Tinderbox Meetup - Sunday, April 23, 2023: What does it mean to use Tinderbox as a Zettelkasten tool (or tool for what ever method we individually might use)?

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
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I’ve interacted with them on their forums (https://forum.zettelkasten.de) and with regard to The Archive (The Archive (macOS) • Zettelkasten Method).

They are both very approachable and generally interested in talking about PKM. Christian can be found on his page: About Christian • Zettelkasten Method and Sascha on his: About Sascha • Zettelkasten Method.

Their blog is a very mine of ideas about PKM: Blog Post Archive • Zettelkasten Method, with posts going back to 2013. If you’ve never looked at it, you’ve missed something.

Christian actually made a short post about Tinderbox back in 2018: Zettelkasten Method and Tinderbox (macOS) • Zettelkasten Method. He might conceivably be interested to be brought up to date about recent developments.

Edit: I posted on their forums: Using Tinderbox for a Zettelkasten — Zettelkasten Forum

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Cool, I’m pretty swamped. It would be cool if someone could help make the connection and invite them to one of our meetups.

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I’m afraid I only speak English, Italian and some French, so that statement is a mystery to me :slight_smile:

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Sorry, I meant to say I am “swamped,” auto-correct got the best of me (fixed the error). It means that I’m VERY busy–as I suspect generally most of us are–and I could use some assistance with introductions and the weekly meetups: ideas, contributions, and content suggestions would be most welcome.

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Ah, auto-correct! The first thing I disable on any device I own :wink:

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@satikusala Sascha Fast has expressed a willingness to take part: Using Tinderbox for a Zettelkasten — Zettelkasten Forum.

I suggest you contact him.

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I sent him an email.

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If I might suggest - it would be useful for members to do a bit of pre-reading on Zettelkasten; whether it be Ahrens’ book or the zettelkasten.de website. The meetup might be benefited by our being on the same page vis-a-vis basic concepts and terminology. Particularly interest on Luhmann’s expansion of the concept might be illuminating, such as the flow that data takes through fleeting/permanent/project note stages.

Suggested-

Wikipedia has an interesting history
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten

From Zettelkasten.de, concepts:
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/concepts-sohnke-ahrens-explained/

Other:
https://meda.io/how-to-make-atomic-literature-notes/

https://beingpax.medium.com/fleeting-notes-vs-literature-notes-vs-permanent-notes-d44364fe5fe7

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I love this idea. The big question I have is whether the idea is to simply transfer the “process” to a TBX environment or is the idea to take key objectives (independent of the process) and try to replicate the ability to create cross-functional insight and output, or some combination of both?

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Personally I feel it would be the last option, a combination. I feel that many of us who’ve been using Tbx for a while have already developed our own systems that synthesize various aspects of traditional note organization with that “something very extra” Tinderbox provides. Others may not be using any specific organizational system, still others may be trying to faithfully reproduce zettels using Tbx as a constructor set.

In reality, just one aspect sticks out at me in Zetteling; which is the high importance placed on writing and re-writing one’s notes and note structure(s) until they actually become ingrained. Very different approach from computer-based “Find”.

It should be an interesting discussion.

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I always found this distinction irritating. To me, a note was a note, and I always thought that these categories created problems. A lot of people seemed to agonise about what kind of note they were writing, when a note turned from being “fleeting” to being “permanent”, and so forth. Others seemed to think that if they didn’t follow the “procedure” correctly the method would not work. I’ve never read Ahrens’ book, but I get the impression that some people take away the wrong lessons from it. In short, I considered the note categories a hindrance and never used them. Some people might find the conceptualisation useful, but I felt it added nothing to my work. I needed something a lot looser and more spontaneous.

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I always found this distinction irritating. To me, a note was a note, and I always thought that these categories created problems. A lot of people seemed to agonise about what kind of note they were writing, when a note turned from being “fleeting” to being “permanent”, and so forth. Others seemed to think that if they didn’t follow the “procedure” correctly the method would not work. I’ve never read Ahrens’ book, but I get the impression that some people take away the wrong lessons from it.

I’m completely agree with you: « a note is a note » and a note with its attributes can be easily read and put to work with the help of the Attribute Browser so there is no necessity to categorize one’s notes in the perspective of being « more (and more and more…) productive ». That’s the modern tendency and I’m not OK at all with that view. In my field of research — philosophy and sciences of education and training —, I sometimes wonder if being productive, particularly in philosophy, wouldn’t mean writing articles « by the yard » (in French, we say « au kilomètre » and it is not flattering at all!). In my field — a clinical approach psychoanalytically oriented —, it’s so hard to write and rewrite incessantly and patiently a « good » article to a journal with a review panel that my work does not consist in making a difference between fleeting notes and permanent notes. I read and write everyday. That’s all. But, I tend to think that this categorization clarifies and delimitates a significant part of my research process: given that one simple reading is equal to an impressive amount of thoughts, associations, fleeting ideas, memories and so on, this categorization helps me to identify what must be elaborated. For instance, an impression is not a statement, an idea on the fly is not the thorough wording of a problem and several « permanent » notes whose statements are close could be a part of a structured note (1., 1.1, 1.1.1…), namely a fragment of an emergent article. Regarding this and in my experience, comparing my feelings of user when I try to examine what tool works as I do, Tinderbox seems to me a very good « companion in research ». But, it is like research, you don’t get it easy. You have to work and learn. Therefore, it seems to me that the Zettelkasten topic is not only about Luhmann’s methodology. It means to me: what do you do with your notes while using Tinderbox? Incidentally, does the slip-box methodology help you with your writing and research process? What kind of functional metaphor does it signify for you?

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How do you define a “note category”?

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Of course, at one level, I agree. A note is a note. On the surface, this can not be argued. Using a biological analogy, if a note is a note, is that like saying a heart cell is the same thing as a skin cell? They are both the same thing, they are cells, but they perform very different functions.

In Tinderbox land, for me, a new note is a stem cell. The stem cell takes on specialization and uniqueness when I start to use it, e.g., apply a prototype and apply attributes. For instance, a note simply might be some text I’ve written, or it might be a person, entity, figure, video, article, or a container that has several of all of the above, and in their collection, they become an article.

For me, notes take on a special significance when I’m going to reuse them across other projects, e.g., I might use a "media note’ in several articles, and an attribute associated with the media not may further specialize it to let me know that it is an image, video, or audio file. I have thousands of these “atomic” special notes, e.g., term definitions, entity overviews, individual “people” profiles, regulation or technical standards overviews. I use transclusion to reference and access the note in its entirety or to dynamically pull individual value from them to perform my work.

So, simply saying a note is a note does not work for me. It is not, or more aptly put, it depends on context.

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Yes, absolutely. As discussed in my videos, I call the “slipbox” a “Resources Folder” or “Backstage” collection. The notes within this category take on special significance. The support function process enables me to incrementally formalize and fine my learning and knowledge, sure, but most important, they help me generate diverse output much faster and with more accuracy and value than I’ve ever been able to do before than at any other time in my life.

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I meant the categorisation into fleeting/permanent/project note. I’ve always disliked it. For some reason I’ve always found the idea of a “fleeting note” particularly irritating, and I don’t know why. It is a personal psychological idiosyncrasy. Some people seem to find the categorisation useful, which is good for them – but I have never worked that way. I’m not generally keen on labels or taxonomies. That might be because I have lived in two different countries and worked in two different languages (more, if I count my extremely creaky French) and I am aware that there is often a linguistic and cultural dimension to the labelling which is capable of distorting perceptions of what something is like. I don’t know much about social constructionism, but I know enough to understand how language and culture influence and limit us. (This is the point where @dominiquerenauld could probably educate us about Foucault!)

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I was specifically thinking about the context of a Zettelkasten, and my experience of dabbling with one was really limited to The Archive, which I think was built on the model of nvAlt – about the most simple note-taking application you could find. I was not remotely thinking about Tinderbox and all of its features and possibilities.

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A confusion for us all is not knowing the context in which a description is read. Someone who’s making a day-book or a to do list likely has a different PoV to a person doing close reading of source texts or writing business reports.

I tend to the view that one can over-categorise. Thinking—consideration before taking action—is he crux. We tend to over-venerate process because we delude ourselves that it is a substitute for engagement with and understanding of our task.

zettelkästen essentially is about atomicity of records and avoidance of needing a complex (hierarchical) indexing system. These things Tinderbox can already do. I’m uncertain giving it a fancy German title makes it any more profound, though I’m happy to be wrong.

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Totally agree; you are speaking @DEddy’s language.

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Hi Tinderboxers,

to give you a heads-up: I (Sascha from zettelkasten.de) will attend the meeting this Sunday.

So, you can prepare specific questions regarding the Zettelkasten Method.

Regarding the three types of notes (fleeting, literature, permanent): I think it is a translation artifact which resulted in reification. In the German book, the labels for the type of notes are just used to label different steps in a process. But they are not treated as a proper classification of notes, as far as I understood the German book.

The result is that the collective thinking process (due to the popularity of the book by Ahrens) was pushed heavily in the direction of thinking about the workflow that transforms each note type to another.

I think this is a distraction from the real issues that are interesting when you ask yourself the Zettelkasten question: How can I create a system that is extends my ability to deal with ideas (and knowledge in general) in a way that it scales beyond one project.

The questions derived from this line of thinking are for example:

  • How to write a note for longevity?
  • How to access a very big and highly complex note collection (or the network if you connect the notes) to assist with the task at hand (thinking on an issue, writing a text etc.)?
  • How to optimize the effect of creating one note?
  • How to access note collections within a note collection? (Not just notes that share a property, but also note clusters that are more tightly connected to each other than to others)

There are also issues/opportunities that emerge from other lines of thinking. For example: My Zettelkasten is also a training tool for me. I have almost 13k notes at the moment. But yesterday I could demonstrate how to create connections between two notes that I took 8 years apart within 2 minutes. It is possible because of the way I work with my Zettelkasten and the depth of connection between the note content. The connected question is:

  • How can you optimize the training effect on your brain using your note-taking system? (Instead of just letting your tool taking care of tasks, which could lead to atrophy of your specific skill in the worst case)

So, don’t get hung on note definitions if you want to understand the Zettelkasten Method. Instead, focus on the actual challenges you want to attack.

(To give you some starting points to think about the Zettelkasten Method in a way that allows a better exploitation of the Zettelkasten Method for Tinderbox)

Live long and prosper
Sascha

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