🌱 Our understanding broadens and gets strengthened by adding nodes and connections to our ZK

Zettelkasten and Evergreen notes expansion

An idea gets written down in an atomic note, with one specific context, the context of that note and understanding. When linking a note, we broaden the context by adding the two notes together. Especially of the other notes is from a (slightly) unrelated field, our understanding and application of our first note grows.

When moving ideas from a previous context in our own understanding, we have to carefully consider the meaning. We want to really understand and not misrepresent the original author.

As you add more notes and create more links you literally broaded your understanding. True understanding is understanding the limits (borders) of a text, and then having the ability to look beyond

Literature notes

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– How to Take Smart Notes - Sönke Ahrens

The nodes in our ZK, chained together form our thoughts. Adding to these nodes means expanding our thinking

• Reading material is transformed into nodes in the ZK. These connected nodes represent chains of thought. As we add nodes, and revisit chains our thinking is expanded and reformed
• The growth of the ZK represents our growth of understanding

Spaced repetition systems are designed to facilitate this effect. If you want prompts to reinforce your understanding of some topic, you must learn to write prompts which collectively invoke retrieval practice of all the key details. – How to write good prompts- using spaced repetition to create understanding

Fleeting notes

We strengthen chains of thought by adding notes to them

• An idea taken from a context is given new context when placed in an atomic note
  • you will recreate something atomic and new, in new surroundings
    • you have made it your own
      • placing this in the ZK will turn it into elements a a chain of thought
        • these thoughts will give it meaning and application
          • thoughts change, and thus the application
            • meaning might be colored, but good notes should be resistant to abuse
        • traveling up and down chains will result in surprising conncetions
          • new context will show new applications of ideas
            • this will lead to new chains of thought
              • the more ideas are added to a chain, the stronger the chain becomes
                • as they chain is our thought: our thoughts get strengthened with more arguments by adding ideas to the ZK