How an Analog Note System Improved My Digital Workflow
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Like many of you, I got stung by the Zettelkasten bug a few years ago and never looked back. I read Sonke Ahrens’ book How to Take Smart Notes several times. In the book, he discussed the note-taking system of a very prolific writer and thinker, Niklas Luhmann.
All the concepts, in and of themselves, made sense to me. I understood the different forms of notes he discussed in the book.
But I couldn’t figure out how to implement it into an efficient system through a digital platform. I tried using Roam Research. I tried using Obsidian. I tried using Evernote. But nothing quite clicked for me.
But then, a few months ago, I had a lightbulb moment. What if I used an analog note-taking system for my Zettelkasten?
I did just that. I looked to Scott Schepler’s “Antinet” system. His article “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet” had all the details I needed to get started. I quickly ditched the digital platforms I was using up to that point and went full steam ahead on the analog train.
I bought all the supplies- a ton of index cards, dividers for those cards, a box to house them, and a bunch of writing utensils. I sat down and started writing out my notes in long-hand.
What I found was that, not only was this system more efficient for me, but it was also more enjoyable. The tactile nature of physically holding the cards and sorting them into different categories was oddly satisfying. And it helped that my note-taking became a lot more deliberate and purposeful.
I learned two very important concepts that I just could not understand by using a digital platform.
- The Index System. On a digital platform, you can just write away and not care about indexing. The search function shoulders the burden of finding your notes. I didn’t have to worry about indexing my notes when I could find them through searching. In an analog system, the more notes you have, the harder it is to find notes you need. The index system in an analog system is very deliberate and adding notes helped me practice indexing and organizing. I always had to go back to the index to see where the new note fit. I didn’t have to do that with my digital system.
- The Literature note. Before implementing the analog system, I conflated the literature note with the permanent note. I could not understand the difference. In a digital system, you can just create tags and then search for those tags later. This made the literature note seem pointless. Why bother creating a duplicate when I could just tag my notes? But in an analog system, it is very difficult to find old notes. The only way to access them is by looking through the index cards. The literature note is merely a means to an end- the permanent note. It is a staging note. When Scott Schepler put it this way, things started to click. I treated the literature note with much more “permanence” than it actually warranted. It simply held ideas from books I read. With these ideas, I could choose to leave them alone or expand on them with my own thoughts in a permanent note.
I only implemented the analog system for about a month before extracting these lessons and implementing them in my digital system (Obsidian). I’ve got a much more efficient process thanks to my brief journey into the Antinet.