I just can't bring myself to go to the effort of documenting a thought and adding links/tags unless it is something I predict that I will need sometime in the future and won't just remember. Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information. If I'm linking thoughts together I'm doing it real time in my head, anything else takes me too far out of my thought process.
I can see it if you are a person working in academia or a writer where you may be generating concepts that you want to link together in the future. But as someone that does project type work, I'm following too much of a defined process to see any benefit.
That's what LLMs are best, actually. Go through all your stuff and painstakingly document, add tags, refer to other documents, etc
> Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information
LLMs can also separate what information was only useful at a specific time vs more perennially useful notes.
I've considered starting another based on the idea of getting high off knowledge. I don't see the point as an information store, but as a toy it makes sense; use it spark curiosity, make neat connections, etc.
There’s just not enough there to make into a blog post.
For me, I don't bookmark a webpage, I'm usually after a sentence or something after.
Highlighting that one sentence or webpage is a habit.
Throwing a tag or two on them isn't as hard when you can call the tags whatever you want.
After that, those topics are one click away, 5-10 years later.
Trying out Zettelkasten, or PARA, Johnny Decimal or some other system, one will work for you. It's less about perfectionism at the start and just improving.
It's also possible to have an AI just organize the folders for you little by little.
It can not be great at first to play around but the more you work at it the more it does become.
"Two professors hadn't heard of him" is a fascinating epistemological standard. Like me stating: I've also met two cardiologists who didn't know who Rudolf Virchow was. Guess he wasn't that productive either.
As for the last comment: having gone to medical school some decades ago and trained in cardiology, I’m familiar with Virchow. I would be surprised to encounter any physician who hadn’t any familiarity with him. But who knows?!
After saving, maybe you need some organization later, but most time they are just there. Most time you search content by categories, keywords, or tags.
I think we need right tools for different requirements.
My practical guide on setting up a smart notes / Zettelkasten / atomic notes Vault: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-zettelkasten
Also wrote about how it fits into my overall Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
Edit: Oh, I actually just found the comment from the author here, sounds like AI slop.
My Obsidian Vault setup: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
All posts about Obsidian: https://bryanhogan.com/tags/obsidian
Maybe this helps?
Edit: Upon a quick scan, this looks more like what I learned as "Linking Your Thinking", which resonates way more with me than a strict Zettelkasten format where you try to arrange notes linearly to match some artificial constraint.
And I think that's a good thing, just not how Ahrens described Zettelkasten.
With AI, there's nothing stopping you from dumping a huge pile of information into a single folder and telling an AI what you want to make with it that day.
We’ll focus on both: how to set it up, and how to keep it running over time with the right habits and AI support. What the Zettelkasten method actually is (and what it isn’t) The Zettelkasten method (German for “slip box”) was popularized by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Over roughly 40 years, he created around 90,000 handwritten notes and used them to produce some 600 publications, including about 60 books. He referred to his Zettelkasten as his “second memory” and credited it as a key part of his output. Originally, the method was built for researchers drowning in information. People who needed to read, process, and connect vast amounts of source material.
Today, AI has created a new kind of knowledge problem. Large language models can’t do much with raw notes or scattered documents. LLMs work better with structured, clearly defined pieces of information that can be referenced and combined. The Zettelkasten format maps almost perfectly onto how AI knowledge bases need to be organized:
One idea per unit Clearly titled Richly connected
But before you set one up, you need to understand what Zettelkasten actually is. Because most people get it wrong from the start.