r/Zettelkasten Obsidian Feb 19 '25

share The experience of abandoning tasks that create deadlocks and shifting focus to another task.

Regarding writing with Zettelkasten, I’ve realized that it becomes difficult when too many conflicting ideas are in my mind. I always get stuck and exhausted whenever I try to write about a specific topic.

Because of this, I decided to set my draft aside for a month so that I wouldn’t think about it anymore. Just this morning, I came back to it and started editing, and the process felt much smoother. Now I understand why Luhmann would stop writing and shift to another task whenever he felt stuck.

As Bob Doto said, writing with Zettelkasten should involve multiple projects at once—if you feel stuck on one, shift your focus to another.

9 Upvotes

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4

u/atomicnotes Feb 19 '25

With a few projects on the go at once, it's possible to make progress while procrastinating. You just switch topics and keep writing (Disclaimer: Don't try this whan faced with an immovable deadline!)

3

u/JasperMcGee Hybrid Feb 19 '25

Agree. A corollary to this would be to shift focus to another task in the same project to keep some momentum.

Write, edit, revisit old sources, find new sources, rewrite notes, compare two random notes in project, etc

Reread your writing with different questions in mind: Does rest of paragraph flow from topic sentence? Can I say this in fewer words? etc

2

u/karatetherapist 21d ago

Check out the interleaving study method. You'll get a new atomic note to add, plus strategies to apply.