmann (the German sociologist and system theorist) and his slip boxes (where the term zettelkasten comes from) with more than 90,000 individual notes that he used to write more than 70 books — without the help of an assistant.

On the other hand, you have the people who argue that all this connected notes stuff is a bunch of hooey and are perfectly content plugging away in Apple Notes.

Personally, I land somewhere in the middle.

I’ve read (and enjoyed) How to Take Smart Notes, but it didn’t completely change my life. However, I do get value from how Obsidian’s Local Graph lets me forge intentional connections between notes in my vault. As someone who creates for a living, I recognize the need to have a system for turning insights from the things I’ve collected into regular content.

Ultimately, we need to learn how to use our tools for thought effectively. But you certainly don’t need to have a million interconnected notes that resemble one of those murder boards from TV detective shows in order to gain insight from your notes and ideas.

Sadly, this is what most people think of when they hear the word “zettelkasten.” This is unfortunate because there are a lot of “normal” people who could benefit from having connected notes who are completely turned off by the (apparent) unnecessary complexity.

All you really need is 1) a collection of notes, and 2) a single example of how connecting them could help your productivity of creativity workflows.

Just Pick One Thing to Start

When I started using Obsidian, I wanted to create my own cross-reference library from sermon sketchnotes that I had taken over the years. I had a collection of sketchnotes I had taken in GoodNotes going back to September of 2017, and I wanted a way to see what notes I had taken were linked to individual Bible verses that were mentioned.

So here’s what I did:

• First, I created notes for each sermon sketchnote I had taken. I keep these organized in folders that are organized by year and then month in the File Explorer in Obsidian.
• Next, a friend created a script for me that broke down the entire King James Version of the Bible into individual verses. Once again, I organized these in folder by book and then chapter.
• Finally, I linked to each verse mentioned in my sketchnote in the note that contained it.

So now, I can look at a note for a sermon, click the link to open a verse that was mentioned, and then see all of the other notes I’ve taken that also mention that verse.

Over time, I’ve layered other things on top of this like tagging specific verses with certain themes, creating topical Bible notes that contain verses for specific situations, and even adding a Chronological Bible reading plan to my Daily Note in Obsidian.

But I never would have gotten there if I hadn’t picked just ONE use case at the beginning.

More Signal, Less Noise

The thing with connected notes is that each link has to be intentional. You have to have some idea of how you’re going to use that link to make something new in the future.

Without it, you end up with a lot of meaningless links.

If you were to open Obsidian and just start adding links in the Unlinked Mentions section without discretion, you might have a graph view that looks pretty impressive but you probably aren’t able to get much additional value from it.

In order to really get value from connecting your notes, each link needs to mean something.

In other words, just like the notes you add to your PKM system, you want more signal and less noise.

Signal refers to things that are important and have meaning or value. Noise is the things that don’t really help you in any practical way.

You could get an insane amount of value from a couple hundred notes with very specific, intentional connections. And you could be completely overwhelmed with a vault that has 50,000 notes.

Now full disclosure, my vault has over 50,000 notes in it. But I’m very particular about what I add to my vault. Each one of those notes has a purpose, and I know how linking to or from that note will help me in the future.

The bottom line is that the number of notes in your vault is not important. But the way that you choose to connect them intentionally is.

Connect the Dots

So… how are you going to leverage the notes in your collection? What sort of connections could you add that would make those notes more valuable for your productivity or creativity workflows?

Start with one use case, and go from there. Start making intentional connections between your notes, but only where it makes sense. You can always grow your uses for Obsidian over time.

And if you have a neat example of how you’re using your connected notes, I’d love to hear about it! Just reply to this email 🙂

Something Cool: Obsidian Soundscapes plugin

I'm a big fan of Lofi background music for deep work sessions. I find this type of music makes it easy to concentrate, so I always turn it on when it's time to focus. I even lead weekly coworking sessions in the Obsidian University community where we work together to Lofi beats and share our progress at the end of the hour.

There are different apps and services you can use to listen to Lofi music, but this week I came across an Obsidian plugin that bakes it right into everybody's favorite connected notes app.

The plugin is called Obsidian Soundscapes and builds Lofi beats into your status bar, which makes it really easy to start a deep work session. And if Lofi isn't your thing, there's a bunch of other nature sounds you can choose from instead.

Book Notes: How to Take Smart Notes

I mentioned How to Take Smart Notes earlier, so it naturally makes sense to share my notes here. And while I said earlier it didn't completely change my life, I do think there is some good stuff here about how our notes and ideas connect together in a way that allows us to be more productive and creative.

You can download my mind map notes here.

— Mike Schmitz

P.S. Reminder that in a few weeks the "sent from" email for the newsletter will change. Now that I have mikeschmitz.com (🎉) I'll be consolidating everything there over the next couple of weeks. But I'm going to finish up the current PKM cohort first 😉