parent:: Lucid Drunkenness
#self/life-optimization/organization/PKM
The Zettelgarden is a place for my notes, my second brain. The word zettel is German for "note", so you can consider this my note-garden. It's inspired by two things: a Zettelkasten and a Digital Garden. The Zettelgarden is my virtual junk drawer: a home for my half-finished zettels about what I’m doing, what I’m thinking about, and various odd and ends that may someday be useful. Each zettel is a work in progress: growing and evolving as my thoughts mature. Like any garden, it’s overgrown in places, and rough around the edges. Over time, some zettels will grow and become more refined. Others will remain wild and untamed.
I've made my notes available on the web in the interests of Learning In Public, as well as a way of open-sourcing my knowledge. The Zettelgarden goes hand-in-hand with my Idea Library, which you can access here if you're interested. In productivity circles, this type of system is part of what is called Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).
There are three major types of zettels in the Zettelgarden:
Research zettels are notes on things I'm reading (books, articles, web pages, blog posts, etc.,) or notes on other media I'm consuming such as podcasts, TV shows, YouTube videos, etc. These Zettels are other people's ideas, thoughts, or concepts distilled and filtered through my understanding of them. Research zettels are not notes on original research, which would fall under concept zettels. In zettelkasten these would be called "Literature Notes"
Concept zettels are notes with original ideas, concepts, and thoughts, and also "remixed" mash-ups based on the work of others.
Meta zettels provide information about the Zettelgarden itself. They include things like maps of content, tag notes, notes about the Zettelgarden, etc.