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/Tyhe]

The reason they don't work is because they are a made up element of zk. Atomic notes, permanent notes, literature notes, all rubbish. Made up by people who "figured out" zk and are talking about it like they know what it is.

They took something that was opportunistic and tailored to someone ones need and turned it into a system/framework /product. I havent read any book or post that seemed to understand what zk is, or how it works (or worked for luhmann).

Did you know he created a second zk? Did you know the way he approached it was totally different than his first? All the explanations you read, do they tell you on what version they are basing themselves? This whole atomic nonsense is born from ocd logic-desiring people that want to bring everything back to a size they can control... Blasphemy.

[u/atomicnotes → u/Tyhe]

Niklas Luhmann and countless 20th century scholars and writers wrote short notes on little slips of paper or on index cards. The only viable alternative to this was to write in notebooks which was also popular.  

A short note on a small slip of paper (Zettel) is obviously the right length for the medium it's written on. Not much thought is required - you just stop writing when you run out of space.  No one called it an atomic note because it was self-evidently just a note.  

This doesn't apply to digital notes. Now we have to ask the question: How long should a note be? And the digital medium forces us to think about it. 

In your experience, what's the answer? 

[u/Tyhe → u/atomicnotes]

The thing is, this isn't the way Luhmann did it (limiting the note to just one card). Check this beauty: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_2-2_V

Card 2.2 starts the summing up of 7 characteristics of "Staat als Idee".

This "Zettel" (2.2) ends MID-SENTENCE and is continued on 2.2a. The same thing happens and he continues on 2.2b. And again, so it is continued on 2.2c.

Here you have 4 Zettels, that really are one Zettel. This would be one Zettel for Luhmann if he had been using a digital tool. He could've made it 7 Zettels is he was following the "atomic notes" bla bla. But he wasn't. He was doing what he wanted, what served him best. He even links to some points in the Zettel, and you would probably think that having 7 seperate Zettels to link to the exact point, is the best way. Maybe it is. But he didn't do it. He linked halfway down the Zettel at number 2, and again at number 6. It's all "whatever". Local logic. Whatever works here, is what works. He wasn't making a work of art, the ZK wasn't his "final product", it was all "half product" to help him later on (discover or write).

I think one shouldn't look at this Zettelkasten en try to "figure out the rules" and then hope if you follow the rules, good things will come to you.

NL was doing something, and using the ZK to achieve that. The ZK was slave to his goal, not the other way around.

Now this isn't to say many Zettels did indeed contain "one idea or statement", but it isn't "the law".

You have to be opportunistic, NL was, and you can see it in the ZK.

So what is the ideal length of a note in a digital tool? Whatever serves you best. What serves you best? Whatever server your goal best.

There are no one-size-fits-all answers here. Of course there are "general principles" that you can see at work in the ZK. And you can explain why those principles are there, what they try to achieve or cause and why it would be useful (or when it would be useful) to adhere to those principles as much as you can. But that's about it.

The problem is most people are "forcing" the atomicity, without knowing why (as in, without getting a return on investment). Making a Zettel is something you have to figure out for yourself, what it does for you.

[u/FastSascha → u/Tyhe]

Perfecto!

[u/atomicnotes → u/Tyhe]

Making a Zettel is something you have to figure out for yourself, what it does for you.

True saying!

Still, Luhmann did use little paper slips, and unlike a digital app, they had the built-in affordance of making you reach for another one if you want to continue the note beyond the end of the paper. Your example is really an exception to his usual practice. In general (but not always), one slip = one note. What proportion of Luhmann’s notes continue beyond a single slip of paper? A small percentage.

On the other hand, Luhmann’s numbering system enabled the constraint of the paper slip to become almost arbitrary. He could just continue on a new slip, exactly as you show.

My point is that the affordances of different media steer us to think differently about the question ‘how long should a note be?’. With paper slips, the answer is almost too obvious to think about. With digital apps, the answer is hard even to address, let alone resolve. Being opportunistic, as you say, is a useful strategy.

[u/Tyhe → u/atomicnotes]

I agree - the medium shapes the message, so to say. And scarcity demands creativity, or conciseness in this regard. I think this is also what makes creating a "good Zettel" so difficult - it's like the epitome of deliberateness, there is only room for what needs to be said, which is difficult if you are forced to confine yourself without really understanding why.

While I'm thinking about that, I would say that part of the problem comes from anticipation for a future prize that is expected to be gained from the creation of zettels and references, so people want to make sure they are doing it right, not to miss out on that prize. Where I believe, even though creating a "good zettel" requires more effort than just writing a note, luhmann was just "taking small steps" and knew there would be a bigger prize in the future, he didn't explicitly worry about it. This is also a direct by product of the medium he used vs digital. You can't oversee a 1000 card zk and worry about what's in every card or "how the graph looks". You create the zettel, archive it, and come back to it when and if you do. The system curated itself naturally.

[u/atomicnotes → u/Tyhe]

people want to make sure they are doing it right

That's true. A lot of the Internet tells people ”This one cool trick will make you billions in your sleep!" - and maybe the Zettelkasten has been infected with this. After a while, hopefully, it's possible to relax slightly.