Today marks the first day I changed this blog’s design into a neater, cleaner one. So this post is going to be just an ala-ala attempt to see how does it feel like writing and posting in a new environment. Since I have no idea what to share today, I’ll probably just start with my recent adventure with Zettelkesten and Obsidian.
Zettelkasten is a unique note-taking system that works like a personal Wikipedia. The creator of this method, Niklas Luhman, have made hundreds of publication throughout his life only by indexing and cross-referencing multiple notes and scattered ideas so that he can generate new ideas. The basic principle of the Zettelkesten method is to see bits of information as interconnected. Words, objects, ideas, and thoughts have relationships. Creativity grows when we can see the pattern or relationship between raw materials, synthesize them, and thus create new ideas. Sherlock Holmes spend all his life indexing and cross-referencing information to be able to generate ideas to solve criminal cases.
These days, we don’t have to do the indexing and cross-referencing manually like Luhman did in the past. Thanks to computer engineers, we can use a software called Obsidian. Honestly speaking, the software looked very daunting when I tried using it the first time, but it gets easier as time goes by. (Since this post is ala-ala, I will talk more about this hidden gem in the next post!)
All in all, Zettlekesten has introduced me to a new note-taking habit. In order to have more evergreen and useful notes, we can take different approaches to link what we consume to other interesting stuff. For example, how is this theory/concept related to my favorite Taylor Swift song? Can I use this idea to interpret a TV show? How is the couch on which my butt is placed reflect Aristotle’s concept of human rights? Is there any feminist thought that could be found in that piece of writing? And et cetera…
That’s all for today.
Welcome and enjoy the new look of my blog!
Kirana Sulaeman 