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Annotation on page 8 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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very few give guidance for the everyday note-taking that takes up the biggest chunk of our writing
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Annotation on page 8 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The available books fall roughly into two categories. The first teaches the formal requirements: style, structure or how to quote correctly. And then there are the psychological ones, which teach you how to get it done without mental breakdowns and before your supervisor or publisher starts refusing to move the deadline once more. What they all have in common, though, is that they start with a blank screen or sheet of paper
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Annotation on page 8 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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But by doing this, they ignore the main part, namely note-taking, failing to understand that improving the organisation of all writing makes a difference. They seem to forget that the process of writing starts much, much earlier than that blank screen and that the actual writing down of the argument is the smallest part of its development.
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Annotation on page 9 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work. And maybe that is the reason why we rarely think about this writing, the everyday writing, the note-taking and draft-making. Like breathing, it is vital to what we do, but because we do it constantly, it escapes our attention. But while even the best breathing technique would probably not make much of a difference to our writing, any improvement in the way we organise the everyday writing, how we take notes of what we encounter and what we do with them, will make all the difference for the moment we do face the blank page/screen – or rather not
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Annotation on page 9 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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as those who take smart notes will never have the problem of a blank screen again
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There is another reason that note-taking flies mostly under the radar: We don’t experience any immediate negative feedback if we do it badly. But without an immediate experience of failure, there is also not much demand for help
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Annotation on page 9 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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If we take notes unsystematically, inefficiently or simply wrong, we might not even realise it until we are in the midst of a deadline panic and wonder why there always seem to be a few who get a lot of good writing done and still have time for a coffee every time we ask them
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Annotation on page 9 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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What can we do differently in the weeks, months or even years before we face the blank page that will get us into the best possible position to write a great paper easily?
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Annotation on page 9 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Very few people struggle with
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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their papers because they don’t know how to cite correctly or because they suffer from a psychological issue that keeps them from writing. Few struggle to text their friends or write emails. The rules of citation can be looked up and there is no way that there are as many mental issues as papers postponed. Most people struggle for much more mundane reasons, and one is the myth of the blank page itself. They struggle because they believe, as they are made to believe, that writing starts with a blank page. If you believe that you have indeed nothing at hand to fill it, you have a very good reason to panic. Just having it all in your head is not enough, as getting it down on paper is the hard bit.
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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That is why good, productive writing is based on good note-taking. Getting something that is already written into another written piece is incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrieve it from there.
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic.
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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vast majority of self-help books and study guides can only help you to close the barn door correctly and according to official rules – not just a moment, but many months after the horse has already escaped
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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In fact, there is no measurable correlation between a high IQ and academic success – at least not north of 120. Yes, a certain intellectual capacity helps to get into academia, and if you struggle severely with an IQ test, it is likely that you will struggle to solve academic problems, too. But once you are in, a superior IQ will neither help you to distinguish yourself nor protect you from failure. What does make a significant difference along the whole intelligence spectrum is something else: how much self-discipline or self-control one uses to approach the tasks at hand (Duckworth and Seligman, 2005; Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone, 2004).
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It is not so important who you are, but what you do
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Self-discipline or self-control is not that easy to achieve with willpower alone
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Willpower is, as far as we know today,[2] a limited resource that depletes quickly and is also not that much up for improvement over the long term (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, and Tice, 1998; Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister, 1998; Schmeichel, Vohs, and Baumeister, 2003; Moller, 2006)
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Annotation on page 11 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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We know today that self-control and self-discipline have much more to do with our environment than with ourselves (cf. Thaler, 2015, ch. 2) – and the environment can be changed.
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Annotation on page 11 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Nobody needs willpower not to eat a chocolate bar when there isn’t one around. And nobody needs willpower to do something they wanted to do anyway. Every task that is interesting, meaningful and well-defined will be done, because there is no conflict between long- and short-term interests. Having a meaningful and well-defined task beats willpower every time. Not having willpower, but not having to use willpower indicates that you set yourself up for success. This is where the organisation of writing and notetaking comes into play.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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But moreover, it describes how he implemented them into his workflow so he could honestly say: “I never force myself to do anything I don’t feel like. Whenever I am stuck, I do something else.” A good structure allows you to do that, to move seamlessly from one task to another – without threatening the whole arrangement or losing sight of the bigger picture
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A good structure is something you can trust. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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By breaking down the amorphous task of “writing a paper” into small and clearly separated tasks, you can focus on one thing at a time, complete each in one go and move on to the next one (Chapter 3.1). A good structure enables flow, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as the work becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Something like that does not happen by chance.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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As students, researchers and nonfiction writers, we have so much more freedom than others to choose what we want to spend our time on. Still, we often struggle the most with procrastination and motivation.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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It is certainly not the lack of interesting topics, but rather the employment of problematic work routines that seems to take charge of us instead of allowing us to steer the process in the right direction.
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A good, structured workflow puts us back in charge and increases our freedom to do the right thing at the right time.
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Having a clear structure to work in is completely different from making plans about something
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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If you make a plan, you impose a structure on yourself; it makes you inflexible. To keep going according to plan, you have to push yourself and employ willpower. This is not only demotivating, but also unsuitable for an open-ended process like research, thinking or studying
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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in general, where we have to adjust our next steps with every new insight, understanding or achievement – which we ideally have on a regular basis and not just as an exception.
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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How do you plan for insight, which, by definition, cannot be anticipated?
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It is a huge misunderstanding that the only alternative to planning is aimless messing around. The challenge is to structure one’s workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward. We do not want to make ourselves dependent on a plan that is threatened by the unexpected, like a new idea, discovery – or insight.
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Unfortunately, even universities try to turn students into planners
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Sure, planning will get you through your exams if you stick to them and push through. But it will not make you an expert in the art of learning/writing/note-taking (there is research on that: cf. Chapter 1.3).
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Planners are also unlikely to continue with their studies after they finish their examinations. They are rather glad it is over.
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Experts, on the other hand, would not even consider voluntarily giving up what has already proved to be rewarding and fun: learning in a way that generates real insight, is accumulative and sparks new ideas.
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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It takes them longer to find a good idea to write about because they know from experience that the first idea is rarely that great and good questions do not fall into their laps. They spend more time in the library to get a better overview of the literature, which leads to more reading, which means that they have to juggle more information. Having read more does not automatically mean having more ideas
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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All that means is that a system is needed to keep track of the everincreasing pool of information, which allows one to combine different ideas in an intelligent way with the aim of generating new ideas.
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Poor students do not have any of these problems. As long as they stick within the boundaries of their discipline and read only as much as they are told to (or less), no serious external system is required and writing can be done by sticking with the usual formulas of “how to write a scientific paper.” In fact, poor students often feel more successful (until they are tested), because they don’t experience much self-doubt. In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger and Dunning, 1999).
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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That means that those who are not very good at something tend to be overly confident, while those who have made an effort tend to underestimate their abilities
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Good students, on the other hand, constantly raise the bar for themselves as they focus on what they haven’t learned and mastered yet
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This is why high achievers who have had a taste of the vast amount of knowledge out there are likely to suffer from what psychologists call imposter syndrome, the feeling that you are not really up to the job, even though, of all people, they are (Clance and Imes 1978; Brems et al. 1994).
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Good Solutions are Simple – and Unexpected
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There is no need to build a complex system and there is no need to reorganise everything you already have. You can start working and developing ideas immediately by taking smart notes.
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Complexity is an issue, though. Even if you don’t aim to develop a grand theory and just want to keep track of what you read, organise your notes and develop your thoughts, you will have to deal with an increasingly complex
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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body of content, especially because it is not just about collecting thoughts, but about making connections and sparking new ideas
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Most people try to reduce complexity by separating what they have into smaller stacks, piles or separate folders. They sort their notes by topics and sub-topics, which makes it look less complex, but quickly becomes very complicated. Plus, it reduces the likelihood of building and finding surprising connections between the notes themselves, which means a trade-off between its usability and usefulness.
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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we don’t have to choose between usability and usefulness. Quite the contrary. The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible and to follow a few basic principles
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The simplicity of the structure allows complexity to build up where we want it: on the content level. There is quite extensive empirical and logical research on this phenomenon (for an overview: cf. Sull and Eisenhardt, 2015). Taking smart notes is as simple as it gets.
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The first idea lies at the heart of this book and is the technique of the simple slip-box
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Even the best tool will not improve your productivity considerably if you don’t change your daily routines the tool is embedded in,
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The new way of working might feel artificial at first and not necessarily like what you intuitively would do. That is normal
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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But as soon as you get used to taking smart notes, it will feel so much more natural that you will wonder how you were ever able to get anything done before
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Routines require simple, repeatable tasks that can become automatic and fit together seamlessly (cf. Mata, Todd, and Lippke, 2010).
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The importance of an overarching workflow is the great insight of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (Allen, 2001).
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The principle of GTD is to collect everything that needs to be taken care of in one place and process it in a standardised way
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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This doesn’t necessarily mean that we actually do everything we once intended to do, but it forces us to make clear choices and regularly check if our tasks still fit into the bigger picture. Only if we know that everything is taken care of, from the important to the trivial, can we let go and focus on what is right in front of us. Only if nothing else is lingering in our working memory and taking up valuable mental resources can we experience what Allen calls a “mind like water” - the state where we can focus on the work right in front of us without getting distracted by competing thoughts.
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The principle is simple but holistic. It is not a quick fix or a fancy tool. It doesn’t do the work for you. But it does provide a structure for our everyday work that deals with the fact that most distractions do not come so much from our environment, but our own minds. Unfortunately, David Allen’s technique cannot simply be transferred to the task of insightful writing. The first reason is that GTD relies on clearly defined objectives, whereas insight cannot be predetermined by definition. We usually start with rather vague ideas that are bound to change until they become clearer in the course of our research (cf. Ahrens, 2014, 134f.). Writing that aims at insight must therefore be organised in a much more open manner. The other reason is that GTD requires projects to be broken down into smaller, concrete “next steps.”
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Writing is not a linear process
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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We constantly have to jump back and forth between different tasks. It wouldn’t make any sense to micromanage ourselves on that level. Zooming out to the bigger picture does not really help, either, because then we have next steps like “writing a page.” That does not really help with navigating the things you have to do to write a page, often a whole bunch of other things that can take an hour or a month. One has to navigate mostly by sight.
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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These are probably the reasons why GTD never really caught on in academia, although it is very successful in business and has a good reputation among the self-employed
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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When it comes to writing, everything, from research to proofreading, is closely connected.
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All the little steps must be linked in a way that will enable you to go seamlessly from one task to another, but still be kept separate enough to enable us to flexibly do what needs to be done in any given situation. And this is the other insight of David Allen: Only if you can trust your system, only if you really know that everything will be taken care of, will your brain let go and let you focus on the task at hand.
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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That is why we need a note-taking system that is as comprehensive as GTD, but one that is suitable for the open-ended process of writing, learning and thinking. Enter the slip-box
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Annotation on page 19 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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In Germany, a professor traditionally starts with a public lecture presenting his or her projects, and Luhmann, too, was asked what his main research project will be. His answer would become famous. He laconically stated: “My project: theory of society. Duration: 30 years. Costs: zero” (Luhmann, 1997, 11). In sociology, a “theory of society” is the mother of all projects. When he finished the final chapter, almost exactly 29 and a half years later, as a two-volume book with the title “The Society of Society” (1997), it stirred up the scientific community.[3]
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l
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It was a radical new theory that not only changed sociology, but stirred heated discussions in philosophy, education, political theory and psychology as well. Not everyone was able to follow the discussions, though. What he did was unusually sophisticated, very different and highly complex
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Annotation on page 19 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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In 30 years, he published 58 books and hundreds of articles, translations not included. Many became classics in their respective fields. Even after his death, about half a dozen more books on diverse subjects like religion, education or politics were published in his name – based on almost finished manuscripts lying around in his office. There are more than a few colleagues I know who would give a lot to be as productive in their whole lifetime as Luhmann was after his death.
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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When he was asked if he missed anything in his life, he famously answered: “If I want something, it’s more time. The only thing that really is a nuisance is the lack of time.” (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek, 1987, 139)
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After doing extensive research on Luhmann’s workflow, the German sociologist Johannes F.K. Schmidt concluded his productivity could only be explained by his unique working technique (Schmidt 2013, 168).
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That technique has never been a secret – Luhmann was always open about it. He regularly mentioned the slip-box as the reason for his productivity
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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From as early as 1985, his standard answer to the question of how anyone could be so productive was: “I, of course, do not think everything by myself. It happens mainly within the slip-box” (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek 1987, 142).
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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But few gave the slip-box and the way he worked with it a closer look, dismissing his explanation as the modest understatement of a genius.
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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But what is even more impressive than the sheer number of publications or the outstanding quality of his writing is the fact that he seemed to achieve all this with almost no real effort.
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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He not only stressed that he never forced himself to do something he didn’t feel like, he even said: “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f.)[4]
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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The best way to maintain the feeling of being in control is to stay in control. And to stay in control, it’s better to keep your options open during the writing process rather than limit yourself to your first idea.
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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It is in the nature of writing, especially insight-oriented writing, that questions change, the material we work with turns out to be very different from the one imagined or that new ideas emerge, which might change our whole perspective on what we do
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Only if the work is set up in a way that is flexible enough to allow these small and constant adjustments can we keep our interest, motivation and work aligned – which is the precondition to effortless or almost effortless work.
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Luhmann was able to focus on the important things right in front of him, pick up quickly where he left off and stay in control of the process because the structure of his work allowed him to do this. If we work in an environment that is flexible enough to accommodate our work rhythm, we don’t need to struggle with resistance
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Studies on highly successful people have proven again and again that success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place (cf. Neal et al. 2012; Painter et al. 2002; Hearn et al. 1998)
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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Instead of struggling with adverse dynamics, highly productive people deflect resistance, very much like judo champions. This is not just about having the right mindset, it is also about having the right workflow. It is the way Luhmann and his slip-box worked together that allowed him to move freely and flexibly between different tasks and levels of thinking. It is about having the right tools and knowing how to use them – and very few understand that you need both.
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Annotation on page 22 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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As far as the technology is concerned, there is no secret. It has all been in the open for more than three decades now. So why is not everybody using a slip-box and working effortlessly towards success? Is it because it is too complicated?
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Annotation on page 22 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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1. Until very recently, when the first results from the research on the file system were published, some crucial misunderstandings prevailed about how Luhmann actually worked, which led to disappointing results for many who tried to emulate the system. The main misunderstanding stems from an isolated focus on the slip-box and a neglect of the actual workflow in which it is embedded. 2. Almost everything that is published about this system was only accessible in German and was almost exclusively discussed within a small group of devoted sociologists who specialised in Luhmann’s theory of social systems – hardly the kind of critical mass that would draw much attention. 3. The third and maybe the most important reason is the very fact that it is simple. Intuitively, most people do not expect much from simple ideas. They rather assume that impressive results must have equally impressively complicated means.
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Annotation on page 22 at 2023-08-22 12:46
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How does the slip-box, the heart of this system, work?
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Strictly speaking, Luhmann had two slip-boxes: a bibliographical one, which contained the references and brief notes on the content of the literature, and the main one in which he collected and generated his ideas, mainly in response to what he read. The notes were written on index cards and stored in wooden boxes. Whenever he read something, he would write the bibliographic information on one side of a card and make brief notes about the content on the other side (Schmidt 2013, 170). These notes would end up in the bibliographic slip-box. In a second step, shortly after, he would look at his brief notes and think about their relevance for his own thinking and writing. He then would turn to the main slip-box and write his ideas, comments and thoughts on new pieces of paper, using only one for each idea and restricting himself to one side of the paper, to make it easier to read them later without having to take them out of the box. He kept them usually brief enough to make one idea fit on a single sheet, but would sometimes add another note to extend a thought.
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He usually wrote his notes with an eye towards already existing notes in the slip-box
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And while the notes on the literature were brief, he wrote them with great care, not much different from his style in the final manuscript: in full sentences and with explicit references to the literature from which he drew his material. More often than not, a new note would directly follow up on another note and would become part of a longer chain of notes. He then would add references to notes somewhere else in the slip-box, some of them which were located nearby, others in completely different areas and contexts. Some were directly related and read more like comments, others contained not-so-obvious connections. Rarely would a note stay in isolation.
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The
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The trick is that he did not organise his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers
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The numbers bore no meaning and were only there to identify each note permanently. If a new note was relevant or directly referred to an already existing note, such as a comment,
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correction or addition, he added it directly behind the previous note. If the existing note had the number 22, the new note would become note number 23. If 23 already existed, he named the new note 22a. By alternating numbers and letters, with some slashes and commas in between, he was able to branch out into as many strings of thought as he liked. For example, a note about causality and systems theory carried the number 21/3d7a7 following a note with the number 21/3d7a6.
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But, as I will explain later, they are quite different and it would be rather misleading to think of his slip-box as a personal Wikipedia or a database on paper
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By adding these links between notes, Luhmann was able to add the same note to different contexts. While other systems start with a preconceived order of topics, Luhmann developed topics bottom up, then added another note to his slip-box, on which he would sort a topic by sorting the links of the relevant other notes
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The last element in his file system was an index, from which he would refer to one or two notes that would serve as a kind of entry point into a line of thought or topic. Notes with a sorted collection of links are, of course, good entry points.
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We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains
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Writing these notes is also not the main work
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Thinking is. Reading is. Understanding and coming up with ideas is. And this is how it is supposed to be. The notes are just the tangible outcome of it. All you have to do is to have a pen in your hand while you are doing what you are doing anyway (or a keyboard under your fingers). Writing notes accompanies the main work and, done right, it helps with it. Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have.
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Notes build up while you think, read, understand and generate ideas, because you have to have a pen in your hand if you want to think, read, understand and generate ideas properly anyway
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If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words. Thinking takes place as much on paper as in your own head. “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible,” neuroscientist Neil Levy concludes in the introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, summarizing decades of research
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to translate it into your own words. Thinking takes place as much on paper as in your own head. “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make
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Writing a paper step by step
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1. Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write with to capture every idea that pops into your mind. Don’t worry too much about how you write it down or what you write it on. These are fleeting notes, mere reminders of what is in your head. They should not cause any distraction. Put them into one place, which you define as your inbox, and process them later. I usually have a simple notebook with me, but I am happy with napkins or receipts if nothing else is at hand. Sometimes I leave a voice record on my phone. If your thoughts are already sorted and you have the time, you can skip this step and write your idea directly down as a proper, permanent note for your slip-box. 2. Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be extra selective with quotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean. Keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place – your reference system. 3. Make permanent notes. Now turn to your slip-box. Go through the notes you made in step one or two (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how they relate to what is relevant for your own research, thinking or interests. This can soon be done by looking into the slipbox – it only contains what interests you anyway. The idea is not to collect,
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but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions. Does the new information contradict, correct, support or add to what you already have (in the slip-box or on your mind)? Can you combine ideas to generate something new? What questions are triggered by them? Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible. Throw away the fleeting notes from step one and put the literature notes from step two into your reference system. You can forget about them now. All that matters is going into the slip-box. 4. Now add your new permanent notes to the slip-box by: a) Filing each one behind one or more related notes (with a program, you can put one note “behind” multiple notes; if you use pen and paper like Luhmann, you have to decide where it fits best and add manual links to the other notes). Look to which note the new one directly relates or, if it does not relate directly to any other note yet, just file it behind the last one. b) Adding links to related notes. c) Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to the index. 5. Develop your topics, questions and research projects bottom up from within the system. See what is there, what is missing and what questions arise. Read more to challenge and strengthen your arguments and change and develop your arguments according to the new information you are learning about. Take more notes, develop ideas further and see where things will take you. Just follow your interest and always take the path that promises the most insight. Build upon what you have. Even if you don’t have anything in your slip-box yet, you never start from scratch – you already have ideas on your mind to be tested, opinions to be challenged and questions to be answered. Do not brainstorm for a topic. Look into the slip-box instead to see where chains of notes have developed and ideas have been built up to clusters. Don’t cling to an idea if another, more promising one gains momentum. The more you become interested in something, the more you will read and think
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about it, the more notes you will collect and the more likely it is that you will generate questions from it. It might be exactly what you were interested in from the beginning, but it is more likely that your interests will have changed – that is what insight does. 6. After a while, you will have developed ideas far enough to decide on a topic to write about. Your topic is now based on what you have, not based on an unfounded idea about what the literature you are about to read might provide. Look through the connections and collect all the relevant notes on this topic (most of the relevant notes will already be in partial order), copy them onto your “desktop”[6] and bring them in order. Look for what is missing and what is redundant. Don’t wait until you have everything together. Rather, try ideas out and give yourself enough time to go back to reading and note-taking to improve your ideas, arguments and their structure. 7. Turn your notes into a rough draft. Don’t simply copy your notes into a manuscript. Translate them into something coherent and embed them into the context of your argument while you build your argument out of the notes at the same time. Detect holes in your argument, fill them or change your argument. 8. Edit and proofread your manuscript. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder and turn to the next manuscript.
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These are the steps, presented as if you will write only one paper/article at a time. In reality, you never work on just one idea, but many ideas in different stages at the same time. And that is where the system plays out its real strengths
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Spending the little extra time to add them to your system will make all the difference, because the accidental encounters make up the majority of what we learn.
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Imagine if we went through life learning only what we planned to learn or being explicitly taught. I doubt we would have even learned to speak. Each added bit of information, filtered only by our interest, is a contribution to our future understanding, thinking and writing. And the best ideas are usually the ones we haven’t anticipated anyway.
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Most people follow different lines of thought at the same time
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They might focus for a while on one idea, but then leave it alone for another while until they see how to proceed further. It is helpful then to be able to pick up on another idea now and go back to the earlier thought later. It is much more realistic to keep this flexibility and you don’t have to worry about starting all over
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There is this story where NASA tried to figure out how to make a ballpoint pen that works in space. If you have ever tried to use a ballpoint pen over your head, you have probably realised it is gravity that keeps the ink flowing. After a series of prototypes, several test runs and tons of money invested, NASA developed a fully functional gravity-independent pen, which pushes the ink onto the paper by means of compressed nitrogen. According to this story, the Russians faced the same problem. So they used pencils (De Bono, 1998, 141)
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The slip-box follows the Russian model: Focus on the essentials, don’t complicate things unnecessarily
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Academic writing in itself is not a complicated process that requires a variety of complicated tools, but is in constant danger of being clogged with unnecessary distractions. Unfortunately, most students collect and embrace over time a variety of learning and note-taking techniques, each promising to make something easier, but combined have the opposite effect
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The Tool Box
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We need four tools: · Something to write with and something to write on (pen and paper will do) · A reference management system (the best programs are free) · The slip-box (the best program is free) · An editor (whatever works best for you: very good ones are free)
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You need something to capture ideas whenever and wherever they pop into your head. Whatever you use, it should not require any thoughts, attention or multiple steps to write it down
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It can be a notebook, a napkin, an app on your phone or iPad. These notes are not meant to be stored permanently. They will be deleted or chucked soon anyway. They only function as a reminder of a thought and are not meant to capture the thought itself, which requires time to phrase proper sentences and check facts. I recommend having pen and paper with you at all times. It is really hard to beat a notebook in its simplicity. If you use other tools, make sure everything ends up in one place, a central inbox or something like that, where you can process it soon, ideally within a day.
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The reference system has two purposes:
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To collect the references (duh) and the notes you take during your reading. I strongly recommend using a free program like Zotero, which allows you to make new entries via
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browser plugins or just by entering the ISBN or digital object identifier (DOI) number. Zotero also can be integrated into Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and NeoOffice, which allows you to insert quotations without actually typing in the reference. That not only makes things easier, you also mitigate the risk of messing things up when you add, edit or delete additional references. You can also easily change the format according to the standards required by your professors or the journal you write for. You can add notes to each entry – but it would also be fine to write your notes by hand and link them to the reference if you prefer to write by hand at this stage. In that case, just give the notes a standardised title like “AuthorYear” and keep them in alphabetical order in one place. You can download Zotero for free at zotero.org (Windows, Mac and Linux). You will find the links to all recommended programs on takesmartnotes.com.[10] If you prefer or already work with another, equally simple program, there is no reason not to use that.
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The slip-box
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Some prefer the old-fashioned pen and paper version in a wooden box. That’s fine – computers can only speed up a relatively minor part of the work anyway, like adding links and formatting references. They can’t speed up the main part of the work, which is thinking, reading and understanding. All you would need are sheets of paper about the size of a postcard (Luhmann used the DIN A6 size, 148 x 105 mm or 5.83 x 4.13 inches) and a box to keep them in. And even though there are clear benefits of handwriting (cf. below chapter 3.2.1), I recommend using the digital version, if only for mobility. Even though you could basically emulate the slip-box with any program that allows setting links and tagging (like Evernote or a Wiki), I strongly recommend using Daniel Lüdecke’s Zettelkasten. It is the only program I know that really implements the principles behind Luhmann’s system and is at the same time simple and easy to use. It is free and available for different operating systems. You can download it from zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de (please consider sending a donation to the developer if you like it).
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the editor:
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If you use Zotero, I recommend using one of the editors it is compatible with (Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice or NeoOffice), because it makes life a lot easier if you don’t have to type in every reference manually. Except for that, everything works fine – no
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editor can improve an argument. If you have pen and paper, an editor, your slip-box and reference system at hand, you are ready to go.
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If we try to use a tool without putting any thought into the way we work with it, even the best tool would not be of much help.
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The slip-box, for example, would most likely be used as an archive for notes – or worse: a graveyard for thoughts (cf. Hollier 2005, 40 on Mallarmé’s index cards).
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THE FOUR UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES
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Writing Is the Only Thing That Matters
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Writing is what follows: In the beginning stands the question to be answered, followed by an overview of the literature, the discussion of it and the conclusion
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This, according to this thinking, prepares you for doing independent research. Alas, it does not. If you become successful in your research, it was not because you learned to approach writing in this way, but despite it.
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Studying does not prepare students for independent research. It is independent research. Nobody starts from scratch and everybody is already able to think for themselves. Studying, done properly, is research, because it is about gaining insight that cannot be anticipated and will be shared within the scientific community under public scrutiny. There is no such thing as private knowledge in academia
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p
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a fact no one can reproduce is no fact at all.
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Making something public always means to write it down so it can be read. There is no such thing as a history of unwritten ideas.
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School is different
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Pupils are usually not encouraged to follow their own learning paths, question and discuss everything the teacher is teaching and move on to another topic if something does not promise to generate interesting insight. The teacher is there for the pupils to learn
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The criteria for a convincing argument are always the same
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regardless of who the author is or the status of the publisher: They have to be coherent and based on facts. Truth does not belong to anyone; it is the outcome of the scientific exchange of written ideas. This is why the presentation and the production of knowledge cannot be separated, but are rather two sides of the same coin (Peters and Schäfer 2006, 9).
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Working as if nothing else counts than writing does not mean spending more time writing at the expense of everything else
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Only if we compartmentalise our work into different, isolated tasks will it seem like focusing on writing reduces the time we spend on other tasks. But it does not mean to read less, for this is the main source of the writing material. It doesn’t mean to attend fewer lectures or seminars, because they provide you with the ideas to write about and questions worth answering
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Attending lectures is also one of the best ways to get an idea about the current state of research, not to mention the ability to ask and discuss questions
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Focusing on writing also doesn’t mean to stop giving presentations or finding other ways
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of making your thoughts public. Where else could you get feedback for your ideas?
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You quickly learn to distinguish good-sounding arguments from actual good ones, as you will have to think them through whenever you try to write them down and connect them with your previous knowledge. It will change the way you read as well: You will become more focused on the most relevant aspects, knowing that you cannot write down everything. You will read in a more engaged way, because you cannot rephrase anything in your own words if you don’t understand what it is about. By doing this, you will elaborate on the meaning, which will make it much more likely that you will remember it. You also have to think beyond the things you read, because you need to turn it into something new. And by doing everything with the clear purpose of writing about it, you will do what you do deliberately. Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what we are doing (cf. Anders Ericsson, 2008).
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Even if you decide never to write a single line of a manuscript, you will improve your reading, thinking and other intellectual skills just by doing everything as if nothing counts other than writing.
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Simplicity Is Paramount
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We tend to think that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But more often than not, it is the simplicity of an idea that makes it so powerful (and often overlooked in the beginning).
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McLean wasn’t the only one who had the idea to use containers on ships. Many others tried it, too, and almost all gave up on the idea soon after – not because they were too stubborn to accept a great idea, but because they lost too much money on it (Levinson, 2006, 45f). The idea was simple, but it wasn’t easy to put it efficiently into practice.
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In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to.
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In the old system, the question is: Under which topic do I store this note? In the new system, the question is: In which context will I want to stumble upon it again?
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The slip-box is the shipping container of the academic world. Instead of having different storage for different ideas, everything goes into the same slip-box and is standardised into the same format
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To achieve a critical mass, it is crucial to distinguish clearly between three types of notes: 1. Fleeting notes, which are only reminders of information, can be written in any kind of way and will end up in the trash within a day or two. 2. Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way. They are always stored in the same way in the same place, either in the reference system or, written as if for print, in the slip-box. 3. Project notes, which are only relevant to one particular project. They are kept within a project-specific folder and can be discarded or archived after the project is finished.
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One of the major reasons for not getting much writing or publishing done lies in the confusion of these categories.
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A typical mistake is made by many diligent students who are adhering to the advice to keep a scientific journal. A friend of mine does not let any idea, interesting finding or quote he stumbles upon dwindle away and writes everything down. He always carries a notebook with him and often makes a few quick notes during a conversation. The advantage is obvious: No idea ever gets lost. The disadvantages are serious, though: As he treats every note as if it belongs to the “permanent” category, the notes will never build up a critical mass. The collection of good ideas is diluted to insignificance by all the other notes, which are only relevant for a specific project or actually not that good on second sight
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The second typical mistake is to collect notes only related to specific projects.
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The disadvantage is that you have to start all over after each project and cut off all other promising lines of thought. That means that everything you
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found, thought or encountered during the time of a project will be lost
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The third typical mistake is, of course, to treat all notes as fleeting ones.
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You can easily spot this approach by the mess that comes with it, or rather by the cycle of slowly growing piles of material followed by the impulse for major clean-ps. Just collecting unprocessed fleeting notes inevitably leads to chaos. Even small amounts of unclear and unrelated notes lingering around your desk will soon induce the wish of starting from scratch.
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What all these category-confusing approaches have in common is that the benefit of note-taking decreases with the number of notes you keep
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Fleeting notes are there for capturing ideas quickly while you are busy doing something else
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When you are in a conversation, listing to a lecture, hear something noteworthy or an idea pops into your mind while you are running errands, a quick note is the best you can do without interrupting what you are in the middle of doing. That might even apply to reading, if you want to focus on a text without interrupting your reading flow. Then you might want to just underline sentences or write short comments in the margins
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They will very soon become completely useless – unless you do something with them. If you already know that you will not go back to them, don’t take these kind of notes in the first place. Take proper notes instead.
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Fleeting notes
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are only useful if you review them within a day or so and turn them into proper notes you can use later
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These kinds of notes are just reminders of a thought, which you haven’t had the time to elaborate on yet.
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Permanent notes, on the other hand, are written in a way that can still be understood even when you have forgotten the context they are taken from.
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Most ideas will not stand the test of time, while others might become the seed for a major project. Unfortunately, they are not easy to distinguish right away.
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That is why the threshold to write an idea down has to be as low as possible, but it is equally crucial to elaborate on them within a day or two.
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A good indication that a note has been left unprocessed too long is when you no longer understand what you meant or it appears banal. In the first case, you forgot what it was supposed to remind you of. In the second case, you forgot the context that gave it its meaning.
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The only permanently stored notes are the literature notes in the reference system and the main notes in the slip-box.
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Luhmann never underlined sentences in the text he read or wrote comments in the margins. All he did was take brief notes about the ideas that caught his attention in a text on a separate piece of paper: “I make a note with the bibliographic details. On the backside I would write ‘on page x is this, on page y is that,’ and then it goes into the bibliographic slip-box where I collect everything I read.” (Hagen, 1997)
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permanent note for the slip-box is elaborated enough to have the potential to become part of or inspire a final written piece, but that can not be decided on up front as their relevance depends on future thinking and developments
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Project-related notes can be: · comments in the manuscript · collections of project-related literature · outlines · snippets of drafts · reminders · to-do lists · and of course the draft itself.
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When you close the folder for your current project in the evening and nothing is left on your desk other than pen and paper, you know that you have achieved a clear separation between fleeting, permanent and projectrelated notes.
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Nobody Ever Starts From Scratch
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“The white sheet of paper – or today: the blank screen – is a fundamental misunderstanding” (Nassehi 2015, 185)
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Every intellectual endeavour starts from an already existing preconception, which then can be transformed during further inquires and can serve as a starting point for following endeavours
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Basically, that is what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the hermeneutic circle (Gadamer 2004).
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We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts
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By focusing on what is interesting and keeping written track of your own intellectual development, topics, questions and arguments will emerge from the material without force.
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If we look into our slip-box to see where clusters have built up, we not only see possible topics, but topics we have already worked on – even if we were not able to see it up front. The idea that nobody ever starts from scratch suddenly becomes very concrete
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The promotion of brainstorming as a starting point is all the more surprising as it is not the origin of most ideas
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The things you are supposed to find in your head by brainstorming usually don’t have their origins in there. Rather, they come from the outside
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There is one reliable sign if you managed to structure your workflow according to the fact that writing is not a linear process, but a circular one: the problem of finding a topic is replaced by the problem of having too many topics to write about
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If you on the other hand develop your thinking in writing, open questions will become clearly visible and give you an abundance of possible topics to elaborate further in writing
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After many years of working with students, I am convinced that the attempt of these study guides to squeeze a nonlinear process like writing into a linear order is the main reason for the very problems and frustrations they promise to solve
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But those who have already developed their thinking through writing can keep the focus on what is interesting for them at the moment and accumulate substantial material just by doing what they most feel like doing
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The material will cluster around the questions they returned to most often, so they don’t risk too far of a departure from their interest. If your first chosen topic turns out to be not as interesting, you will just move on and your notes will cluster around something else
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Maybe you will even note down the reasons why the first question is not interesting and turn that into an insight valuable enough to make public
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Even though academic writing is not a linear process, that does not mean you should follow an anything-goes approach. On the contrary, a clear, reliable structure is paramount.
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8 Let the Work Carry You Forward
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You may remember from school the difference between an exergonic and an endergonic reaction. In the first case, you constantly need to add energy to keep the process going. In the second case, the reaction, once triggered, continues by itself and even releases energy. The dynamics of work are not so different. Sometimes we feel like our work is draining our energy and we can only move forward if we put more and more energy into it. But sometimes it is the opposite
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Once we get into the workflow, it is as if the work itself gains momentum, pulling us along and sometimes even energizing us. This is the kind of dynamic we are looking for.
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A good workflow can easily turn into a virtuous circle, where the positive experience motivates us to take on the next task with ease, which helps us to get better at what we are doing, which in return makes it more likely for us to enjoy the work, and so on
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Any attempts to trick ourselves into work with external rewards (like doing something nice after finishing a chapter) are only short-term solutions with no prospect of establishing a positive feedback loop. These are very fragile motivational constructions. Only if the work itself becomes rewarding can the dynamic of motivation and reward become self-sustainable and propel the whole process forward (DePasque and Tricomi, 2015).
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They enter the virtuous circle where willpower isn’t needed anymore because they feel like doing it anyway
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Feedback loops are not only crucial for the dynamics of motivation, but also the key element to any learning process
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Those who fear and avoid feedback because it might damage their cherished positive self-image might feel better in the short term, but will quickly fall behind in actual performance (Dweck 2006; 2013)
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Following a circular approach, on the other hand, allows you to implement many feedback loops, which give you the chance to improve your work while you are working on it.
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We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words
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Expressing our own thoughts in writing makes us realise if we really thought them through.
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The moment we try to combine them with
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previously written notes, the system will unambiguously show us contradictions, inconsistencies and repetitions
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The slip-box is not a collection of notes. Working with it is less about retrieving specific notes and more about being pointed to relevant facts and generating insight by letting ideas mingle.
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Its usability grows with its size, not just linearly but exponentially. When we turn to the slip-box, its inner connectedness will not just provide us with isolated facts, but with lines of developed thoughts. Moreover, because of its inner complexity, a search thought the slip-box will confront us with related notes we did not look for
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But if facts are not kept isolated nor learned in an isolated fashion, but hang together in a network of ideas, or “latticework of mental models” (Munger, 1994), it becomes easier to make sense of new information
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It is not the slip-box or our brains
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alone, but the dynamic between them that makes working with it so productive.
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THE SIX STEPS
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STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING
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9 Separate and Interlocking Tasks
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9.1 Give Each Task Your Undivided Attention
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9.2 Multitasking is not a good idea
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Psychologists who interviewed the multitaskers did test them instead of just asking. They gave them different tasks to accomplish and compared their results with another group that was instructed to do only one thing at a time. The outcome is unambiguous: While those who multitasked felt more productive, their productivity actually decreased – a lot (Wang and Tchernev 2012; Rosen 2008; Ophir, Nass, and Wagner 2009). Not only the quantity but also the quality of their accomplishments lagged significantly behind that of the control group.
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Trying to multitask fatigues us and decreases our ability to deal with more than one task.
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But it does have practical consequences for the way we work if we think about what “writing” truly means: many different tasks we might end up trying to do at the same time if we don’t separate them consciously and practically.
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Writing a paper involves much more than just typing on the keyboard. It also means reading, understanding, reflecting, getting ideas, making connections, distinguishing terms, finding the right words, structuring, organizing, editing, correcting and rewriting.
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It is not only impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time, but also to have a different kind of attention on more than one thing at a time
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Today, research differentiates between multiple forms of attention. Ever since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1970s described “flow,” the state in which being highly focused becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), [18]
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When it comes to focused attention, we focus on one thing only, something we can sustain for only a few seconds. The maximum duration of focused attention seems not to have changed over time (Doyle and Zakrajsek 2013, 91). Focused attention is different from “sustained attention,” which we need to stay focused on one task for a longer period and is necessary to learn, understand or get something done
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This is the kind of attention that is most certainly under threat from an increase in distractions. The average duration seems to have shrunken quite considerably over time – we practice much less focused attention than we used to (ibid).
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A lack of structure makes it much more challenging to stay focused for extended periods of time. The slip-box provides not only a clear structure to work in, but also forces us to shift our attention consciously as we can complete tasks in reasonable time before moving on to the next one
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slip-box can become a haven for our restless minds.
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9.3 Give Each Task the Right Kind of Attention
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To be able to switch between the role of critic and the role of writer requires a clear separation between these two tasks, and that becomes easier with experience
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If we proofread a manuscript and don’t manage to get enough distance from ourselves as authors, we will only see our thoughts, not the actual text.
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Letting the inner critic interfere with the author isn’t helpful, either.
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If we try to please the critical reader instantly, our workflow would come to a standstill.
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A real professional would wait until it was time for proofreading, so he or she can focus on one thing at a time
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While proofreading requires more focused attention, finding the right words during writing requires much more floating attention.
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It is also easier to focus on finding the right words if we don’t have to think about the structure of the text at the same time, which is why a printed outline of the manuscript should be always in front of our eyes. We have to know what we don’t have to write about at the moment, because we know that we will take care of that in another part of our text.
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Outlining or changing the outline is also a very different task that requires a very different focus on something else: not on one thought, but on the whole argument
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It is important, though, to understand outlining not as the preparation of writing or even as planning, but as a separate task we need to return to throughout the writing process on a regular basis. We need a structure all the time, but as we work our way bottom-up, it is bound to change often. And whenever we need to update the structure, we need to take a step back, look at the big picture and change it accordingly.
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Proofreading, formulating and outlining are also different from the task of combining and developing thoughts
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Working with the slip-box means playing with ideas and looking out for interesting connections and comparisons. It means building clusters, combining them with other clusters and preparing the order of notes for a project. Here, we need to puzzle with notes and find the best fit. It is much more associative, playful and creative than the other tasks and requires a very different kind of attention as well.
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It would be ridiculous to adhere to a general formula and read every text in the same way, even though that is what many study guides or speed-reading courses try to convince us of. It is not a sign of professionalism to master one technique and stick to it no matter what, but to be flexible and adjust one’s reading to whatever speed or approach a text requires.
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Oshin Vartanian compared and analysed the daily workflows of Nobel Prize winners and other eminent scientists and concluded that it is not a relentless focus, but flexible focus that distinguishes them. “Specifically, the problemsolving behavior of eminent scientists can alternate between extraordinary levels of focus on specific concepts and playful exploration of ideas. This suggests that successful problem solving may be a function of flexible strategy application in relation to task demands.” (Vartanian 2009, 57)
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The answer to this conundrum is that creative people need both … The key to creativity is being able to switch between a wide-open, playful mind and a narrow analytical frame.” (Dean, 2013, 152)
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9.4 Become an Expert Instead of a Planner
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“(An) exclusive use of analytical rationality tends to impede further improvement in human performance because of analytical rationality’s slow reasoning and its emphasis on rules,
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principles, and universal solutions. Second, bodily involvement, speed, and an intimate knowledge of concrete cases in the form of good examples is a prerequisite for true expertise.” (Flyvbjerg 2001, 15)
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Experts, on the other hand, have internalised the necessary knowledge so they don’t have to actively remember rules or think consciously about their choices. They have acquired enough experience in various situations to be able to rely on their intuition to know what to do in which kind of situation. Their decisions in complex situations are explicitly not made by long rational-analytical considerations, but rather come from the gut (cf. Gigerenzer, 2008a, 2008b).
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Here, gut feeling is not a mysterious force, but an incorporated history of experience.
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9.5 Get Closure
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Attention is not our only limited resource. Our short-term memory is also limited. We need strategies not to waste its capacity with thoughts we can better delegate to an external system.
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We can hold a maximum of seven things in our head at the same time, plus/minus two (Miller 1956).
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Information cannot be saved in short-term memory like on a memory stick. Rather, it kind of floats around in our heads, seeks our attention and occupies valuable mental resources until it is either forgotten, replaced by something
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more important (according to our brains) or moved into long-term memory.
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Or, if recent research is right and the participants in earlier tests have always already bundled things together, then the maximum capacity of our working memory is not seven plus/minus two, but more like a maximum of four (Cowan 2001).
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Things we understand are connected, either through rules, theories, narratives, pure logic, mental models or explanations. And deliberately building these kinds of meaningful connections is what the slipbox is all about.
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Every step is accompanied by questions like: How does this fact fit into my idea of …? How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory? Are these two ideas contradictory or do they complement each other? Isn’t this argument similar to that one? Haven’t I heard this before? And above all: What does x mean for y? These questions not only increase our understanding, but facilitate learning as well
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Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik
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Zeigarnik successfully reproduced what is now known as the Zeigarnik effect: Open tasks tend to occupy our short-term memory – until they are done. That is why we get so easily distracted by thoughts of unfinished tasks, regardless of their importance. But thanks to Zeigarnik’s follow-up research, we also know that we don’t actually have to finish tasks to convince our brains to stop thinking about them. All we have to do is to write them down in a way that convinces us that it will be taken care of.
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By writing something down, we literally get it out of our heads. This is why David Allen’s “Getting things done” system works:
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The first step is to break down the amorphous task of “writing” into smaller pieces of different tasks that can be finished in one go. The second step is to make sure we always write down the outcome of our thinking,
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including possible connections to further inquiries
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As the outcome of each task is written down and possible connections become visible, it is easy to pick up the work any time where we left it without having to keep it in mind all the time
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Possible subsequent tasks are open questions or connections to other notes, which we could elaborate on further or not. It also comes up in explicit reminders like “review this chapter and check for redundancies,” which belong into the project folder
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Or the third option is the simple fact that something is still in our in-box waiting to be turned into a permanent note – a quick and not-yet–crossed-out note in our notebook, or literature notes not yet archived in our reference system.
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All this enables us to later pick up a task exactly where we stopped without the need to “keep in mind” that there still was something to do. That is one of the main advantages of thinking in writing – everything is externalised anyway.
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9.6 Reduce the Number of Decisions
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Next to the attention that can only be directed at one thing at a time and the short-term memory that can only hold up to seven things at once, the third limited resource is motivation or willpower
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“ego depletion”
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“We use the term ego depletion to refer to a temporary reduction in the self’s capacity or willingness to engage in volitional action (including controlling the environment, controlling the self, making choices, and initiating action) caused by prior exercise of volition.” (Baumeister et al., 1998, 1253) One of the most interesting findings of the research on ego depletion is the broad variety of things that can have a depleting effect. “Our results suggest that a broad assortment of actions make use of the same resource. Acts of self-control, responsible decision making, and active choice seem to interfere with other such acts that follow soon after. The implication is that some vital resource of the self becomes depleted by such acts of volition. To be sure, we assume that this resource is commonly replenished, although the factors that might hasten or delay the replenishment remain unknown, along with the precise nature of this resource.” (Baumeister et al., 1998, 1263f)
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If we don’t give ourselves a break in between work sessions, be it out of eagerness or fear of forgetting what we were doing, it can have a detrimental effect on our efforts. To have a walk (Ratey, 2008) or even a nap[24] supports learning and thinking.
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n
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10 Read for Understanding
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“I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand and enter in a little book short hints of what you feel that is common or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such portcullis in your memory.” – Benjamin Franklin[26]
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10.1 Read With a Pen in Hand
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To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft; to get a good draft written, you only have to turn a series of notes into a continuous text. And as a series of notes is just the rearrangement of notes you already have in your slip-box, all you really have to do is have a pen in your hand when you read
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The series of notes in the slip-box develops into arguments, which are shaped by the theories, ideas and mental models you have in your head. And the theories, ideas and mental models in your head are also shaped by the things you read.
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The step from the slip-box to the final text is pretty straightforward. The content is already meaningful, thought through and in many parts already put into well-connected sequences. The notes only need to be put into a linear order
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Drawing from the slip-box to develop a draft is more like a dialogue with it than a mechanical act
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The outcome of reading with a
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pen in the hand is not possible to anticipate either, and here, too, the idea is not to copy, but to have a meaningful dialogue with the texts we read.
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When we extract ideas from the specific context of a text, we deal with ideas that serve a specific purpose in a particular context, support a specific argument, are part of a theory that isn’t ours or written in a language we wouldn’t use. This is why we have to translate them into our own language to prepare them to be embedded into new contexts of our own thinking, the different context(s) within the slip-box
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Translating means to give the truest possible account of the original work, using different words – it does not mean the freedom to make something fit. As well, the mere copying of quotes almost always changes their meaning by stripping them out of context, even though the words aren’t changed. This is a common beginner mistake, which can only lead to a patchwork of ideas, but never a coherent thought.
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“I always have a slip of paper at hand, on which I note down the ideas of certain pages. On the backside I write down the bibliographic details. After finishing the book I go through my notes and think how these notes might be relevant for already written notes in the slip-box. It means that I always read with an eye towards possible connections in the slip-box.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 150)
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As literature notes are also a tool for understanding and grasping the text, more elaborate notes make sense in more challenging cases, while in easier cases it might be sufficient to just jot down some keywords.
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Luhmann, certainly being on the outer spectrum of expertise, contented himself with pretty short notes and was still able to turn them into valuable slip-box notes without distorting the meaning of the original texts.
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It is mainly a matter of having an extensive latticework of mental models or theories in our heads that enable us to identify and describe the main ideas quickly (cf. Rickheit and Sichelschmidt, 1999).
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Whenever we explore a new, unfamiliar subject, our notes will tend to
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be more extensive, but we shouldn’t get nervous about it, as this is the deliberate practice of understanding we cannot skip.
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The only thing that matters is that these notes provide the best possible support for the next step, the writing of the actual slip-box notes
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And more often than not, reading is not accompanied by taking notes, which is, in terms of writing, almost as valuable as not having read at all
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Here, everything is about building up a critical mass of useful notes in the slip-box, which gives us a clear idea of how to read and how to take literature notes
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But all of this would be just an extra step before you do the only step that really counts, which is to take the permanent note that will add value to the actual slip-box.
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Literature notes are short and meant to help with writing slip-box notes. Everything else either helps to get to this point or is a distraction.
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The students who typed into their laptops were much quicker, which enabled them to copy the lecture more closely but circumvented actual understanding.
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Verbatim notes can be taken with almost no thinking, as if the words are taking a short cut from the ear to the hand, bypassing the brain.
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10.2 Keep an Open Mind
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“If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration” (Nickerson 1998, 175).
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With a good system, the mere necessities of the workflow will force us to act more virtuously without actually having to become more virtuous.
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Confirmation bias is tackled here in two steps: First, by turning the whole writing process on its head, and secondly, by changing the incentives from finding confirming facts to an indiscriminate gathering of any relevant information regardless of what argument it will support
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If insight becomes a threat to your academic or writing success, you are doing it wrong.
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Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead of top-down is the first and most important step to opening ourselves up for insight.
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The slip-box forces us to be selective in reading and note-taking, but the only criterion is the question of whether something adds to a discussion in the slip-box. The only thing that matters is that it connects or is open to connections
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Everything can contribute to the development of thoughts within the slip-box: an addition as well as a contradiction, the questioning of a seemingly obvious idea as well as the differentiation of an argument. What we are looking for are facts and information that can add something and therefore enrich the slip-box.
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One of the most important habitual changes when starting to work with the slip-box is moving the attention from the individual project with our preconceived ideas towards the open connections within the slip-box.
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In fact, it is almost impossible to write anything interesting and worth publishing (and therefore motivating) if it is based on nothing else than an idea we were able to come up with up front before elaborating on the problem.
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The slip-box is pretty agnostic about the content it is fed. It just prefers relevant notes.
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It is after reading and collecting relevant data, connecting
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thoughts and discussing how they fit together that it is time to draw conclusions and develop a linear structure for the argument.
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10.3 Get the Gist
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It is the practice of looking for the gist and distinguishing it from mere supporting details
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But with the learned ability of spotting patterns, we can enter the circle of virtuosity: Reading becomes easier, we grasp the gist quicker, can read more in less time, and can more easily spot patterns and improve our understanding of them.
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Immanuel Kant described in his famous text about the Enlightenment: “Nonage [immaturity] is the inability to use
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one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is selfimposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” (Kant 1784)
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Luhmann stresses the importance of permanent notes in this regard: “The problem with reading academic texts seems to be that we need not the short-term memory, but the long-term memory to develop reference points for distinguishing the important things from the less important, the new information from the mere repeated. But it is of course impossible to remember everything. That would be rote learning. To put it differently: One has to read extremely selectively and extract widespread and connected references. One has to be able to follow recurrences. But how to learn it if guidance is impossible? […] Probably the best method is to take notes – not excerpts, but condensed reformulated accounts of a text. Rewriting what was already written almost automatically trains one to shift the attention towards frames, patterns and categories in the observations, or the conditions/assumptions, which enable certain, but not other descriptions. It makes sense to always ask the question: What is not meant, what is excluded if a certain claim is made? If someone speaks of ‘human rights:’ What distinction is made? A distinction towards ‘nonhuman rights?’ ‘Human duties?’ Is it a cultural comparison or one with some historic people who didn’t have the concept of human rights, but lived okay together anyway? Often, the text does not give an answer or a clear answer to this question. But then one has to resort to one’s own imagination.” (Luhmann 2000, 154f)
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The better you become in doing this, the quicker you can jot down notes, which are still helpful.
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Luhmann’s notes are very condensed (Schmidt 2015).
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10.4 Learn to Read
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“If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” (John Searle)
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Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman once said that he could only determine whether he understood something if he could give an introductory lecture on it.
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Permanent notes, too, are directed towards an audience ignorant of the thoughts behind the text and unaware of the original context, only equipped with a general knowledge of the field. The only difference is that the audience here consists of our future selves, which will very soon have reached the same state of ignorance as someone who never had access to what we have written about.
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The most important advantage of writing is that it helps us to confront ourselves when we do not understand something as well as we would like to believe.
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“The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool,” Feynman stressed in a speech to young scientists (Feynman 1985, 342).
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Reading, especially rereading, can easily fool us into believing we understand a text. Rereading is especially dangerous because of the mereexposure effect: The moment we become familiar with something, we start believing we also understand it
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If we don’t try to verify our understanding during our studies, we will happily enjoy the feeling of getting smarter and more knowledgeable while in reality staying as dumb as we were.
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This warm feeling disappears quickly when we try to explain what we read in our own words in writing. Suddenly, we see the problem. The attempt to rephrase an argument in our own words confronts us without mercy with all the gaps in our understanding
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We have to choose between feeling smarter or becoming smarter.
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while writing down an idea feels like a detour, extra time spent, not writing it down is the real waste of time, as it renders most of what we read as ineffectual.
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Understanding is not just a precondition to learning something. To a certain degree, learning is understanding
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The majority of students chooses every day not to test themselves in any way. Instead, they apply the very method research has shown again (Karpicke, Butler, and Roediger 2009) and again (Brown 2014, ch. 1) to be almost completely useless: rereading and underlining sentences for later rereading. And most of them choose that method, even if they are taught that they don’t work
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This is why choosing an external system that forces us to deliberate practice and confronts us as much as possible with our lack of understanding or not-yet-learned information is such a smart move. We only have to make the conscious choice once
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10.5 Learn by Reading
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that the best-researched and most successful learning method is elaboration. It is very similar to what we do when we take smart notes and combine them with others, which is the opposite of mere reviewing (Stein et al. 1984)
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Elaboration means nothing other than really thinking about the meaning of what we read, how it could inform different
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questions and topics and how it could be combined with other knowledge.
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In fact, “Writing for Learning” is the name of an “elaboration method” (Gunel, Hand, and Prain 2007). But there is a caveat. Even though elaboration works verifiably well for deep understanding, it might not be the best choice if you just want to learn isolated encyclopaedic facts (Rivard 1994).
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The objection that it takes too much time to take notes and sort them into the slip-box is therefore short-sighted. Writing, taking notes and thinking about how ideas connect is exactly the kind of elaboration that is needed to learn. Not learning from what we read because we don’t take the time to elaborate on it is the real waste of time.
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There is a clear division of labour between the brain and the slip-box: The slip-box takes care of details and references and is a long-term memory resource that keeps information objectively unaltered. That allows the brain to focus on the gist, the deeper understanding and the bigger picture, and frees it up to be creative. Both the brain and the slip-box can focus on what they are best at
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11 Take Smart Notes
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11.1 Make a Career One Note at a Time
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More notes mean more possible connections, more ideas, more synergy between different projects and therefore a much higher degree of productivity.
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Luhmann’s slip-box contains about 90,000 notes, which sounds like an incredibly large number. But it only means that he wrote six notes a day from the day he started to work with his slip-box until he died.
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11.2 Think Outside the Brain
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As we write notes with an eye towards existing notes, we take more into account than the information that is already available in our internal memory. That is extremely important, because the internal memory retrieves information not in a rational or logical way, but according to psycho-logical rules.
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Philosophers, neuroscientists, educators and psychologists like to disagree in many different aspects on how the brain works. But they no longer disagree when it comes to the need for external scaffolding
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“Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible” is one of the key takeaways in a contemporary handbook of neuroscientists (Levy 2011, 290) Concluding the discussions in this book, Levy writes: “In any case, no matter how internal processes are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinely concerned with what enables human beings to perform the spectacular intellectual feats exhibited in science and other areas of systematic enquiry, as well as in the arts, they need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.” (Ibid.)
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Luhmann writes: “Somehow one has to mark differences, keep track of distinctions, either explicitly or implicitly in concepts,” because only if the connections are somehow fixed externally can they function as models or theories to give meaning and continuity for further thinking (Luhmann, 1992, 53).
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I took some literature notes collecting reasons how and why humans act so very differently when they experience scarcity. This was step one, done with an eye towards the argument of the book. I had questions in mind like: Is this convincing? What methods do they use? Which of the references are familiar?
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But the first question I asked myself when it came to writing the first permanent note for the slip-box was: What does this all mean for my own research and the questions I think about in my slip-box? This is just another way of asking: Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest?
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where do I turn to, to find answers to these questions? Correct: The first choice for further inquiry is the slip-box. Maybe there is already something on social inequality that helps me to answer these questions, or at least an indication of where to look.
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None of it needs to be discussed right away, especially as most of these ideas would require more research and reading. But there is also no reason not to write down these possible connections and come back to them later, if my research points me back to them.
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11.3 Learn by not Trying
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If we instead focus on “retrieval strength,” we instantly start to think strategically about what kind of cues should trigger the retrieval of a memory.
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What does help for true, useful learning is to connect a piece of information to as many meaningful contexts as possible, which is what we do when we connect our notes in the slip-box with other notes.
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Making these connections deliberately means building up a self-supporting network of interconnected ideas and facts that work reciprocally as cues for each other.
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Memory techniques are the fix for a rather artificial situation. When it comes to academic writing, we don’t have the need for this trick, as we can choose to build and think exclusively within meaningful contexts. Abstract information like bibliographic references can be stored externally – there is no benefit in knowing them by heart. Everything else better bear meaning.
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The first step of elaboration is to think enough about a piece of information so we are able to write about it. The second step is to think about what it means for other contexts as well.
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This is not so different from when elaboration is recommended as a “learning method.” As a method, it has been proven to be more successful than any other approach (McDaniel and Donnelly 1996).
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Barry S. Stein et al. summarises: “The results of several recent studies support the hypothesis that retention is facilitated by acquisition conditions that prompt people to elaborate information in a way that increases the distinctiveness of their memory representations.” (Stein et al. 1984, 522)
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“[he] may find it difficult at first to understand and remember that arteries have
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thick walls, are elastic, and do not have valves, whereas veins are less elastic, have thinner walls, and have valves” (ibid.). But by elaborating a little bit on this difference and asking the right questions, like “why?” the students can connect this knowledge with prior knowledge, like their understanding of pressure and the function of the heart.
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Learned right, which means understanding, which means connecting in a meaningful way to previous knowledge, information almost cannot be forgotten anymore and will be reliably retrieved if triggered by the right cues.
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Writing notes and sorting them into the slip-box is nothing other than an attempt to understand the wider meaning of something. The slip-box forces us to ask numerous elaborating questions: What does it mean? How does it connect to … ? What is the difference between … ? What is it similar to?
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That the slip-box is not sorted by topics is the precondition for actively building connections between notes. Connections can be made between
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heterogeneous notes – as long as the connection makes sense.
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The fact that too much order can impede learning has become more and more known (Carey 2014).
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11.4 Adding Permanent Notes to the Slip-Box The next step after writing the permanent notes is to add them to the slip-box. 1. Add a note to the slip-box either behind the note you directly refer to or, if you do not follow up on a specific note, just behind the last note in the slip-box. Number it consecutively. The Zettelkasten numbers the notes automatically. “New note” will just add a note with a new number. If you click “New note sequence,” the new note will be registered at the same time as the note that follows the note currently active on the screen. But you can always add notes “behind” other notes anytime later. Each note can follow multiple other notes and therefore be part of different note sequences. 2. Add links to other notes or links on other notes to your new note. 3. Make sure it can be found from the index; add an entry in the index if necessary or refer to it from a note that is connected to the index.
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4. Build a Latticework of Mental Models
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12 Develop Ideas
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“Every note is just an element in the network of references and back references in the system, from which it gains its quality.” (Luhmann 1992)
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Because the slip-box is not intended to be an encyclopaedia, but a tool to think with, we don’t need to worry about completeness. We don’t need to write anything down just to bridge a gap in a note sequence. We only write if it helps us with our own thinking.
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gaps will only become obvious in the next step, when we take the relevant notes for an argument out of the network of the slip-box and sort them into the linear order for the rough draft.
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12.1 Develop Topics
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In the Zettelkasten, keywords can easily be added to a note like tags and will then show up in the index. They should be chosen carefully and sparsely. Luhmann would add the number of one or two (rarely more) notes next to a keyword in the index (Schmidt 2013, 171).
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The reason he was so economical with notes per keyword and why we too should be very selective lies in the way the slip-box is used. Because it should not be used as an archive, where we just take out what we put in, but as a system to think with, the references between the notes are much more important than the references from the index to a single note. Focusing exclusively on the index would basically mean that we always know upfront what we are looking for we would have to have a fully developed plan in our heads. But liberating our brains from the task of organizing the notes is the main reason we use the slip-box in the first place
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The organisation of the notes is in the network of references in the slip-box, so all we need from the index are entry
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points.
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The quicker we get from the index to the concrete notes, the quicker we move our attention from mentally preconceived ideas towards the fact-rich level of interconnected content, where we can conduct a fact-based dialogue with the slip-box.
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Even though we will not get an overview of the whole slip-box (as we certainly will never get an overview of our whole internal memory), we can get an overview of a specific topic.
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The consideration of how to structure a topic, therefore, belongs on notes as well – and not on a metahierarchical level.
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We can provide ourselves with a (temporarily valid) overview over a topic or subtopic just by making another note. If we then link from the index to such a note, we have a good entry point. If the overview on this note ceases to correctly represent the state of a cluster or topic, or we decide it should be structured differently, we can write a new note with a better structure and update the respective link from the index.
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The archivist asks: Which keyword is the most fitting? A writer asks: In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note, even if I forget about it? It is a crucial difference.
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As writers, we approach the question of keywords differently. We look at our slip-box for already existing lines of thought and think about the questions and problems already on our minds to which a new note might contribute.
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By assigning this keyword, you might stumble upon already existing notes on capital allocation, which either help to answer these questions or trigger new ones.
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But maybe you are a political scientist and read this note as an answer to the question of why certain topics are discussed during an election and others not, or why it could be politically more sensible to promote easyto-visualise solutions over solutions that really work. Fitting keywords here might be “political strategies,” “elections” or “dysfunctionalities, political.”
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Keywords should always be assigned with an eye towards the topics you are working on or interested in, never by looking at the note in isolation. This is also why this process cannot be automated or delegated to a machine or program – it requires thinking.
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Assigning keywords is much more than just a bureaucratic act. It is a crucial part of the thinking process, which often leads to a deeper elaboration of the note itself and the connection to other notes
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making good cross-references is a matter of serious thinking and a crucial part of the development of thoughts
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Luhmann used four basic types of cross-references in his file-box (Schmidt 2013, 173f; Schmidt 2015, 165f). Only the first and last are relevant for the digital Zettelkasten, the other two are merely compensating for restrictions of the analogue pen and paper version. You don’t need to concern yourself with them if you use the digital program. 1. The first type of links are those on notes that are giving you the overview of a topic. These are notes directly referred to from the index and usually used as an entry point into a topic that has already developed to such a degree that an overview is needed or at least becomes helpful. On a note like this, you can collect links to other relevant notes to this topic or question, preferably with a short indication of what to find on these notes (one or two words or a short sentence is sufficient). This kind of note helps to structure thoughts and can be seen as an in-between step towards the development of a manuscript. Above all, they help orientate oneself within the slip-box. You will know when you need to write one. Luhmann collected up to 25 links to other notes on these kind of entry notes. They don’t have to be written in one go as links can be added over time, which again shows how topics can grow organically. What we think is relevant for a topic and what is not depends on our current understanding and should be taken quite seriously: It defines an idea as much as the facts it is based on. What we regard as being relevant for a topic and how we
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structure it will change over time. This change might lead to another note with a different, more adequate topic structure, which then can be seen as a comment on the previous note. Thankfully, it won’t make all the other notes redundant. As mentioned before: All we have to do is to change the entry in the index to this new note and/or indicate on the old note that we now consider a new structure more fitting. 2. A similar though less crucial kind of link collection is on those notes that give an overview of a local, physical cluster of the slip-box. This is only necessary if you work with pen and paper like Luhmann. While the first type of note gives an overview of a topic, regardless of where the notes are located within the slip-box, this type of note is a pragmatic way of keeping track of all the different topics discussed on the notes that are physically close together. As Luhmann put notes between notes to internally branch out subtopics and sub-subtopics, original lines of thoughts were often interrupted by hundreds of different notes. This second type of note keeps track of the original lines of thought. Obviously, we don’t need to worry about this if we work with the digital version. 3. Equally less relevant for the digital version are those links that indicate the note to which the current note is a follow-up and those links that indicate the note that follows on the current note. Again, this is only relevant to see which notes follow each other, even if they don’t physically stand behind each other anymore. The digital Zettelkasten automatically adds these kinds of backlinks and presents you the relevant notes in a note sequence. 4. The most common form of reference is plain note-to-note links. They have no function other than indicating a relevant connection between two individual notes. By linking two related notes regardless of where they are within the slip-box or within different contexts, surprising new lines of thought can be established. These note-to-note links are like the “weak links” (Granovetter 1973) of social relationships we have with acquaintances: even though they are usually not the ones we turn to first, they often can offer new and different perspectives.
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Comparing notes also helps us to detect contradictions, paradoxes or oppositions – important facilitators for insight. When we realise that we used to accept two contradicting ideas as equally true, we know that we have a problem – and problems are good because we now have something to solve.
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Albert Rothenberg suggests that the construction of oppositions is the most reliable way of generating new ideas (Rothenberg 1971; 1996; 2015).
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The slip-box not only confronts us with dis-confirming information, but also helps with what is known as the feature-positive effect (Allison and Messick 1988; Newman, Wolff, and Hearst 1980; Sainsbury 1971). This is the phenomenon in which we tend to overstate the importance of information that is (mentally) easily available to us and tilts our thinking towards the most recently acquired facts, not necessarily the most relevant ones.
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Just by working with the slip-box, we retrieve old ideas and facts on an irregular basis and connect them with other bits of information – very much how experts recommend we learn (Bjork 2011, 8; Kornell and Bjork 2008).
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Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, stresses the importance of having a broad theoretical toolbox – not to be a good academic, but to have a good, pragmatic grip on reality
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J- interesting to know the importance on “ways of thinking”
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He advocates looking out for the most powerful concepts in every discipline and to try to understand them so thoroughly that they become part of our thinking. The moment one starts to combine these mental models and attach one’s experiences to them, one cannot help but gain what he calls “worldly wisdom.”
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You would become the man with a hammer who sees nails everywhere (cf. Maslow, 1966, 15).
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J -why it’s good to deeply learn multiple disciplines
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You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.” (Munger 1994).
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A truly wise person is not someone who knows everything, but someone who is able to make sense of things by drawing from an extended resource of interpretation schemes
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The beauty of this approach is that we co-evolve with our slip-boxes: we build the same connections in our heads while we deliberately develop them in our slip-box – and make it easier to remember the facts as they now have a latticework we can attach them to.
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Helmut D. Sachs puts it like this: “By learning, retaining, and building on the retained basics, we are creating a rich web of associated information. The more we know, the more information (hooks) we have to connect new information to, the easier we can form long-term memories. […] Learning becomes fun. We have entered a virtuous circle of learning, and it seems as if our long-term memory capacity and speed are actually growing. On the other hand, if we fail to retain what we have learned, for example, by not using effective strategies, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn information that builds on earlier learning. More and more knowledge gaps become apparent. Since we can’t really connect new information to gaps, learning becomes an uphill battle that exhausts us and takes the fun out of learning. It seems as if we have reached the capacity limit of our brain and memory. Welcome to a vicious circle. Certainly, you would much rather be in a virtuous learning circle, so to remember what you have learned, you need to build effective long-term memory structures.” (Sachs 2013, 26) His recommendations for learning read almost like instructions for the slipbox: 1. Pay attention to what you want to remember. 2. Properly encode the information you want to keep. (This includes thinking about suitable cues.) 3. Practice recall. (Ibid., 31)
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To be able to play with ideas, we first have to liberate them from their original context by means of abstraction and re-specification. We did this when we took literature notes and translated them into the different contexts within the slip-box. Abstraction does not have a good reputation at the moment. It is the tangible, the concrete that is cheered for. Abstraction should indeed not be the final goal of thinking, but it is a necessary in-between step to make heterogeneous ideas compatible
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J- role of abstraction in slip box
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Make sure that you really see what you think you see and describe it as plainly and factually as possible. Double-check if necessary. That this isn’t as obvious as it sounds will become clearer by the fact that the ability to truly see what is in front of one’s eyes is often listed as a trait of experts. And that is easily explained by the fact that our perception does not follow the order of seeing first and interpreting second
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J- importance of writing unbiased notes
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To really understand a text is therefore a constant revision of our first interpretation. We have to train ourselves to get used to seeing this difference and to hold back our ingrained urge to jump to conclusions
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A good rule of thumb for working with the program is: Each note should fit onto the screen and there should be no need of scrolling.
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J- Putting restrictions on the Slip box process helps you keep to one idea per note
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If we accompany every step of our work with the question, “What is interesting about this?” and everything we read with the question, “What is so relevant about this that it is worth noting down?” we do not just choose information according to our interest. By elaborating on what we encounter, we also discover aspects we didn’t know anything about before and therefore develop our interests along the way. It would be quite sad if we did not change our interests during research.
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J-developing a vault that contains highly relevant decontextualized notes allows one to quickly adapt to changes of interest one a critical mass is reached with the vault
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Organizing the work so we can steer our projects in the most promising direction not only allows us to stay focused for longer, but also to have more fun – and that is a fact (Gilbert 2006)
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The key is to structure the draft visibly. It is not so much about deciding once and for all what to write in which chapter or paragraph, but what does not need to be written in a particular part of the manuscript.
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J- Bringing slip tox netes together for publishing
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Another key point: Try working on different manuscripts at the same time. While the slip-box is already helpful to get one project done, its real strength comes into play when we start working on multiple projects at the same time. The slip-box is in some way what the chemical industry calls “verbund.” This is a setup in which the inevitable by-product of one production line becomes the resource for another, which again produces by-products that can be used in other processes and so on, until a network of production lines becomes so efficiently intertwined that there is no chance of an isolated factory competing with it anymore.
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J- The slipbox is most effective when working on multiple projects at once.
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Remember: Luhmann’s answer to the question of how one person could be so productive was that he never forced himself to do anything and only did what came easily to him. “When I am stuck for one moment, I leave it and do something else.” When he was asked what else he did when he was stuck, his answer was: “Well, writing other books. I always work on different manuscripts at the same time. With this method, to work on different things simultaneously, I never encounter any mental blockages.” (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek 1987, 125–55)
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The lesson to draw is to be generally sceptical about planning, especially if it is merely focused on the outcome, not on the actual work and the steps required to achieve a goal. While it doesn’t help to imagine oneself the great author of a successful and timely finished paper, it does make a difference if we have a realistic idea about what needs to be done to get there in our minds. We know from sports that it doesn’t help when athletes imagine themselves as winners of a race, but it makes a big difference if they imagine all the training that is necessary to be able to win.
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J- it’s better to visualise steps to a goal than the goal itself
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Once we do some research, we may discover that our initial idea was not as good as we thought; once we read something, it is likely that we will discover something else to read, because that is how we discover literature; once we start writing down our arguments, it is likely that we will realise that we need to take something else into account, change our initial ideas or go back to an article we might not have understood well enough. None of this is unusual, but all of this will mess up any grand plans
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J- Research takes much longer than we imagine it to take
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But the biggest difference lies in the task you are facing to start with. It is much easier to get started if the next step is as feasible as “writing a note,” “collect what is interesting in this paper” or “turning this series of notes into a paragraph” than if we decide to spend the next days with a vague and illdefined task like “keep working on that overdue paper.”
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J-another reason it is effective to think in terms of tasks rather than goals
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Ernest Hemingway was once asked how often he rewrote his first draft. His answer: “It depends. I rewrote the ending of ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.” “Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?” the interviewer asked. “Getting the words right,” Hemingway replied (Paris Review, 1956). If there is one piece of advice that is worth giving, it is to keep in mind that the first draft is only the first draft. Slavoj Žižek said in an interview[41] that he wouldn’t be able to write a single sentence if he didn’t start by convincing himself he was only writing down some ideas for himself, and that maybe he could turn it into something publishable later.
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J - Start with assumption that your first draft will not make final copy that you publish
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very few give guidance for the everyday note-taking that takes up the biggest chunk of our writing
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The available books fall roughly into two categories. The first teaches the formal requirements: style, structure or how to quote correctly. And then there are the psychological ones, which teach you how to get it done without mental breakdowns and before your supervisor or publisher starts refusing to move the deadline once more. What they all have in common, though, is that they start with a blank screen or sheet of paper.
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But by doing this, they ignore the main part, namely note-taking, failing to understand that improving the organisation of all writing makes a difference. They seem to forget that the process of writing starts much, much earlier than that blank screen and that the actual writing down of the argument is the smallest part of its development.
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Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work. And maybe that is the reason why we rarely think about this writing, the everyday writing, the note-taking and draft-making. Like breathing, it is vital to what we do, but because we do it constantly, it escapes our attention. But while even the best breathing technique would probably not make much of a difference to our writing, any improvement in the way we organise the everyday writing, how we take notes of what we encounter and what we do with them, will make all the difference for the moment we do face the blank page/screen – or rather not,
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as those who take smart notes will never have the problem of a blank screen again.
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There is another reason that note-taking flies mostly under the radar: We don’t experience any immediate negative feedback if we do it badly. But without an immediate experience of failure, there is also not much demand for help.
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If we take notes unsystematically, inefficiently or simply wrong, we might not even realise it until we are in the midst of a deadline panic and wonder why there always seem to be a few who get a lot of good writing done and still have time for a coffee every time we ask them.
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What can we do differently in the weeks, months or even years before we face the blank page that will get us into the best possible position to write a great paper easily?
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Very few people struggle with
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their papers because they don’t know how to cite correctly or because they suffer from a psychological issue that keeps them from writing. Few struggle to text their friends or write emails. The rules of citation can be looked up and there is no way that there are as many mental issues as papers postponed. Most people struggle for much more mundane reasons, and one is the myth of the blank page itself. They struggle because they believe, as they are made to believe, that writing starts with a blank page. If you believe that you have indeed nothing at hand to fill it, you have a very good reason to panic. Just having it all in your head is not enough, as getting it down on paper is the hard bit.
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-07-24 04:14
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That is why good, productive writing is based on good note-taking. Getting something that is already written into another written piece is incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrieve it from there.
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-07-24 04:14
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The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic.
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-07-24 04:15
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vast majority of self-help books and study guides can only help you to close the barn door correctly and according to official rules – not just a moment, but many months after the horse has already escaped
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-07-24 04:16
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In fact, there is no measurable correlation between a high IQ and academic success – at least not north of 120. Yes, a certain intellectual capacity helps to get into academia, and if you struggle severely with an IQ test, it is likely that you will struggle to solve academic problems, too. But once you are in, a superior IQ will neither help you to distinguish yourself nor protect you from failure. What does make a significant difference along the whole intelligence spectrum is something else: how much self-discipline or self-control one uses to approach the tasks at hand (Duckworth and Seligman, 2005; Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone, 2004).
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Annotation on page 10 at 2023-07-24 04:16
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It is not so important who you are, but what you do.
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Annotation on page 11 at 2023-07-24 04:16
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Self-discipline or self-control is not that easy to achieve with willpower alone.
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Annotation on page 11 at 2023-07-24 04:17
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Willpower is, as far as we know today,[2] a limited resource that depletes quickly and is also not that much up for improvement over the long term (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, and Tice, 1998; Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister, 1998; Schmeichel, Vohs, and Baumeister, 2003; Moller, 2006).
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Annotation on page 11 at 2023-07-24 04:17
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We know today that self-control and self-discipline have much more to do with our environment than with ourselves (cf. Thaler, 2015, ch. 2) – and the environment can be changed.
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Annotation on page 11 at 2023-07-24 04:17
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Nobody needs willpower not to eat a chocolate bar when there isn’t one around. And nobody needs willpower to do something they wanted to do anyway. Every task that is interesting, meaningful and well-defined will be done, because there is no conflict between longand short-term interests. Having a meaningful and well-defined task beats willpower every time. Not having willpower, but not having to use willpower indicates that you set yourself up for success. This is where the organisation of writing and notetaking comes into play.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:18
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But moreover, it describes how he implemented them into his workflow so he could honestly say: “I never force myself to do anything I don’t feel like. Whenever I am stuck, I do something else.” A good structure allows you to do that, to move seamlessly from one task to another – without threatening the whole arrangement or losing sight of the bigger picture.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:18
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A good structure is something you can trust. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:19
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By breaking down the amorphous task of “writing a paper” into small and clearly separated tasks, you can focus on one thing at a time, complete each in one go and move on to the next one (Chapter 3.1). A good structure enables flow, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as the work becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Something like that does not happen by chance.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:20
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As students, researchers and nonfiction writers, we have so much more freedom than others to choose what we want to spend our time on. Still, we often struggle the most with procrastination and motivation.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:20
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It is certainly not the lack of interesting topics, but rather the employment of problematic work routines that seems to take charge of us instead of allowing us to steer the process in the right direction.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:20
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A good, structured workflow puts us back in charge and increases our freedom to do the right thing at the right time.
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:21
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Having a clear structure to work in is completely different from making plans about something
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Annotation on page 12 at 2023-07-24 04:21
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If you make a plan, you impose a structure on yourself; it makes you inflexible. To keep going according to plan, you have to push yourself and employ willpower. This is not only demotivating, but also unsuitable for an open-ended process like research, thinking or studying
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:21
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in general, where we have to adjust our next steps with every new insight, understanding or achievement – which we ideally have on a regular basis and not just as an exception.
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:22
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How do you plan for insight, which, by definition, cannot be anticipated?
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:22
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It is a huge misunderstanding that the only alternative to planning is aimless messing around. The challenge is to structure one’s workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward. We do not want to make ourselves dependent on a plan that is threatened by the unexpected, like a new idea, discovery – or insight.
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:23
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Unfortunately, even universities try to turn students into planners
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:23
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Sure, planning will get you through your exams if you stick to them and push through. But it will not make you an expert in the art of learning/writing/note-taking (there is research on that: cf. Chapter 1.3).
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:23
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Planners are also unlikely to continue with their studies after they finish their examinations. They are rather glad it is over.
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:24
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Experts, on the other hand, would not even consider voluntarily giving up what has already proved to be rewarding and fun: learning in a way that generates real insight, is accumulative and sparks new ideas.
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Annotation on page 13 at 2023-07-24 04:25
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It takes them longer to find a good idea to write about because they know from experience that the first idea is rarely that great and good questions do not fall into their laps. They spend more time in the library to get a better overview of the literature, which leads to more reading, which means that they have to juggle more information. Having read more does not automatically mean having more ideas
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:26
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All that means is that a system is needed to keep track of the everincreasing pool of information, which allows one to combine different ideas in an intelligent way with the aim of generating new ideas.
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:27
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Poor students do not have any of these problems. As long as they stick within the boundaries of their discipline and read only as much as they are told to (or less), no serious external system is required and writing can be done by sticking with the usual formulas of “how to write a scientific paper.” In fact, poor students often feel more successful (until they are tested), because they don’t experience much self-doubt. In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger and Dunning, 1999).
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:27
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That means that those who are not very good at something tend to be overly confident, while those who have made an effort tend to underestimate their abilities
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:28
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Good students, on the other hand, constantly raise the bar for themselves as they focus on what they haven’t learned and mastered yet.
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:28
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This is why high achievers who have had a taste of the vast amount of knowledge out there are likely to suffer from what psychologists call imposter syndrome, the feeling that you are not really up to the job, even though, of all people, they are (Clance and Imes 1978; Brems et al. 1994).
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:29
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Good Solutions are Simple – and Unexpected
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:29
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There is no need to build a complex system and there is no need to reorganise everything you already have. You can start working and developing ideas immediately by taking smart notes.
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Annotation on page 14 at 2023-07-24 04:29
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Complexity is an issue, though. Even if you don’t aim to develop a grand theory and just want to keep track of what you read, organise your notes and develop your thoughts, you will have to deal with an increasingly complex
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-07-24 04:29
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body of content, especially because it is not just about collecting thoughts, but about making connections and sparking new ideas
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-07-24 04:30
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Most people try to reduce complexity by separating what they have into smaller stacks, piles or separate folders. They sort their notes by topics and sub-topics, which makes it look less complex, but quickly becomes very complicated. Plus, it reduces the likelihood of building and finding surprising connections between the notes themselves, which means a trade-off between its usability and usefulness.
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-07-24 04:30
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we don’t have to choose between usability and usefulness. Quite the contrary. The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible and to follow a few basic principles
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-07-24 04:31
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The simplicity of the structure allows complexity to build up where we want it: on the content level. There is quite extensive empirical and logical research on this phenomenon (for an overview: cf. Sull and Eisenhardt, 2015). Taking smart notes is as simple as it gets.
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-07-24 04:33
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The first idea lies at the heart of this book and is the technique of the simple slip-box.
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Annotation on page 15 at 2023-07-24 04:33
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Even the best tool will not improve your productivity considerably if you don’t change your daily routines the tool is embedded in,
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-07-24 04:33
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The new way of working might feel artificial at first and not necessarily like what you intuitively would do. That is normal.
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-07-24 04:33
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But as soon as you get used to taking smart notes, it will feel so much more natural that you will wonder how you were ever able to get anything done before.
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-07-24 04:34
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Routines require simple, repeatable tasks that can become automatic and fit together seamlessly (cf. Mata, Todd, and Lippke, 2010).
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-07-24 04:34
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The importance of an overarching workflow is the great insight of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (Allen, 2001).
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-07-24 04:35
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The principle of GTD is to collect everything that needs to be taken care of in one place and process it in a standardised way.
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-07-24 04:35
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This doesn’t necessarily mean that we actually do everything we once intended to do, but it forces us to make clear choices and regularly check if our tasks still fit into the bigger picture. Only if we know that everything is taken care of, from the important to the trivial, can we let go and focus on what is right in front of us. Only if nothing else is lingering in our working memory and taking up valuable mental resources can we experience what Allen calls a “mind like water” - the state where we can focus on the work right in front of us without getting distracted by competing thoughts.
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Annotation on page 16 at 2023-07-24 04:36
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The principle is simple but holistic. It is not a quick fix or a fancy tool. It doesn’t do the work for you. But it does provide a structure for our everyday work that deals with the fact that most distractions do not come so much from our environment, but our own minds. Unfortunately, David Allen’s technique cannot simply be transferred to the task of insightful writing. The first reason is that GTD relies on clearly defined objectives, whereas insight cannot be predetermined by definition. We usually start with rather vague ideas that are bound to change until they become clearer in the course of our research (cf. Ahrens, 2014, 134f.). Writing that aims at insight must therefore be organised in a much more open manner. The other reason is that GTD requires projects to be broken down into smaller, concrete “next steps.”
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-07-24 07:19
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Writing is not a linear process
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-07-24 07:19
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We constantly have to jump back and forth between different tasks. It wouldn’t make any sense to micromanage ourselves on that level. Zooming out to the bigger picture does not really help, either, because then we have next steps like “writing a page.” That does not really help with navigating the things you have to do to write a page, often a whole bunch of other things that can take an hour or a month. One has to navigate mostly by sight.
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-07-24 07:19
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These are probably the reasons why GTD never really caught on in academia, although it is very successful in business and has a good reputation among the self-employed.
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-07-24 07:21
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When it comes to writing, everything, from research to proofreading, is closely connected.
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-07-24 07:21
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All the little steps must be linked in a way that will enable you to go seamlessly from one task to another, but still be kept separate enough to enable us to flexibly do what needs to be done in any given situation. And this is the other insight of David Allen: Only if you can trust your system, only if you really know that everything will be taken care of, will your brain let go and let you focus on the task at hand.
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Annotation on page 17 at 2023-07-24 07:21
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That is why we need a note-taking system that is as comprehensive as GTD, but one that is suitable for the open-ended process of writing, learning and thinking. Enter the slip-box
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Annotation on page 19 at 2023-07-24 07:28
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In Germany, a professor traditionally starts with a public lecture presenting his or her projects, and Luhmann, too, was asked what his main research project will be. His answer would become famous. He laconically stated: “My project: theory of society. Duration: 30 years. Costs: zero” (Luhmann, 1997, 11). In sociology, a “theory of society” is the mother of all projects. When he finished the final chapter, almost exactly 29 and a half years later, as a two-volume book with the title “The Society of Society” (1997), it stirred up the scientific community.[3]
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Annotation on page 19 at 2023-07-24 07:28
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tly
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Annotation on page 19 at 2023-07-24 07:29
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It was a radical new theory that not only changed sociology, but stirred heated discussions in philosophy, education, political theory and psychology as well. Not everyone was able to follow the discussions, though. What he did was unusually sophisticated, very different and highly complex
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Annotation on page 19 at 2023-07-24 07:29
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In 30 years, he published 58 books and hundreds of articles, translations not included. Many became classics in their respective fields. Even after his death, about half a dozen more books on diverse subjects like religion, education or politics were published in his name – based on almost finished manuscripts lying around in his office. There are more than a few colleagues I know who would give a lot to be as productive in their whole lifetime as Luhmann was after his death.
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-07-24 07:30
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When he was asked if he missed anything in his life, he famously answered: “If I want something, it’s more time. The only thing that really is a nuisance is the lack of time.” (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek, 1987, 139)
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-07-24 07:31
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After doing extensive research on Luhmann’s workflow, the German sociologist Johannes F.K. Schmidt concluded his productivity could only be explained by his unique working technique (Schmidt 2013, 168).
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-07-24 07:31
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That technique has never been a secret – Luhmann was always open about it. He regularly mentioned the slip-box as the reason for his productivity
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-07-24 07:32
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From as early as 1985, his standard answer to the question of how anyone could be so productive was: “I, of course, do not think everything by myself. It happens mainly within the slip-box” (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek 1987, 142).
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-07-24 07:32
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But few gave the slip-box and the way he worked with it a closer look, dismissing his explanation as the modest understatement of a genius.
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-07-24 07:33
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But what is even more impressive than the sheer number of publications or the outstanding quality of his writing is the fact that he seemed to achieve all this with almost no real effort.
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Annotation on page 20 at 2023-07-24 07:33
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He not only stressed that he never forced himself to do something he didn’t feel like, he even said: “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f.)[4]
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-07-24 07:35
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The best way to maintain the feeling of being in control is to stay in control. And to stay in control, it’s better to keep your options open during the writing process rather than limit yourself to your first idea.
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-07-24 07:35
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It is in the nature of writing, especially insight-oriented writing, that questions change, the material we work with turns out to be very different from the one imagined or that new ideas emerge, which might change our whole perspective on what we do
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-07-24 07:35
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Only if the work is set up in a way that is flexible enough to allow these small and constant adjustments can we keep our interest, motivation and work aligned – which is the precondition to effortless or almost effortless work.
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-07-24 07:36
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Luhmann was able to focus on the important things right in front of him, pick up quickly where he left off and stay in control of the process because the structure of his work allowed him to do this. If we work in an environment that is flexible enough to accommodate our work rhythm, we don’t need to struggle with resistance.
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-07-24 07:37
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Studies on highly successful people have proven again and again that success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place (cf. Neal et al. 2012; Painter et al. 2002; Hearn et al. 1998).
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Annotation on page 21 at 2023-07-24 07:37
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Instead of struggling with adverse dynamics, highly productive people deflect resistance, very much like judo champions. This is not just about having the right mindset, it is also about having the right workflow. It is the way Luhmann and his slip-box worked together that allowed him to move freely and flexibly between different tasks and levels of thinking. It is about having the right tools and knowing how to use them – and very few understand that you need both.
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Annotation on page 22 at 2023-07-24 07:38
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As far as the technology is concerned, there is no secret. It has all been in the open for more than three decades now. So why is not everybody using a slip-box and working effortlessly towards success? Is it because it is too complicated?
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Annotation on page 22 at 2023-07-24 07:39
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1. Until very recently, when the first results from the research on the file system were published, some crucial misunderstandings prevailed about how Luhmann actually worked, which led to disappointing results for many who tried to emulate the system. The main misunderstanding stems from an isolated focus on the slip-box and a neglect of the actual workflow in which it is embedded. 2. Almost everything that is published about this system was only accessible in German and was almost exclusively discussed within a small group of devoted sociologists who specialised in Luhmann’s theory of social systems – hardly the kind of critical mass that would draw much attention. 3. The third and maybe the most important reason is the very fact that it is simple. Intuitively, most people do not expect much from simple ideas. They rather assume that impressive results must have equally impressively complicated means.
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Annotation on page 22 at 2023-07-24 07:40
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How does the slip-box, the heart of this system, work?
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Annotation on page 23 at 2023-07-24 07:40
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Strictly speaking, Luhmann had two slip-boxes: a bibliographical one, which contained the references and brief notes on the content of the literature, and the main one in which he collected and generated his ideas, mainly in response to what he read. The notes were written on index cards and stored in wooden boxes. Whenever he read something, he would write the bibliographic information on one side of a card and make brief notes about the content on the other side (Schmidt 2013, 170). These notes would end up in the bibliographic slip-box. In a second step, shortly after, he would look at his brief notes and think about their relevance for his own thinking and writing. He then would turn to the main slip-box and write his ideas, comments and thoughts on new pieces of paper, using only one for each idea and restricting himself to one side of the paper, to make it easier to read them later without having to take them out of the box. He kept them usually brief enough to make one idea fit on a single sheet, but would sometimes add another note to extend a thought.
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Annotation on page 23 at 2023-07-24 07:41
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He usually wrote his notes with an eye towards already existing notes in the slip-box.
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Annotation on page 23 at 2023-07-24 07:42
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And while the notes on the literature were brief, he wrote them with great care, not much different from his style in the final manuscript: in full sentences and with explicit references to the literature from which he drew his material. More often than not, a new note would directly follow up on another note and would become part of a longer chain of notes. He then would add references to notes somewhere else in the slip-box, some of them which were located nearby, others in completely different areas and contexts. Some were directly related and read more like comments, others contained not-so-obvious connections. Rarely would a note stay in isolation.
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Annotation on page 23 at 2023-07-24 07:43
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The
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Annotation on page 23 at 2023-07-24 07:43
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The trick is that he did not organise his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers
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Annotation on page 23 at 2023-07-24 07:43
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The numbers bore no meaning and were only there to identify each note permanently. If a new note was relevant or directly referred to an already existing note, such as a comment,
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Annotation on page 24 at 2023-07-24 07:44
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correction or addition, he added it directly behind the previous note. If the existing note had the number 22, the new note would become note number 23. If 23 already existed, he named the new note 22a. By alternating numbers and letters, with some slashes and commas in between, he was able to branch out into as many strings of thought as he liked. For example, a note about causality and systems theory carried the number 21/3d7a7 following a note with the number 21/3d7a6.
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Annotation on page 24 at 2023-07-24 07:46
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But, as I will explain later, they are quite different and it would be rather misleading to think of his slip-box as a personal Wikipedia or a database on paper.
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Annotation on page 24 at 2023-07-24 07:47
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By adding these links between notes, Luhmann was able to add the same note to different contexts. While other systems start with a preconceived order of topics, Luhmann developed topics bottom up, then added another note to his slip-box, on which he would sort a topic by sorting the links of the relevant other notes
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Annotation on page 24 at 2023-07-24 07:47
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The last element in his file system was an index, from which he would refer to one or two notes that would serve as a kind of entry point into a line of thought or topic. Notes with a sorted collection of links are, of course, good entry points.
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Annotation on page 24 at 2023-07-24 07:48
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We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains
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Annotation on page 26 at 2023-07-24 07:56
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Writing these notes is also not the main work.
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Annotation on page 26 at 2023-07-24 07:57
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Thinking is. Reading is. Understanding and coming up with ideas is. And this is how it is supposed to be. The notes are just the tangible outcome of it. All you have to do is to have a pen in your hand while you are doing what you are doing anyway (or a keyboard under your fingers). Writing notes accompanies the main work and, done right, it helps with it. Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have.
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Annotation on page 26 at 2023-07-24 07:58
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Notes build up while you think, read, understand and generate ideas, because you have to have a pen in your hand if you want to think, read, understand and generate ideas properly anyway
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Annotation on page 26 at 2023-07-24 07:58
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If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words. Thinking takes place as much on paper as in your own head. “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible,” neuroscientist Neil Levy concludes in the introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, summarizing decades of research
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Annotation on page 26 at 2023-07-24 08:01
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to translate it into your own words. Thinking takes place as much on paper as in your own head. “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make
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Annotation on page 27 at 2023-07-24 08:03
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Writing a paper step by step
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Annotation on page 27 at 2023-07-24 08:04
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1. Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write with to capture every idea that pops into your mind. Don’t worry too much about how you write it down or what you write it on. These are fleeting notes, mere reminders of what is in your head. They should not cause any distraction. Put them into one place, which you define as your inbox, and process them later. I usually have a simple notebook with me, but I am happy with napkins or receipts if nothing else is at hand. Sometimes I leave a voice record on my phone. If your thoughts are already sorted and you have the time, you can skip this step and write your idea directly down as a proper, permanent note for your slip-box. 2. Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be extra selective with quotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean. Keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place – your reference system. 3. Make permanent notes. Now turn to your slip-box. Go through the notes you made in step one or two (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how they relate to what is relevant for your own research, thinking or interests. This can soon be done by looking into the slipbox – it only contains what interests you anyway. The idea is not to collect,
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Annotation on page 28 at 2023-07-24 08:03
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but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions. Does the new information contradict, correct, support or add to what you already have (in the slip-box or on your mind)? Can you combine ideas to generate something new? What questions are triggered by them? Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible. Throw away the fleeting notes from step one and put the literature notes from step two into your reference system. You can forget about them now. All that matters is going into the slip-box. 4. Now add your new permanent notes to the slip-box by: a) Filing each one behind one or more related notes (with a program, you can put one note “behind” multiple notes; if you use pen and paper like Luhmann, you have to decide where it fits best and add manual links to the other notes). Look to which note the new one directly relates or, if it does not relate directly to any other note yet, just file it behind the last one. b) Adding links to related notes. c) Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to the index. 5. Develop your topics, questions and research projects bottom up from within the system. See what is there, what is missing and what questions arise. Read more to challenge and strengthen your arguments and change and develop your arguments according to the new information you are learning about. Take more notes, develop ideas further and see where things will take you. Just follow your interest and always take the path that promises the most insight. Build upon what you have. Even if you don’t have anything in your slip-box yet, you never start from scratch – you already have ideas on your mind to be tested, opinions to be challenged and questions to be answered. Do not brainstorm for a topic. Look into the slip-box instead to see where chains of notes have developed and ideas have been built up to clusters. Don’t cling to an idea if another, more promising one gains momentum. The more you become interested in something, the more you will read and think
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Annotation on page 29 at 2023-07-24 08:03
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about it, the more notes you will collect and the more likely it is that you will generate questions from it. It might be exactly what you were interested in from the beginning, but it is more likely that your interests will have changed – that is what insight does. 6. After a while, you will have developed ideas far enough to decide on a topic to write about. Your topic is now based on what you have, not based on an unfounded idea about what the literature you are about to read might provide. Look through the connections and collect all the relevant notes on this topic (most of the relevant notes will already be in partial order), copy them onto your “desktop”[6] and bring them in order. Look for what is missing and what is redundant. Don’t wait until you have everything together. Rather, try ideas out and give yourself enough time to go back to reading and note-taking to improve your ideas, arguments and their structure. 7. Turn your notes into a rough draft. Don’t simply copy your notes into a manuscript. Translate them into something coherent and embed them into the context of your argument while you build your argument out of the notes at the same time. Detect holes in your argument, fill them or change your argument. 8. Edit and proofread your manuscript. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder and turn to the next manuscript.
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Annotation on page 29 at 2023-07-24 08:13
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These are the steps, presented as if you will write only one paper/article at a time. In reality, you never work on just one idea, but many ideas in different stages at the same time. And that is where the system plays out its real strengths
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Annotation on page 30 at 2023-07-24 08:16
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Spending the little extra time to add them to your system will make all the difference, because the accidental encounters make up the majority of what we learn.
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Annotation on page 30 at 2023-07-24 08:17
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Imagine if we went through life learning only what we planned to learn or being explicitly taught. I doubt we would have even learned to speak. Each added bit of information, filtered only by our interest, is a contribution to our future understanding, thinking and writing. And the best ideas are usually the ones we haven’t anticipated anyway.
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Annotation on page 30 at 2023-07-24 08:17
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Most people follow different lines of thought at the same time.
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Annotation on page 30 at 2023-07-24 08:17
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They might focus for a while on one idea, but then leave it alone for another while until they see how to proceed further. It is helpful then to be able to pick up on another idea now and go back to the earlier thought later. It is much more realistic to keep this flexibility and you don’t have to worry about starting all over.
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Annotation on page 31 at 2023-07-24 08:22
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There is this story where NASA tried to figure out how to make a ballpoint pen that works in space. If you have ever tried to use a ballpoint pen over your head, you have probably realised it is gravity that keeps the ink flowing. After a series of prototypes, several test runs and tons of money invested, NASA developed a fully functional gravity-independent pen, which pushes the ink onto the paper by means of compressed nitrogen. According to this story, the Russians faced the same problem. So they used pencils (De Bono, 1998, 141).
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Annotation on page 31 at 2023-07-24 08:22
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The slip-box follows the Russian model: Focus on the essentials, don’t complicate things unnecessarily.
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Annotation on page 31 at 2023-07-24 08:22
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Academic writing in itself is not a complicated process that requires a variety of complicated tools, but is in constant danger of being clogged with unnecessary distractions. Unfortunately, most students collect and embrace over time a variety of learning and note-taking techniques, each promising to make something easier, but combined have the opposite effect.
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Annotation on page 32 at 2023-07-24 08:25
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The Tool Box
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Annotation on page 32 at 2023-07-24 08:25
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We need four tools: · Something to write with and something to write on (pen and paper will do) · A reference management system (the best programs are free) · The slip-box (the best program is free) · An editor (whatever works best for you: very good ones are free)
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Annotation on page 32 at 2023-07-24 08:25
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You need something to capture ideas whenever and wherever they pop into your head. Whatever you use, it should not require any thoughts, attention or multiple steps to write it down
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Annotation on page 32 at 2023-07-24 08:26
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It can be a notebook, a napkin, an app on your phone or iPad. These notes are not meant to be stored permanently. They will be deleted or chucked soon anyway. They only function as a reminder of a thought and are not meant to capture the thought itself, which requires time to phrase proper sentences and check facts. I recommend having pen and paper with you at all times. It is really hard to beat a notebook in its simplicity. If you use other tools, make sure everything ends up in one place, a central inbox or something like that, where you can process it soon, ideally within a day.
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Annotation on page 32 at 2023-07-24 08:26
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The reference system has two purposes:
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Annotation on page 32 at 2023-07-24 08:26
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To collect the references (duh) and the notes you take during your reading. I strongly recommend using a free program like Zotero, which allows you to make new entries via
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Annotation on page 33 at 2023-07-24 08:26
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browser plugins or just by entering the ISBN or digital object identifier (DOI) number. Zotero also can be integrated into Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and NeoOffice, which allows you to insert quotations without actually typing in the reference. That not only makes things easier, you also mitigate the risk of messing things up when you add, edit or delete additional references. You can also easily change the format according to the standards required by your professors or the journal you write for. You can add notes to each entry – but it would also be fine to write your notes by hand and link them to the reference if you prefer to write by hand at this stage. In that case, just give the notes a standardised title like “AuthorYear” and keep them in alphabetical order in one place. You can download Zotero for free at zotero.org (Windows, Mac and Linux). You will find the links to all recommended programs on takesmartnotes.com.[10] If you prefer or already work with another, equally simple program, there is no reason not to use that.
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Annotation on page 33 at 2023-07-24 08:28
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The slip-box.
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Annotation on page 33 at 2023-07-24 08:28
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Some prefer the old-fashioned pen and paper version in a wooden box. That’s fine – computers can only speed up a relatively minor part of the work anyway, like adding links and formatting references. They can’t speed up the main part of the work, which is thinking, reading and understanding. All you would need are sheets of paper about the size of a postcard (Luhmann used the DIN A6 size, 148 x 105 mm or 5.83 x 4.13 inches) and a box to keep them in. And even though there are clear benefits of handwriting (cf. below chapter 3.2.1), I recommend using the digital version, if only for mobility. Even though you could basically emulate the slip-box with any program that allows setting links and tagging (like Evernote or a Wiki), I strongly recommend using Daniel Lüdecke’s Zettelkasten. It is the only program I know that really implements the principles behind Luhmann’s system and is at the same time simple and easy to use. It is free and available for different operating systems. You can download it from zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de (please consider sending a donation to the developer if you like it).
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Annotation on page 33 at 2023-07-24 08:30
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the editor:
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Annotation on page 33 at 2023-07-24 08:30
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If you use Zotero, I recommend using one of the editors it is compatible with (Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice or NeoOffice), because it makes life a lot easier if you don’t have to type in every reference manually. Except for that, everything works fine – no
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Annotation on page 34 at 2023-07-24 08:31
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editor can improve an argument. If you have pen and paper, an editor, your slip-box and reference system at hand, you are ready to go.
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Annotation on page 35 at 2023-07-24 08:33
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If we try to use a tool without putting any thought into the way we work with it, even the best tool would not be of much help.
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Annotation on page 35 at 2023-07-24 08:33
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The slip-box, for example, would most likely be used as an archive for notes – or worse: a graveyard for thoughts (cf. Hollier 2005, 40 on Mallarmé’s index cards).
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Annotation on page 36 at 2023-07-24 08:35
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THE FOUR UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES
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Annotation on page 37 at 2023-07-24 08:35
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Writing Is the Only Thing That Matters
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Annotation on page 37 at 2023-07-24 08:38
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Writing is what follows: In the beginning stands the question to be answered, followed by an overview of the literature, the discussion of it and the conclusion.
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Annotation on page 37 at 2023-07-24 08:38
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This, according to this thinking, prepares you for doing independent research. Alas, it does not. If you become successful in your research, it was not because you learned to approach writing in this way, but despite it.
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Annotation on page 37 at 2023-07-24 08:39
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Studying does not prepare students for independent research. It is independent research. Nobody starts from scratch and everybody is already able to think for themselves. Studying, done properly, is research, because it is about gaining insight that cannot be anticipated and will be shared within the scientific community under public scrutiny. There is no such thing as private knowledge in academia.
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Annotation on page 37 at 2023-07-24 08:39
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op
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Annotation on page 37 at 2023-07-24 08:41
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a fact no one can reproduce is no fact at all.
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Annotation on page 37 at 2023-07-24 08:41
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Making something public always means to write it down so it can be read. There is no such thing as a history of unwritten ideas.
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-24 08:41
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School is different.
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-24 08:41
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Pupils are usually not encouraged to follow their own learning paths, question and discuss everything the teacher is teaching and move on to another topic if something does not promise to generate interesting insight. The teacher is there for the pupils to learn.
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-25 07:50
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The criteria for a convincing argument are always the same,
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-25 07:50
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regardless of who the author is or the status of the publisher: They have to be coherent and based on facts. Truth does not belong to anyone; it is the outcome of the scientific exchange of written ideas. This is why the presentation and the production of knowledge cannot be separated, but are rather two sides of the same coin (Peters and Schäfer 2006, 9).
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-25 07:52
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Working as if nothing else counts than writing does not mean spending more time writing at the expense of everything else.
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-25 07:52
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Only if we compartmentalise our work into different, isolated tasks will it seem like focusing on writing reduces the time we spend on other tasks. But it does not mean to read less, for this is the main source of the writing material. It doesn’t mean to attend fewer lectures or seminars, because they provide you with the ideas to write about and questions worth answering.
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-25 07:52
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Attending lectures is also one of the best ways to get an idea about the current state of research, not to mention the ability to ask and discuss questions
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Annotation on page 38 at 2023-07-25 07:52
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Focusing on writing also doesn’t mean to stop giving presentations or finding other ways
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Annotation on page 39 at 2023-07-25 07:53
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of making your thoughts public. Where else could you get feedback for your ideas?
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Annotation on page 39 at 2023-07-25 08:02
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You quickly learn to distinguish good-sounding arguments from actual good ones, as you will have to think them through whenever you try to write them down and connect them with your previous knowledge. It will change the way you read as well: You will become more focused on the most relevant aspects, knowing that you cannot write down everything. You will read in a more engaged way, because you cannot rephrase anything in your own words if you don’t understand what it is about. By doing this, you will elaborate on the meaning, which will make it much more likely that you will remember it. You also have to think beyond the things you read, because you need to turn it into something new. And by doing everything with the clear purpose of writing about it, you will do what you do deliberately. Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what we are doing (cf. Anders Ericsson, 2008).
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Annotation on page 39 at 2023-07-25 08:03
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Even if you decide never to write a single line of a manuscript, you will improve your reading, thinking and other intellectual skills just by doing everything as if nothing counts other than writing.
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Annotation on page 40 at 2023-07-25 08:03
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Simplicity Is Paramount
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Annotation on page 40 at 2023-07-25 08:03
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We tend to think that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But more often than not, it is the simplicity of an idea that makes it so powerful (and often overlooked in the beginning).
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Annotation on page 41 at 2023-07-25 08:05
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McLean wasn’t the only one who had the idea to use containers on ships. Many others tried it, too, and almost all gave up on the idea soon after – not because they were too stubborn to accept a great idea, but because they lost too much money on it (Levinson, 2006, 45f). The idea was simple, but it wasn’t easy to put it efficiently into practice.
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Annotation on page 41 at 2023-07-25 08:05
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In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to.
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Annotation on page 42 at 2023-07-27 07:19
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In the old system, the question is: Under which topic do I store this note? In the new system, the question is: In which context will I want to stumble upon it again?
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Annotation on page 42 at 2023-07-27 07:20
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The slip-box is the shipping container of the academic world. Instead of having different storage for different ideas, everything goes into the same slip-box and is standardised into the same format.
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Annotation on page 43 at 2023-07-27 07:21
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To achieve a critical mass, it is crucial to distinguish clearly between three types of notes: 1. Fleeting notes, which are only reminders of information, can be written in any kind of way and will end up in the trash within a day or two. 2. Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way. They are always stored in the same way in the same place, either in the reference system or, written as if for print, in the slip-box. 3. Project notes, which are only relevant to one particular project. They are kept within a project-specific folder and can be discarded or archived after the project is finished.
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Annotation on page 43 at 2023-07-27 07:22
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One of the major reasons for not getting much writing or publishing done lies in the confusion of these categories.
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Annotation on page 43 at 2023-07-27 07:23
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A typical mistake is made by many diligent students who are adhering to the advice to keep a scientific journal. A friend of mine does not let any idea, interesting finding or quote he stumbles upon dwindle away and writes everything down. He always carries a notebook with him and often makes a few quick notes during a conversation. The advantage is obvious: No idea ever gets lost. The disadvantages are serious, though: As he treats every note as if it belongs to the “permanent” category, the notes will never build up a critical mass. The collection of good ideas is diluted to insignificance by all the other notes, which are only relevant for a specific project or actually not that good on second sight.
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Annotation on page 43 at 2023-07-27 07:24
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The second typical mistake is to collect notes only related to specific projects.
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Annotation on page 43 at 2023-07-27 07:24
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The disadvantage is that you have to start all over after each project and cut off all other promising lines of thought. That means that everything you
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:24
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found, thought or encountered during the time of a project will be lost.
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:25
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The third typical mistake is, of course, to treat all notes as fleeting ones.
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:25
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You can easily spot this approach by the mess that comes with it, or rather by the cycle of slowly growing piles of material followed by the impulse for major clean-ps. Just collecting unprocessed fleeting notes inevitably leads to chaos. Even small amounts of unclear and unrelated notes lingering around your desk will soon induce the wish of starting from scratch.
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:25
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What all these category-confusing approaches have in common is that the benefit of note-taking decreases with the number of notes you keep
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:27
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Fleeting notes are there for capturing ideas quickly while you are busy doing something else.
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:27
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When you are in a conversation, listing to a lecture, hear something noteworthy or an idea pops into your mind while you are running errands, a quick note is the best you can do without interrupting what you are in the middle of doing. That might even apply to reading, if you want to focus on a text without interrupting your reading flow. Then you might want to just underline sentences or write short comments in the margins
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:28
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They will very soon become completely useless – unless you do something with them. If you already know that you will not go back to them, don’t take these kind of notes in the first place. Take proper notes instead.
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Annotation on page 44 at 2023-07-27 07:28
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Fleeting notes
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are only useful if you review them within a day or so and turn them into proper notes you can use later.
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Annotation on page 45 at 2023-07-27 07:28
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These kinds of notes are just reminders of a thought, which you haven’t had the time to elaborate on yet.
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Annotation on page 45 at 2023-07-27 07:28
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Permanent notes, on the other hand, are written in a way that can still be understood even when you have forgotten the context they are taken from.
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Annotation on page 45 at 2023-07-27 07:30
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Most ideas will not stand the test of time, while others might become the seed for a major project. Unfortunately, they are not easy to distinguish right away.
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Annotation on page 45 at 2023-07-27 07:30
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That is why the threshold to write an idea down has to be as low as possible, but it is equally crucial to elaborate on them within a day or two.
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Annotation on page 45 at 2023-07-27 07:30
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A good indication that a note has been left unprocessed too long is when you no longer understand what you meant or it appears banal. In the first case, you forgot what it was supposed to remind you of. In the second case, you forgot the context that gave it its meaning.
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Annotation on page 45 at 2023-07-29 07:51
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The only permanently stored notes are the literature notes in the reference system and the main notes in the slip-box.
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Annotation on page 45 at 2023-07-29 07:52
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Luhmann never underlined sentences in the text he read or wrote comments in the margins. All he did was take brief notes about the ideas that caught his attention in a text on a separate piece of paper: “I make a note with the bibliographic details. On the backside I would write ‘on page x is this, on page y is that,’ and then it goes into the bibliographic slip-box where I collect everything I read.” (Hagen, 1997)[
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Annotation on page 46 at 2023-07-29 07:53
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permanent note for the slip-box is elaborated enough to have the potential to become part of or inspire a final written piece, but that can not be decided on up front as their relevance depends on future thinking and developments
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Annotation on page 46 at 2023-07-29 07:55
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Project-related notes can be: · comments in the manuscript · collections of project-related literature · outlines · snippets of drafts · reminders · to-do lists · and of course the draft itself.
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Annotation on page 47 at 2023-07-29 07:56
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When you close the folder for your current project in the evening and nothing is left on your desk other than pen and paper, you know that you have achieved a clear separation between fleeting, permanent and projectrelated notes.
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Annotation on page 48 at 2023-07-29 07:56
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Nobody Ever Starts From Scratch
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Annotation on page 48 at 2023-07-29 07:56
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“The white sheet of paper – or today: the blank screen – is a fundamental misunderstanding” (Nassehi 2015, 185)
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Annotation on page 48 at 2023-07-29 07:58
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Every intellectual endeavour starts from an already existing preconception, which then can be transformed during further inquires and can serve as a starting point for following endeavours
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Annotation on page 48 at 2023-07-29 07:58
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Basically, that is what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the hermeneutic circle (Gadamer 2004).
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Annotation on page 49 at 2023-07-29 08:01
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We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts
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Annotation on page 49 at 2023-07-29 08:01
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By focusing on what is interesting and keeping written track of your own intellectual development, topics, questions and arguments will emerge from the material without force.
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Annotation on page 49 at 2023-07-29 08:01
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If we look into our slip-box to see where clusters have built up, we not only see possible topics, but topics we have already worked on – even if we were not able to see it up front. The idea that nobody ever starts from scratch suddenly becomes very concrete.
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Annotation on page 50 at 2023-07-29 08:03
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The promotion of brainstorming as a starting point is all the more surprising as it is not the origin of most ideas
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Annotation on page 50 at 2023-07-29 08:03
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The things you are supposed to find in your head by brainstorming usually don’t have their origins in there. Rather, they come from the outside:
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Annotation on page 50 at 2023-07-29 08:04
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There is one reliable sign if you managed to structure your workflow according to the fact that writing is not a linear process, but a circular one: the problem of finding a topic is replaced by the problem of having too many topics to write about.
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Annotation on page 50 at 2023-07-29 08:04
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If you on the other hand develop your thinking in writing, open questions will become clearly visible and give you an abundance of possible topics to elaborate further in writing
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Annotation on page 50 at 2023-07-29 08:04
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After many years of working with students, I am convinced that the attempt of these study guides to squeeze a nonlinear process like writing into a linear order is the main reason for the very problems and frustrations they promise to solve.
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Annotation on page 51 at 2023-07-29 08:06
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But those who have already developed their thinking through writing can keep the focus on what is interesting for them at the moment and accumulate substantial material just by doing what they most feel like doing.
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Annotation on page 51 at 2023-07-29 08:06
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The material will cluster around the questions they returned to most often, so they don’t risk too far of a departure from their interest. If your first chosen topic turns out to be not as interesting, you will just move on and your notes will cluster around something else.
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Annotation on page 51 at 2023-07-29 08:07
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Maybe you will even note down the reasons why the first question is not interesting and turn that into an insight valuable enough to make public.
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Annotation on page 51 at 2023-07-29 08:08
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Even though academic writing is not a linear process, that does not mean you should follow an anything-goes approach. On the contrary, a clear, reliable structure is paramount.
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Annotation on page 52 at 2023-07-29 08:08
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8 Let the Work Carry You Forward
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Annotation on page 52 at 2023-07-29 08:10
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You may remember from school the difference between an exergonic and an endergonic reaction. In the first case, you constantly need to add energy to keep the process going. In the second case, the reaction, once triggered, continues by itself and even releases energy. The dynamics of work are not so different. Sometimes we feel like our work is draining our energy and we can only move forward if we put more and more energy into it. But sometimes it is the opposite.
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Annotation on page 52 at 2023-07-29 08:10
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Once we get into the workflow, it is as if the work itself gains momentum, pulling us along and sometimes even energizing us. This is the kind of dynamic we are looking for.
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Annotation on page 52 at 2023-07-29 08:10
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A good workflow can easily turn into a virtuous circle, where the positive experience motivates us to take on the next task with ease, which helps us to get better at what we are doing, which in return makes it more likely for us to enjoy the work, and so on.
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Annotation on page 52 at 2023-07-29 08:10
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Any attempts to trick ourselves into work with external rewards (like doing something nice after finishing a chapter) are only short-term solutions with no prospect of establishing a positive feedback loop. These are very fragile motivational constructions. Only if the work itself becomes rewarding can the dynamic of motivation and reward become self-sustainable and propel the whole process forward (DePasque and Tricomi, 2015).
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Annotation on page 53 at 2023-07-29 08:12
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They enter the virtuous circle where willpower isn’t needed anymore because they feel like doing it anyway
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Annotation on page 53 at 2023-07-29 08:12
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Feedback loops are not only crucial for the dynamics of motivation, but also the key element to any learning process
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Annotation on page 53 at 2023-07-29 08:13
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Those who fear and avoid feedback because it might damage their cherished positive self-image might feel better in the short term, but will quickly fall behind in actual performance (Dweck 2006; 2013).
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Annotation on page 54 at 2023-07-29 08:14
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Following a circular approach, on the other hand, allows you to implement many feedback loops, which give you the chance to improve your work while you are working on it.
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Annotation on page 54 at 2023-07-29 08:15
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We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words
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Annotation on page 54 at 2023-07-29 08:16
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Expressing our own thoughts in writing makes us realise if we really thought them through.
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Annotation on page 54 at 2023-07-29 08:17
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The moment we try to combine them with
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Annotation on page 55 at 2023-07-29 08:17
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previously written notes, the system will unambiguously show us contradictions, inconsistencies and repetitions
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Annotation on page 55 at 2023-07-29 08:17
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The slip-box is not a collection of notes. Working with it is less about retrieving specific notes and more about being pointed to relevant facts and generating insight by letting ideas mingle.
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Annotation on page 55 at 2023-07-29 08:18
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Its usability grows with its size, not just linearly but exponentially. When we turn to the slip-box, its inner connectedness will not just provide us with isolated facts, but with lines of developed thoughts. Moreover, because of its inner complexity, a search thought the slip-box will confront us with related notes we did not look for.
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Annotation on page 55 at 2023-07-29 08:19
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But if facts are not kept isolated nor learned in an isolated fashion, but hang together in a network of ideas, or “latticework of mental models” (Munger, 1994), it becomes easier to make sense of new information
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Annotation on page 55 at 2023-07-29 08:21
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It is not the slip-box or our brains
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Annotation on page 56 at 2023-07-29 08:21
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alone, but the dynamic between them that makes working with it so productive.
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Annotation on page 57 at 2023-07-29 08:21
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THE SIX STEPS
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Annotation on page 57 at 2023-07-29 08:21
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STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING
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Annotation on page 58 at 2023-07-29 08:21
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9 Separate and Interlocking Tasks
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Annotation on page 58 at 2023-07-29 08:21
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9.1 Give Each Task Your Undivided Attention
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Annotation on page 58 at 2023-07-29 08:23
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9.2 Multitasking is not a good idea
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Annotation on page 59 at 2023-07-29 08:24
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Psychologists who interviewed the multitaskers did test them instead of just asking. They gave them different tasks to accomplish and compared their results with another group that was instructed to do only one thing at a time. The outcome is unambiguous: While those who multitasked felt more productive, their productivity actually decreased – a lot (Wang and Tchernev 2012; Rosen 2008; Ophir, Nass, and Wagner 2009). Not only the quantity but also the quality of their accomplishments lagged significantly behind that of the control group.
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Annotation on page 59 at 2023-07-29 08:25
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Trying to multitask fatigues us and decreases our ability to deal with more than one task.
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Annotation on page 59 at 2023-07-29 08:26
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But it does have practical consequences for the way we work if we think about what “writing” truly means: many different tasks we might end up trying to do at the same time if we don’t separate them consciously and practically.
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Annotation on page 60 at 2023-07-29 08:26
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Writing a paper involves much more than just typing on the keyboard. It also means reading, understanding, reflecting, getting ideas, making connections, distinguishing terms, finding the right words, structuring, organizing, editing, correcting and rewriting.
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Annotation on page 60 at 2023-07-29 08:26
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It is not only impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time, but also to have a different kind of attention on more than one thing at a time.
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Annotation on page 60 at 2023-07-29 08:27
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Today, research differentiates between multiple forms of attention. Ever since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1970s described “flow,” the state in which being highly focused becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), [18]
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Annotation on page 60 at 2023-07-29 08:28
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When it comes to focused attention, we focus on one thing only, something we can sustain for only a few seconds. The maximum duration of focused attention seems not to have changed over time (Doyle and Zakrajsek 2013, 91). Focused attention is different from “sustained attention,” which we need to stay focused on one task for a longer period and is necessary to learn, understand or get something done.
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Annotation on page 60 at 2023-07-29 08:28
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This is the kind of attention that is most certainly under threat from an increase in distractions. The average duration seems to have shrunken quite considerably over time – we practice much less focused attention than we used to (ibid).
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Annotation on page 60 at 2023-07-29 08:32
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A lack of structure makes it much more challenging to stay focused for extended periods of time. The slip-box provides not only a clear structure to work in, but also forces us to shift our attention consciously as we can complete tasks in reasonable time before moving on to the next one.
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Annotation on page 61 at 2023-07-29 08:32
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slip-box can become a haven for our restless minds.
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Annotation on page 61 at 2023-07-29 08:34
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9.3 Give Each Task the Right Kind of Attention
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Annotation on page 61 at 2023-07-29 08:34
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To be able to switch between the role of critic and the role of writer requires a clear separation between these two tasks, and that becomes easier with experience.
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Annotation on page 61 at 2023-07-29 08:35
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If we proofread a manuscript and don’t manage to get enough distance from ourselves as authors, we will only see our thoughts, not the actual text.
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Annotation on page 61 at 2023-07-29 08:36
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Letting the inner critic interfere with the author isn’t helpful, either.
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Annotation on page 61 at 2023-07-29 08:36
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If we try to please the critical reader instantly, our workflow would come to a standstill.
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:36
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A real professional would wait until it was time for proofreading, so he or she can focus on one thing at a time.
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:37
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While proofreading requires more focused attention, finding the right words during writing requires much more floating attention.
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:38
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It is also easier to focus on finding the right words if we don’t have to think about the structure of the text at the same time, which is why a printed outline of the manuscript should be always in front of our eyes. We have to know what we don’t have to write about at the moment, because we know that we will take care of that in another part of our text.
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:38
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Outlining or changing the outline is also a very different task that requires a very different focus on something else: not on one thought, but on the whole argument.
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:38
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It is important, though, to understand outlining not as the preparation of writing or even as planning, but as a separate task we need to return to throughout the writing process on a regular basis. We need a structure all the time, but as we work our way bottom-up, it is bound to change often. And whenever we need to update the structure, we need to take a step back, look at the big picture and change it accordingly.
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:39
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Proofreading, formulating and outlining are also different from the task of combining and developing thoughts
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:39
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Working with the slip-box means playing with ideas and looking out for interesting connections and comparisons. It means building clusters, combining them with other clusters and preparing the order of notes for a project. Here, we need to puzzle with notes and find the best fit. It is much more associative, playful and creative than the other tasks and requires a very different kind of attention as well.
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Annotation on page 62 at 2023-07-29 08:40
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It would be ridiculous to adhere to a general formula and read every text in the same way, even though that is what many study guides or speed-reading courses try to convince us of. It is not a sign of professionalism to master one technique and stick to it no matter what, but to be flexible and adjust one’s reading to whatever speed or approach a text requires.
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Annotation on page 63 at 2023-07-30 07:35
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Oshin Vartanian compared and analysed the daily workflows of Nobel Prize winners and other eminent scientists and concluded that it is not a relentless focus, but flexible focus that distinguishes them. “Specifically, the problemsolving behavior of eminent scientists can alternate between extraordinary levels of focus on specific concepts and playful exploration of ideas. This suggests that successful problem solving may be a function of flexible strategy application in relation to task demands.” (Vartanian 2009, 57)
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Annotation on page 63 at 2023-07-30 07:37
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The answer to this conundrum is that creative people need both … The key to creativity is being able to switch between a wide-open, playful mind and a narrow analytical frame.” (Dean, 2013, 152)
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Annotation on page 63 at 2023-07-30 07:38
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9.4 Become an Expert Instead of a Planner
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Annotation on page 63 at 2023-07-30 07:38
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“(An) exclusive use of analytical rationality tends to impede further improvement in human performance because of analytical rationality’s slow reasoning and its emphasis on rules,
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Annotation on page 64 at 2023-07-30 07:38
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principles, and universal solutions. Second, bodily involvement, speed, and an intimate knowledge of concrete cases in the form of good examples is a prerequisite for true expertise.” (Flyvbjerg 2001, 15)
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Annotation on page 65 at 2023-07-30 07:43
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Experts, on the other hand, have internalised the necessary knowledge so they don’t have to actively remember rules or think consciously about their choices. They have acquired enough experience in various situations to be able to rely on their intuition to know what to do in which kind of situation. Their decisions in complex situations are explicitly not made by long rational-analytical considerations, but rather come from the gut (cf. Gigerenzer, 2008a, 2008b).
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Annotation on page 65 at 2023-07-30 07:44
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Here, gut feeling is not a mysterious force, but an incorporated history of experience.
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Annotation on page 66 at 2023-07-30 07:45
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9.5 Get Closure
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Annotation on page 66 at 2023-07-30 07:46
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Attention is not our only limited resource. Our short-term memory is also limited. We need strategies not to waste its capacity with thoughts we can better delegate to an external system.
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Annotation on page 66 at 2023-07-30 07:46
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We can hold a maximum of seven things in our head at the same time, plus/minus two (Miller 1956).
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Annotation on page 66 at 2023-07-30 07:46
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Information cannot be saved in short-term memory like on a memory stick. Rather, it kind of floats around in our heads, seeks our attention and occupies valuable mental resources until it is either forgotten, replaced by something
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Annotation on page 67 at 2023-07-30 07:46
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more important (according to our brains) or moved into long-term memory.
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Annotation on page 67 at 2023-07-30 07:47
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Or, if recent research is right and the participants in earlier tests have always already bundled things together, then the maximum capacity of our working memory is not seven plus/minus two, but more like a maximum of four (Cowan 2001).
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Annotation on page 67 at 2023-07-30 07:50
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Things we understand are connected, either through rules, theories, narratives, pure logic, mental models or explanations. And deliberately building these kinds of meaningful connections is what the slipbox is all about.
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Annotation on page 67 at 2023-07-30 07:50
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Every step is accompanied by questions like: How does this fact fit into my idea of …? How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory? Are these two ideas contradictory or do they complement each other? Isn’t this argument similar to that one? Haven’t I heard this before? And above all: What does x mean for y? These questions not only increase our understanding, but facilitate learning as well.
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Annotation on page 68 at 2023-07-30 07:52
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Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik
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Annotation on page 68 at 2023-07-30 07:53
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Zeigarnik successfully reproduced what is now known as the Zeigarnik effect: Open tasks tend to occupy our short-term memory – until they are done. That is why we get so easily distracted by thoughts of unfinished tasks, regardless of their importance. But thanks to Zeigarnik’s follow-up research, we also know that we don’t actually have to finish tasks to convince our brains to stop thinking about them. All we have to do is to write them down in a way that convinces us that it will be taken care of.
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Annotation on page 68 at 2023-07-30 07:53
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By writing something down, we literally get it out of our heads. This is why David Allen’s “Getting things done” system works:
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Annotation on page 68 at 2023-07-30 07:54
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The first step is to break down the amorphous task of “writing” into smaller pieces of different tasks that can be finished in one go. The second step is to make sure we always write down the outcome of our thinking,
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Annotation on page 69 at 2023-07-30 07:54
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including possible connections to further inquiries
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Annotation on page 69 at 2023-07-30 07:54
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As the outcome of each task is written down and possible connections become visible, it is easy to pick up the work any time where we left it without having to keep it in mind all the time.
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Annotation on page 69 at 2023-07-30 07:55
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Possible subsequent tasks are open questions or connections to other notes, which we could elaborate on further or not. It also comes up in explicit reminders like “review this chapter and check for redundancies,” which belong into the project folder.
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Annotation on page 69 at 2023-07-30 07:56
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Or the third option is the simple fact that something is still in our in-box waiting to be turned into a permanent note – a quick and not-yet–crossed-out note in our notebook, or literature notes not yet archived in our reference system.
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Annotation on page 69 at 2023-07-30 07:56
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All this enables us to later pick up a task exactly where we stopped without the need to “keep in mind” that there still was something to do. That is one of the main advantages of thinking in writing – everything is externalised anyway.
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Annotation on page 69 at 2023-07-30 07:57
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9.6 Reduce the Number of Decisions
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Annotation on page 69 at 2023-07-30 07:58
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Next to the attention that can only be directed at one thing at a time and the short-term memory that can only hold up to seven things at once, the third limited resource is motivation or willpower.
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Annotation on page 70 at 2023-07-30 07:59
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“ego depletion”:
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Annotation on page 70 at 2023-07-30 07:59
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“We use the term ego depletion to refer to a temporary reduction in the self’s capacity or willingness to engage in volitional action (including controlling the environment, controlling the self, making choices, and initiating action) caused by prior exercise of volition.” (Baumeister et al., 1998, 1253) One of the most interesting findings of the research on ego depletion is the broad variety of things that can have a depleting effect. “Our results suggest that a broad assortment of actions make use of the same resource. Acts of self-control, responsible decision making, and active choice seem to interfere with other such acts that follow soon after. The implication is that some vital resource of the self becomes depleted by such acts of volition. To be sure, we assume that this resource is commonly replenished, although the factors that might hasten or delay the replenishment remain unknown, along with the precise nature of this resource.” (Baumeister et al., 1998, 1263f)
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Annotation on page 71 at 2023-07-30 08:03
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If we don’t give ourselves a break in between work sessions, be it out of eagerness or fear of forgetting what we were doing, it can have a detrimental effect on our efforts. To have a walk (Ratey, 2008) or even a nap[24] supports learning and thinking.[
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Annotation on page 71 at 2023-07-30 08:03
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ink
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 08:59
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10 Read for Understanding
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 09:00
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“I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand and enter in a little book short hints of what you feel that is common or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such portcullis in your memory.” – Benjamin Franklin[26]
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 09:00
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10.1 Read With a Pen in Hand
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 09:00
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To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft; to get a good draft written, you only have to turn a series of notes into a continuous text. And as a series of notes is just the rearrangement of notes you already have in your slip-box, all you really have to do is have a pen in your hand when you read
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 09:01
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The series of notes in the slip-box develops into arguments, which are shaped by the theories, ideas and mental models you have in your head. And the theories, ideas and mental models in your head are also shaped by the things you read.
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 09:01
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The step from the slip-box to the final text is pretty straightforward. The content is already meaningful, thought through and in many parts already put into well-connected sequences. The notes only need to be put into a linear order.
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 09:08
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Drawing from the slip-box to develop a draft is more like a dialogue with it than a mechanical act.
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Annotation on page 72 at 2023-07-30 09:08
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The outcome of reading with a
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:08
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pen in the hand is not possible to anticipate either, and here, too, the idea is not to copy, but to have a meaningful dialogue with the texts we read.
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:20
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When we extract ideas from the specific context of a text, we deal with ideas that serve a specific purpose in a particular context, support a specific argument, are part of a theory that isn’t ours or written in a language we wouldn’t use. This is why we have to translate them into our own language to prepare them to be embedded into new contexts of our own thinking, the different context(s) within the slip-box.
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:21
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Translating means to give the truest possible account of the original work, using different words – it does not mean the freedom to make something fit. As well, the mere copying of quotes almost always changes their meaning by stripping them out of context, even though the words aren’t changed. This is a common beginner mistake, which can only lead to a patchwork of ideas, but never a coherent thought.
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:22
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“I always have a slip of paper at hand, on which I note down the ideas of certain pages. On the backside I write down the bibliographic details. After finishing the book I go through my notes and think how these notes might be relevant for already written notes in the slip-box. It means that I always read with an eye towards possible connections in the slip-box.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 150)
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:27
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As literature notes are also a tool for understanding and grasping the text, more elaborate notes make sense in more challenging cases, while in easier cases it might be sufficient to just jot down some keywords.
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:28
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Luhmann, certainly being on the outer spectrum of expertise, contented himself with pretty short notes and was still able to turn them into valuable slip-box notes without distorting the meaning of the original texts.[
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:28
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It is mainly a matter of having an extensive latticework of mental models or theories in our heads that enable us to identify and describe the main ideas quickly (cf. Rickheit and Sichelschmidt, 1999).
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Annotation on page 73 at 2023-07-30 09:28
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Whenever we explore a new, unfamiliar subject, our notes will tend to
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Annotation on page 74 at 2023-07-30 09:28
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be more extensive, but we shouldn’t get nervous about it, as this is the deliberate practice of understanding we cannot skip.
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Annotation on page 74 at 2023-07-30 09:28
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be more extensive, but we shouldn’t get nervous about it, as this is the deliberate practice of understanding we cannot skip.
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Annotation on page 74 at 2023-07-30 09:29
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The only thing that matters is that these notes provide the best possible support for the next step, the writing of the actual slip-box notes
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Annotation on page 74 at 2023-07-30 09:30
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And more often than not, reading is not accompanied by taking notes, which is, in terms of writing, almost as valuable as not having read at all.
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Annotation on page 74 at 2023-07-30 09:30
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Here, everything is about building up a critical mass of useful notes in the slip-box, which gives us a clear idea of how to read and how to take literature notes
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Annotation on page 74 at 2023-07-30 09:31
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But all of this would be just an extra step before you do the only step that really counts, which is to take the permanent note that will add value to the actual slip-box.
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Annotation on page 74 at 2023-07-30 09:32
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Literature notes are short and meant to help with writing slip-box notes. Everything else either helps to get to this point or is a distraction.
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Annotation on page 75 at 2023-07-30 09:34
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The students who typed into their laptops were much quicker, which enabled them to copy the lecture more closely but circumvented actual understanding.
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Annotation on page 75 at 2023-07-30 09:34
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Verbatim notes can be taken with almost no thinking, as if the words are taking a short cut from the ear to the hand, bypassing the brain.
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Annotation on page 75 at 2023-07-30 09:35
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10.2 Keep an Open Mind
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Annotation on page 76 at 2023-07-30 09:36
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“If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration” (Nickerson 1998, 175).
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Annotation on page 77 at 2023-07-30 09:38
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With a good system, the mere necessities of the workflow will force us to act more virtuously without actually having to become more virtuous.
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Annotation on page 77 at 2023-07-30 09:38
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Confirmation bias is tackled here in two steps: First, by turning the whole writing process on its head, and secondly, by changing the incentives from finding confirming facts to an indiscriminate gathering of any relevant information regardless of what argument it will support.
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Annotation on page 77 at 2023-07-30 09:39
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If insight becomes a threat to your academic or writing success, you are doing it wrong.
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Annotation on page 77 at 2023-07-30 09:39
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Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead of top-down is the first and most important step to opening ourselves up for insight.
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Annotation on page 78 at 2023-07-30 09:40
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The slip-box forces us to be selective in reading and note-taking, but the only criterion is the question of whether something adds to a discussion in the slip-box. The only thing that matters is that it connects or is open to connections
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Annotation on page 78 at 2023-07-30 09:41
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Everything can contribute to the development of thoughts within the slip-box: an addition as well as a contradiction, the questioning of a seemingly obvious idea as well as the differentiation of an argument. What we are looking for are facts and information that can add something and therefore enrich the slip-box.
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Annotation on page 78 at 2023-07-30 09:41
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One of the most important habitual changes when starting to work with the slip-box is moving the attention from the individual project with our preconceived ideas towards the open connections within the slip-box.
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Annotation on page 78 at 2023-07-30 10:08
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In fact, it is almost impossible to write anything interesting and worth publishing (and therefore motivating) if it is based on nothing else than an idea we were able to come up with up front before elaborating on the problem.
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Annotation on page 78 at 2023-07-30 10:09
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The slip-box is pretty agnostic about the content it is fed. It just prefers relevant notes.
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Annotation on page 78 at 2023-07-30 10:09
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It is after reading and collecting relevant data, connecting
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Annotation on page 79 at 2023-07-30 10:09
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thoughts and discussing how they fit together that it is time to draw conclusions and develop a linear structure for the argument.
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Annotation on page 79 at 2023-07-30 10:09
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10.3 Get the Gist
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Annotation on page 79 at 2023-07-30 10:09
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It is the practice of looking for the gist and distinguishing it from mere supporting details
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Annotation on page 79 at 2023-07-30 10:11
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But with the learned ability of spotting patterns, we can enter the circle of virtuosity: Reading becomes easier, we grasp the gist quicker, can read more in less time, and can more easily spot patterns and improve our understanding of them.
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Annotation on page 79 at 2023-07-30 10:12
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Immanuel Kant described in his famous text about the Enlightenment: “Nonage [immaturity] is the inability to use
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Annotation on page 80 at 2023-07-30 10:12
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one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is selfimposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” (Kant 1784)
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Annotation on page 80 at 2023-07-30 10:13
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Luhmann stresses the importance of permanent notes in this regard: “The problem with reading academic texts seems to be that we need not the short-term memory, but the long-term memory to develop reference points for distinguishing the important things from the less important, the new information from the mere repeated. But it is of course impossible to remember everything. That would be rote learning. To put it differently: One has to read extremely selectively and extract widespread and connected references. One has to be able to follow recurrences. But how to learn it if guidance is impossible? […] Probably the best method is to take notes – not excerpts, but condensed reformulated accounts of a text. Rewriting what was already written almost automatically trains one to shift the attention towards frames, patterns and categories in the observations, or the conditions/assumptions, which enable certain, but not other descriptions. It makes sense to always ask the question: What is not meant, what is excluded if a certain claim is made? If someone speaks of ‘human rights:’ What distinction is made? A distinction towards ‘nonhuman rights?’ ‘Human duties?’ Is it a cultural comparison or one with some historic people who didn’t have the concept of human rights, but lived okay together anyway? Often, the text does not give an answer or a clear answer to this question. But then one has to resort to one’s own imagination.” (Luhmann 2000, 154f)
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Annotation on page 80 at 2023-07-30 10:16
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The better you become in doing this, the quicker you can jot down notes, which are still helpful.
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Annotation on page 80 at 2023-07-30 10:16
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Luhmann’s notes are very condensed (Schmidt 2015).
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Annotation on page 81 at 2023-07-30 10:17
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10.4 Learn to Read
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Annotation on page 81 at 2023-07-30 10:17
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“If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” (John Searle)
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Annotation on page 81 at 2023-07-30 10:47
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Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman once said that he could only determine whether he understood something if he could give an introductory lecture on it.
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Annotation on page 81 at 2023-07-30 10:48
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Permanent notes, too, are directed towards an audience ignorant of the thoughts behind the text and unaware of the original context, only equipped with a general knowledge of the field. The only difference is that the audience here consists of our future selves, which will very soon have reached the same state of ignorance as someone who never had access to what we have written about.
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Annotation on page 81 at 2023-07-30 10:49
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The most important advantage of writing is that it helps us to confront ourselves when we do not understand something as well as we would like to believe.
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Annotation on page 81 at 2023-07-30 10:49
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“The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool,” Feynman stressed in a speech to young scientists (Feynman 1985, 342).
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Annotation on page 81 at 2023-07-30 10:50
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Reading, especially rereading, can easily fool us into believing we understand a text. Rereading is especially dangerous because of the mereexposure effect: The moment we become familiar with something, we start believing we also understand it.
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Annotation on page 82 at 2023-07-30 10:52
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If we don’t try to verify our understanding during our studies, we will happily enjoy the feeling of getting smarter and more knowledgeable while in reality staying as dumb as we were.
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Annotation on page 82 at 2023-07-30 10:52
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This warm feeling disappears quickly when we try to explain what we read in our own words in writing. Suddenly, we see the problem. The attempt to rephrase an argument in our own words confronts us without mercy with all the gaps in our understanding.
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Annotation on page 82 at 2023-07-30 10:53
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We have to choose between feeling smarter or becoming smarter.
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Annotation on page 82 at 2023-07-30 10:53
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while writing down an idea feels like a detour, extra time spent, not writing it down is the real waste of time, as it renders most of what we read as ineffectual.
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Annotation on page 82 at 2023-07-30 10:56
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Understanding is not just a precondition to learning something. To a certain degree, learning is understanding.
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Annotation on page 82 at 2023-07-31 05:26
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The majority of students chooses every day not to test themselves in any way. Instead, they apply the very method research has shown again (Karpicke, Butler, and Roediger 2009) and again (Brown 2014, ch. 1) to be almost completely useless: rereading and underlining sentences for later rereading. And most of them choose that method, even if they are taught that they don’t work.
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Annotation on page 83 at 2023-07-31 05:27
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This is why choosing an external system that forces us to deliberate practice and confronts us as much as possible with our lack of understanding or not-yet-learned information is such a smart move. We only have to make the conscious choice once.
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Annotation on page 83 at 2023-07-31 05:27
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10.5 Learn by Reading
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Annotation on page 84 at 2023-07-31 05:31
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that the best-researched and most successful learning method is elaboration. It is very similar to what we do when we take smart notes and combine them with others, which is the opposite of mere reviewing (Stein et al. 1984)
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Annotation on page 84 at 2023-07-31 05:32
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Elaboration means nothing other than really thinking about the meaning of what we read, how it could inform different
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Annotation on page 85 at 2023-07-31 05:32
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questions and topics and how it could be combined with other knowledge.
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Annotation on page 85 at 2023-07-31 05:32
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In fact, “Writing for Learning” is the name of an “elaboration method” (Gunel, Hand, and Prain 2007). But there is a caveat. Even though elaboration works verifiably well for deep understanding, it might not be the best choice if you just want to learn isolated encyclopaedic facts (Rivard 1994).
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Annotation on page 85 at 2023-07-31 05:34
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The objection that it takes too much time to take notes and sort them into the slip-box is therefore short-sighted. Writing, taking notes and thinking about how ideas connect is exactly the kind of elaboration that is needed to learn. Not learning from what we read because we don’t take the time to elaborate on it is the real waste of time.
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Annotation on page 85 at 2023-07-31 05:34
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There is a clear division of labour between the brain and the slip-box: The slip-box takes care of details and references and is a long-term memory resource that keeps information objectively unaltered. That allows the brain to focus on the gist, the deeper understanding and the bigger picture, and frees it up to be creative. Both the brain and the slip-box can focus on what they are best at.
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Annotation on page 86 at 2023-07-31 05:34
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11 Take Smart Notes
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Annotation on page 87 at 2023-07-31 05:37
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11.1 Make a Career One Note at a Time
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Annotation on page 88 at 2023-07-31 05:43
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More notes mean more possible connections, more ideas, more synergy between different projects and therefore a much higher degree of productivity.
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Annotation on page 88 at 2023-07-31 05:43
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Luhmann’s slip-box contains about 90,000 notes, which sounds like an incredibly large number. But it only means that he wrote six notes a day from the day he started to work with his slip-box until he died.
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Annotation on page 88 at 2023-07-31 05:44
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11.2 Think Outside the Brain
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Annotation on page 89 at 2023-07-31 05:50
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As we write notes with an eye towards existing notes, we take more into account than the information that is already available in our internal memory. That is extremely important, because the internal memory retrieves information not in a rational or logical way, but according to psycho-logical rules.
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Annotation on page 90 at 2023-07-31 05:53
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Philosophers, neuroscientists, educators and psychologists like to disagree in many different aspects on how the brain works. But they no longer disagree when it comes to the need for external scaffolding.
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Annotation on page 90 at 2023-07-31 05:53
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“Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible” is one of the key takeaways in a contemporary handbook of neuroscientists (Levy 2011, 290) Concluding the discussions in this book, Levy writes: “In any case, no matter how internal processes are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinely concerned with what enables human beings to perform the spectacular intellectual feats exhibited in science and other areas of systematic enquiry, as well as in the arts, they need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.” (Ibid.)
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Annotation on page 90 at 2023-07-31 05:54
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Luhmann writes: “Somehow one has to mark differences, keep track of distinctions, either explicitly or implicitly in concepts,” because only if the connections are somehow fixed externally can they function as models or theories to give meaning and continuity for further thinking (Luhmann, 1992, 53).
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Annotation on page 91 at 2023-07-31 05:55
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I took some literature notes collecting reasons how and why humans act so very differently when they experience scarcity. This was step one, done with an eye towards the argument of the book. I had questions in mind like: Is this convincing? What methods do they use? Which of the references are familiar?
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Annotation on page 91 at 2023-07-31 05:56
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But the first question I asked myself when it came to writing the first permanent note for the slip-box was: What does this all mean for my own research and the questions I think about in my slip-box? This is just another way of asking: Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest?
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Annotation on page 92 at 2023-07-31 05:58
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where do I turn to, to find answers to these questions? Correct: The first choice for further inquiry is the slip-box. Maybe there is already something on social inequality that helps me to answer these questions, or at least an indication of where to look.
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Annotation on page 92 at 2023-07-31 05:59
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None of it needs to be discussed right away, especially as most of these ideas would require more research and reading. But there is also no reason not to write down these possible connections and come back to them later, if my research points me back to them.
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Annotation on page 92 at 2023-07-31 05:59
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11.3 Learn by not Trying
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Annotation on page 95 at 2023-07-31 07:11
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If we instead focus on “retrieval strength,” we instantly start to think strategically about what kind of cues should trigger the retrieval of a memory.
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Annotation on page 96 at 2023-07-31 07:12
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What does help for true, useful learning is to connect a piece of information to as many meaningful contexts as possible, which is what we do when we connect our notes in the slip-box with other notes.
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Annotation on page 96 at 2023-07-31 07:12
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Making these connections deliberately means building up a self-supporting network of interconnected ideas and facts that work reciprocally as cues for each other.
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Annotation on page 97 at 2023-07-31 07:17
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Memory techniques are the fix for a rather artificial situation. When it comes to academic writing, we don’t have the need for this trick, as we can choose to build and think exclusively within meaningful contexts. Abstract information like bibliographic references can be stored externally – there is no benefit in knowing them by heart. Everything else better bear meaning.
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Annotation on page 97 at 2023-07-31 07:18
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The first step of elaboration is to think enough about a piece of information so we are able to write about it. The second step is to think about what it means for other contexts as well.
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Annotation on page 97 at 2023-07-31 07:18
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This is not so different from when elaboration is recommended as a “learning method.” As a method, it has been proven to be more successful than any other approach (McDaniel and Donnelly 1996).
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Annotation on page 97 at 2023-07-31 07:20
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Barry S. Stein et al. summarises: “The results of several recent studies support the hypothesis that retention is facilitated by acquisition conditions that prompt people to elaborate information in a way that increases the distinctiveness of their memory representations.” (Stein et al. 1984, 522)
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Annotation on page 97 at 2023-07-31 07:23
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“[he] may find it difficult at first to understand and remember that arteries have
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Annotation on page 98 at 2023-07-31 07:23
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thick walls, are elastic, and do not have valves, whereas veins are less elastic, have thinner walls, and have valves” (ibid.). But by elaborating a little bit on this difference and asking the right questions, like “why?” the students can connect this knowledge with prior knowledge, like their understanding of pressure and the function of the heart.
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Annotation on page 98 at 2023-07-31 07:23
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Learned right, which means understanding, which means connecting in a meaningful way to previous knowledge, information almost cannot be forgotten anymore and will be reliably retrieved if triggered by the right cues.
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Annotation on page 98 at 2023-07-31 07:26
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Writing notes and sorting them into the slip-box is nothing other than an attempt to understand the wider meaning of something. The slip-box forces us to ask numerous elaborating questions: What does it mean? How does it connect to … ? What is the difference between … ? What is it similar to?
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Annotation on page 98 at 2023-07-31 07:26
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That the slip-box is not sorted by topics is the precondition for actively building connections between notes. Connections can be made between
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Annotation on page 99 at 2023-07-31 07:26
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heterogeneous notes – as long as the connection makes sense.
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Annotation on page 99 at 2023-07-31 07:27
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The fact that too much order can impede learning has become more and more known (Carey 2014).
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Annotation on page 99 at 2023-07-31 07:28
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11.4 Adding Permanent Notes to the Slip-Box The next step after writing the permanent notes is to add them to the slip-box. 1. Add a note to the slip-box either behind the note you directly refer to or, if you do not follow up on a specific note, just behind the last note in the slip-box. Number it consecutively. The Zettelkasten numbers the notes automatically. “New note” will just add a note with a new number. If you click “New note sequence,” the new note will be registered at the same time as the note that follows the note currently active on the screen. But you can always add notes “behind” other notes anytime later. Each note can follow multiple other notes and therefore be part of different note sequences. 2. Add links to other notes or links on other notes to your new note. 3. Make sure it can be found from the index; add an entry in the index if necessary or refer to it from a note that is connected to the index.
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Annotation on page 100 at 2023-07-31 07:28
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4. Build a Latticework of Mental Models
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Annotation on page 101 at 2023-07-31 07:30
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12 Develop Ideas
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Annotation on page 101 at 2023-07-31 07:30
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“Every note is just an element in the network of references and back references in the system, from which it gains its quality.” (Luhmann 1992)
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Annotation on page 101 at 2023-07-31 07:34
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Because the slip-box is not intended to be an encyclopaedia, but a tool to think with, we don’t need to worry about completeness. We don’t need to write anything down just to bridge a gap in a note sequence. We only write if it helps us with our own thinking.
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Annotation on page 102 at 2023-07-31 07:34
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gaps will only become obvious in the next step, when we take the relevant notes for an argument out of the network of the slip-box and sort them into the linear order for the rough draft.
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Annotation on page 102 at 2023-07-31 07:35
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12.1 Develop Topics
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Annotation on page 102 at 2023-07-31 07:36
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In the Zettelkasten, keywords can easily be added to a note like tags and will then show up in the index. They should be chosen carefully and sparsely. Luhmann would add the number of one or two (rarely more) notes next to a keyword in the index (Schmidt 2013, 171).
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Annotation on page 102 at 2023-07-31 07:37
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The reason he was so economical with notes per keyword and why we too should be very selective lies in the way the slip-box is used. Because it should not be used as an archive, where we just take out what we put in, but as a system to think with, the references between the notes are much more important than the references from the index to a single note. Focusing exclusively on the index would basically mean that we always know upfront what we are looking for – we would have to have a fully developed plan in our heads. But liberating our brains from the task of organizing the notes is the main reason we use the slip-box in the first place.
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Annotation on page 102 at 2023-07-31 07:39
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The organisation of the notes is in the network of references in the slip-box, so all we need from the index are entry
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Annotation on page 103 at 2023-07-31 07:39
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points.
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Annotation on page 103 at 2023-08-01 08:14
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The quicker we get from the index to the concrete notes, the quicker we move our attention from mentally preconceived ideas towards the fact-rich level of interconnected content, where we can conduct a fact-based dialogue with the slip-box.
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Annotation on page 103 at 2023-08-01 08:14
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Even though we will not get an overview of the whole slip-box (as we certainly will never get an overview of our whole internal memory), we can get an overview of a specific topic.
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Annotation on page 103 at 2023-08-01 08:15
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The consideration of how to structure a topic, therefore, belongs on notes as well – and not on a metahierarchical level.
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Annotation on page 103 at 2023-08-01 08:15
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We can provide ourselves with a (temporarily valid) overview over a topic or subtopic just by making another note. If we then link from the index to such a note, we have a good entry point. If the overview on this note ceases to correctly represent the state of a cluster or topic, or we decide it should be structured differently, we can write a new note with a better structure and update the respective link from the index.
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Annotation on page 103 at 2023-08-01 08:16
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The archivist asks: Which keyword is the most fitting? A writer asks: In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note, even if I forget about it? It is a crucial difference.
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Annotation on page 104 at 2023-08-01 08:18
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As writers, we approach the question of keywords differently. We look at our slip-box for already existing lines of thought and think about the questions and problems already on our minds to which a new note might contribute.
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Annotation on page 104 at 2023-08-06 06:44
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By assigning this keyword, you might stumble upon already existing notes on capital allocation, which either help to answer these questions or trigger new ones.
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Annotation on page 104 at 2023-08-06 06:44
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But maybe you are a political scientist and read this note as an answer to the question of why certain topics are discussed during an election and others not, or why it could be politically more sensible to promote easyto-visualise solutions over solutions that really work. Fitting keywords here might be “political strategies,” “elections” or “dysfunctionalities, political.”
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Annotation on page 104 at 2023-08-06 06:45
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Keywords should always be assigned with an eye towards the topics you are working on or interested in, never by looking at the note in isolation. This is also why this process cannot be automated or delegated to a machine or program – it requires thinking.
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Annotation on page 105 at 2023-08-06 06:47
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Assigning keywords is much more than just a bureaucratic act. It is a crucial part of the thinking process, which often leads to a deeper elaboration of the note itself and the connection to other notes
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Annotation on page 105 at 2023-08-06 06:48
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making good cross-references is a matter of serious thinking and a crucial part of the development of thoughts
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Annotation on page 105 at 2023-08-06 06:48
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Luhmann used four basic types of cross-references in his file-box (Schmidt 2013, 173f; Schmidt 2015, 165f). Only the first and last are relevant for the digital Zettelkasten, the other two are merely compensating for restrictions of the analogue pen and paper version. You don’t need to concern yourself with them if you use the digital program. 1. The first type of links are those on notes that are giving you the overview of a topic. These are notes directly referred to from the index and usually used as an entry point into a topic that has already developed to such a degree that an overview is needed or at least becomes helpful. On a note like this, you can collect links to other relevant notes to this topic or question, preferably with a short indication of what to find on these notes (one or two words or a short sentence is sufficient). This kind of note helps to structure thoughts and can be seen as an in-between step towards the development of a manuscript. Above all, they help orientate oneself within the slip-box. You will know when you need to write one. Luhmann collected up to 25 links to other notes on these kind of entry notes. They don’t have to be written in one go as links can be added over time, which again shows how topics can grow organically. What we think is relevant for a topic and what is not depends on our current understanding and should be taken quite seriously: It defines an idea as much as the facts it is based on. What we regard as being relevant for a topic and how we
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Annotation on page 106 at 2023-08-06 06:49
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structure it will change over time. This change might lead to another note with a different, more adequate topic structure, which then can be seen as a comment on the previous note. Thankfully, it won’t make all the other notes redundant. As mentioned before: All we have to do is to change the entry in the index to this new note and/or indicate on the old note that we now consider a new structure more fitting. 2. A similar though less crucial kind of link collection is on those notes that give an overview of a local, physical cluster of the slip-box. This is only necessary if you work with pen and paper like Luhmann. While the first type of note gives an overview of a topic, regardless of where the notes are located within the slip-box, this type of note is a pragmatic way of keeping track of all the different topics discussed on the notes that are physically close together. As Luhmann put notes between notes to internally branch out subtopics and sub-subtopics, original lines of thoughts were often interrupted by hundreds of different notes. This second type of note keeps track of the original lines of thought. Obviously, we don’t need to worry about this if we work with the digital version. 3. Equally less relevant for the digital version are those links that indicate the note to which the current note is a follow-up and those links that indicate the note that follows on the current note. Again, this is only relevant to see which notes follow each other, even if they don’t physically stand behind each other anymore. The digital Zettelkasten automatically adds these kinds of backlinks and presents you the relevant notes in a note sequence. 4. The most common form of reference is plain note-to-note links. They have no function other than indicating a relevant connection between two individual notes. By linking two related notes regardless of where they are within the slip-box or within different contexts, surprising new lines of thought can be established. These note-to-note links are like the “weak links” (Granovetter 1973) of social relationships we have with acquaintances: even though they are usually not the ones we turn to first, they often can offer new and different perspectives.
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Annotation on page 108 at 2023-08-06 07:00
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Comparing notes also helps us to detect contradictions, paradoxes or oppositions – important facilitators for insight. When we realise that we used to accept two contradicting ideas as equally true, we know that we have a problem – and problems are good because we now have something to solve.
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Annotation on page 108 at 2023-08-06 07:00
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Albert Rothenberg suggests that the construction of oppositions is the most reliable way of generating new ideas (Rothenberg 1971; 1996; 2015).
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Annotation on page 109 at 2023-08-06 07:02
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The slip-box not only confronts us with dis-confirming information, but also helps with what is known as the feature-positive effect (Allison and Messick 1988; Newman, Wolff, and Hearst 1980; Sainsbury 1971). This is the phenomenon in which we tend to overstate the importance of information that is (mentally) easily available to us and tilts our thinking towards the most recently acquired facts, not necessarily the most relevant ones.
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Annotation on page 109 at 2023-08-06 07:03
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Just by working with the slip-box, we retrieve old ideas and facts on an irregular basis and connect them with other bits of information – very much how experts recommend we learn (Bjork 2011, 8; Kornell and Bjork 2008).
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Annotation on page 110 at 2023-08-18 05:18
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Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, stresses the importance of having a broad theoretical toolbox – not to be a good academic, but to have a good, pragmatic grip on reality.
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J- interesting to know the importance on “ways of thinking”
Annotation on page 110 at 2023-08-18 05:19
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He advocates looking out for the most powerful concepts in every discipline and to try to understand them so thoroughly that they become part of our thinking. The moment one starts to combine these mental models and attach one’s experiences to them, one cannot help but gain what he calls “worldly wisdom.”
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Annotation on page 110 at 2023-08-18 05:20
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You would become the man with a hammer who sees nails everywhere (cf. Maslow, 1966, 15).
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J -why it’s good to deeply learn multiple disciplines
Annotation on page 110 at 2023-08-18 05:21
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You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.” (Munger 1994).
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Annotation on page 110 at 2023-08-18 05:21
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A truly wise person is not someone who knows everything, but someone who is able to make sense of things by drawing from an extended resource of interpretation schemes
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Annotation on page 111 at 2023-08-18 05:23
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The beauty of this approach is that we co-evolve with our slip-boxes: we build the same connections in our heads while we deliberately develop them in our slip-box – and make it easier to remember the facts as they now have a latticework we can attach them to.
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Annotation on page 111 at 2023-08-18 05:25
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Helmut D. Sachs puts it like this: “By learning, retaining, and building on the retained basics, we are creating a rich web of associated information. The more we know, the more information (hooks) we have to connect new information to, the easier we can form long-term memories. […] Learning becomes fun. We have entered a virtuous circle of learning, and it seems as if our long-term memory capacity and speed are actually growing. On the other hand, if we fail to retain what we have learned, for example, by not using effective strategies, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn information that builds on earlier learning. More and more knowledge gaps become apparent. Since we can’t really connect new information to gaps, learning becomes an uphill battle that exhausts us and takes the fun out of learning. It seems as if we have reached the capacity limit of our brain and memory. Welcome to a vicious circle. Certainly, you would much rather be in a virtuous learning circle, so to remember what you have learned, you need to build effective long-term memory structures.” (Sachs 2013, 26) His recommendations for learning read almost like instructions for the slipbox: 1. Pay attention to what you want to remember. 2. Properly encode the information you want to keep. (This includes thinking about suitable cues.) 3. Practice recall. (Ibid., 31)
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