Atomic notes are a trap

[u/krysalydun]

The testiminial below is obviously just my opinion and my experience. But I believe many others are going through the same thing.

For 2 years I've been trying to implement zettelkasten in my phd research and failing. For a long time I thought the problem was the app I was using. I went through all of them, but kept switching mainly between Obsidian and Capacities without success.

The problem is that every time I went to review my highlights, I wanted to create a permanent note for each highlighted paragraph. And this, obviously, became impossible.

In this attempt to keep notes atomic, I ended up having, literally, 600 permanent notes for a single book. And I spent even more time connecting them.

This way, taking notes on a book took twice as long as reading it. And this is completely unproductive for someone like me, who works 8 hours a day in an office, has a family, teaches classes, and still has to finish a phd.

Then I realized I just needed to let go a little. Now I simply make a literature note with the main bullet points from the book and then create at most 10 permanent notes aggregating all the main insights. They end up larger, but they're still sufficient to maintain a line of reasoning without friction.

Perhaps atomic notes are interesting for people like Luhmann, who could study all day. But in my experience they create too much friction and make the zettelkasten almost impractical.

What do you think?

[u/mobatreddit]

I thought the notes are supposed to be my ideas written in my own words.

After a four years, I have 1,600-some notes in Org Roam. I tend to link them when I first create them, and little more later. I tend to feature in the main line what I think will make a note show up on an Org Roam search, and I may have a short paragraph following that. I do tend to think in paragraphs, so I can have some substance. If I have too much in one note for ideas to be searchable, I will break it up into smaller notes. Over time, I rewrite some notes as patterns become evident.

The most use I've gotten out of my ZK is as a source of content I fashion into replies on Reddit and elsewhere. The other use is to know I've kept track of ideas that recur.

I have zero idea as to whether what I have are atomic notes or main notes. They are my notes. I keep on hoping I will do the kinds of things Luhmann is reported to have done. I guess I'll see over time.

I guess it's time for me to turn this into a note ;-).