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I'm re-reading Sönke Ahrens's *How to Take Smart Notes* in preparation for my spring grad seminar, a second go at "Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing." It hardly needs to be said that Ahrens is *super* opinionated in his take on the beauty of the #Zettelkasten, and his approach is one that I've never managed to make work. Or at least not yet. I think I'm figuring out a modified version of the method (of course using #Obsidian) that I'm going to commit myself to for the semester, and see where it leads me. At first glance, it works with two key goals that I'm holding for the year ahead:
1. Read way more, and think way more about what you read, without committing to a next Big Writing Project until that project announces its inescapability.
2. Write and publish more, but in the small, self-hosted chunks that #Hometown and #blogging make possible. See where those small chunks might lead.
Sending you all wishes for whatever will most feed your creativity in #2024.
@kfitz Happy New Year!
Too late for the syllabus, but I keep a bibliography of note taking manuals with a variety of related/historical alternatives to Ahrens if it will help anyone in the class: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought/collections/V9RPUCXJ/tags/note%20taking%20manuals/collection
Most are broadly w/in the humanities. Some of my favorites include Locke, Sertillanges, Goutor, Weinberg, and Eco.
I've also recently updated my note taking collection of articles of which the Examples section may be interesting as the process is frequently difficult for some to visualize. https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/
Related works I frequently recommend:
- “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 3rd ed. 2006. Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
- Adler, Mortimer J., & Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised & Updated ed. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.
- Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062
@chrisaldrich Thanks! Looks like a ton of great stuff.