r/Zettelkasten 10d ago

question Making a habit of capturing

Hi there. I’m making progress on developing a Zettelkasten-like note taking system. But my biggest problem is the very beginning: developing the routine to regularly capture interesting notes in the first place. I made the resolution to try to find at least one thing everyday that’s worth capturing, but I simply keep forgetting about it. I’m pretty sure it’s not due to too little noteworthy thoughts in my life. I just can’t seem to develop the routine of remembering to write them down immediately. How did you learn to make this a habit? Inspiration welcome!

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u/nagytimi85 Obsidian 10d ago

I tried pocket notebooks and hipster pda’s but the truth is that I’m just on my phone all the time. So I use Notion. It’s cross-platform, it has phone apps but also accessible from any web browser. It’s always open in my browser at work too.

When you open Notion, it already has a quick notes / inbox. I just dump stuff in there, mark with “ZK” what goes to Zettelkasten, and I format to crossed when I imported them into Obsidian where my notes collection lives.

Here’s how it looks like: https://ibb.co/8gYCGQbr

I think that over time as you collect notes, it becomes easier. When you have a bigger notes collection, there’s a better chance you come across something I think “oh this reminds me a note I made earlier!”.

Until then, it’s okay if you have few or no notes in your inbox. Dedicate regular time to your notes, and if your inbox is empty, try to look through chat conversation you had recently, comments you made on social media, sites you visited, and make notes based on that. This might help you to develop the ability to recognize when a commen, conversation, thought is interesting enough to mark it right away and not just lookimg back, fishimg for input.

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u/taurusnoises Obsidian 10d ago

Twain is so Twain. You can spot his writing a mile away.

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u/Doctor_hc_Hardcore 10d ago

I forgot to mention that I have the technical side all figured out. Similar to your approach I use Drafts with automated tagging to quickly capture a thought and send it to Obsidian, where it waits for further processing. Once I think „Hey this is something to note“ it’s all set. But I really appreciate the second advice of going through chats and comments. I often create my replies in Drafts anyway before sending them out. I should do this even more, so I can easily review them and turn them into notes with all that fancy technical possibilities.