What Does Your General Knowledge Management Look Like?

[@MelvilCz]

Dear Mr. Newport, as a proud publisher of your books in Czech language _AND_ happy publisher of the How to Take Smart Notes book by Sönke Ahrens (which became a bestseller here with huge community growing), we suggest you to invite its author into your podcast. :) It would be great!

[@Vendos2004]

Hoovno Melvil omgg

[@Vendos2004]

Jinak podle me Cal nepujde, copak neznate jeho knihu Digitalni minimalismus? Navíc tohle ani neni jeho kanál, jen mu to nejakej editor striha :D

[@dmk5n1]

4:18 exactly. and adding a unique identifier to your notes is like having an ISBN for each thought. So you can combine, link and find things on your external brain very quickly.

[@raiseyourvibration1411]

Aloha Cal, I read the book, and I use Obsidian for my PKM, and Yes, I agree that "writing can be made easy" is an overstatement by the author (Ahrens). The power of the Zettelkasten is that you no longer have notes spread out all over 10 different platforms (in the margins of books, highlighted passages, in electronic word documents, in physical notebooks, etc.), but rather you have them all in one place. Nikolas Luhman used a paper system in the 1950s and 1960s, but today we have computers, and the power of the system is leveraged. Roam has a lot of drawbacks, such as issues around the fact that's it's a proprietary software, while Obsidian is far superior on many fronts, including it's based on text files/markdown, so if Obsidian software was to suddenly go out of business, you don't lose any notes. I strongly suggest you try Obsidian.

[@dsuthapong]

Cal, please help make this concept go mainstream!

[@funkyidol]

Please normalize the final audio volume. Intro outro are too loud compared to the the voice recording. Becomes startling and annoying. Love the content but please fix this grave issue

[@DonDealio]

yeah it is annoying to sit in focused mode and then get blasted.

[@ThomasToPC]

Thanks for sharing this! This is the same idea as the coding method used in textual analysis, for qualitative research. I’ve toyed around the idea of using software such as NVivo for literature review, and perhaps also for non-academic readings, self-reflections, journal entries, etc. Glad to hear an anecdote of someone having made this work for them, even before the times where this kind of software is available.

[@Martin_Adams]

Great video. The book has been a huge inspiration and ah-ha moment in my personal knowledge journey. I would love to know what your thoughts are on whether the slip-box can help you find gaps in your understanding for writing. My take on it is that the notes and connections can spark inspiration for new thinking, but this is an entry point to a new line of research.

[@hansimeier6587]

How far is the Zettelkasten method suited to promote deep focus or deep work, as you promote them?

[@AlexeiAnisimov]

TiddlyWiki anyone? Not exactly out of the box, but its proper open source and community driven

[@judahgoddard7734]

I want a Tiago Forte and Cal Newport boxing match

[@upvotecomment2110]

Roam Research kinda sucks compared to Obsidian No Offense.

[@raiseyourvibration1411]

You're very right. On just about every measure possible, Obsidian is far superior to Roam, Evernote, etc.

[@RichardHaggerty]

Cal, have you read Building A Second Brain by Tiago Forte? The reason is this: Your video on the Corner Marking Method has been so helpful for me. The pragmatic approach is amazing, and I have taught it business owners and people I coach and mentor. I use it this week to read Building A Second Brain (BASB), which also mentions How To Take Smart Notes. BASB helped me organise everything from Evernote through to email and external hard drives, Dropbox. I had been using this method to gather ideas for years (when I learned it, it was called Freenoting - writing down your insights and thoughts around what you are reading/studying) BASB explains exactly how to do what back in Jan you though Zettelcasting couldn't: use it to create products and write books. As a writer too, it is really helped me. And Tiago used the method to write his book. It is extremely well-written. The notes I make in Evernote will need some polishing. But the idea of re-usable assets, project focus were brilliant. And the slant I take is make sure I use physical book, corner mark it, and them apply to Deep Work sessions. Thank you for your excellent books and podcast. I think Tiago's book is a must read as there is a lot of richness to cross-pollinate with Deep Work.