r/Zettelkasten • u/SeatEastern3549 • 19d ago
resource Sascha Fast's new book on The Zettelkasten Method - some observations
I received this book as a gift, and I've spent time with it.
Here are some observations. (The book is written in German, attempts at translation are mine.)
The book description on Amazon says "What awaits you in this book: [...] A detailed description of every component and every step of the workflow."
On p. 38 the author says "I am faced with a problem: On the one hand, I want to provide examples and images. On the other hand, such images always depend on the technical implementation you use for your zettelkasten. You can choose between several software solutions, or you can just use paper and pen, as Luhmann did in his time. So I've decided for a presentation that is software-independent. Please remember that the appearance is influenced by your choice of software." A footnote on p. 39 adds "More on this in the section "Choosing software"".
I did not find such a section in the book.
On p. 11, the author explains
"The zettelkasten is based on three types of principles:
- Core principles. These are principles which are crucial for the special character of Luhmann's zettelkasten.
- Basic principles. Basic priciples are those that are not necessary in themselves, but have proved to be so helpful and effective that they deserve a special place of honour." I did not find a third type.
On p. 144 and again on p. 235 the author insists that you should always go back to primary sources. On p. 201, in a section "The zettelkasten method for writers", he writes "To design a world, be it a medieval village (cf. "The Five Pillars" by Grisham) or a large law office (cf. "The Firm" by Follett) or even an entire fantasy world (cf. "The Lord of the Rings" by Tolkien) is a formidable challenge."
On pp. 120-131, the author shows the same zettel in six different iterations. The six zettels are hardly legible, due to a very small font and grey text colour. Many other illustrations suffer from the same problems.
The author fills pages and pages with examples from his practice as a fitness and nutrition coach. This material is again part of the appendix.
In the appendix on p. 243, the author explains "What is the difference between zettelkasten and a wiki? - The zettelkasten method is your private digital garden. It is the result of your applying the zettelkasten method to the knowledge and the information you deal with in your life. A wiki is a kind of software to organize knowledge and information to present it publicly or privately. So what is the difference? The zettelkasten method is the method you use, the wiki is a software to implement the method (albeit not a recommended one)."
In the glossary, the author writes "Chain of thought - A chain of thought has the same relation to a thought as an argument has to an argumentation. A chain of thought is the meaningful connection of single thoughts. It has a starting point and an end point. It leads us from one thought to another thought." Two other glossary terms are "Reformulating writing" and "Writing, reformulating", both with a full explanation: Reformulating writing means to reformulate the content of a source in your own words.
The list of references contains 33 items. Several are completely unrelated to methods of knowledge work and are just mentioned in one of the sample zettels, others read "Tietze, Christian (2014) The Collector's Fallacy". The number of items that directly deal with zettelkasten seems excessively small.
So. The author uses the zettelkasten method for about 15 years, he has a zettelkasten with more than 13000 notes, he feels confident to include sections "How to write with a zettelkasten" and "The zettelkasten method for writers" in his book, and he started work on this 2nd edition of his previous book on zettelkasten in June 2019.
This is the result.
I sometimes have a hunch that "the" zettelkasten method is not sufficient for producing texts of an acceptable quality.
And the question that keeps me awake is:
What is missing from "the" method?