Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

I reserve my computer time for linking, tagging, and organizing notes; I summarize fleeting notes while reclining; I read while lying down; and I take fleeting notes while active

By trying to think of how to describe the passage in my own words, I activate the associative machine, which often causes the current idea to collide with some other idea in my mind. Associative thinking promotes a positive mood, so it shouldn't be a surprise how fun this task is.

Tiago Forte calls the highlighting of highlights "progressive summarization."

Once you've exported your highlights, review them and highlight, once again, the parts of those highlights that are the most interesting.

In the ancient world, storytellers traveled around, telling the same stories over and over. This was like Darwinism for storytelling. The stories changed slightly with each re-telling, so that by the time they were written, only the most compelling elements survived.

I, myself, often resist re-writing. But I go ahead and do it and usually I'm presented with something I didn't expect:

Someday/Maybe is borrowed from the Getting Things Done productivity system. You often come across things that are interesting, but not interesting enough and/or not relevant enough to your current projects to investigate further. The "someday/maybe" designation helps reduce worries that the idea might fall through the cracks, without obligating you to follow up on the idea right now.

Fleeting Notes: Notes you take "on the fly."
Literature Notes: Condensed notes of an entire article, book, etc.
Permanent Notes: Notes summarizing a single idea. These are assigned keywords and linked to other notes.

Search engines and the internet are not a substitute for your notes. Your notes contain more than just simple facts, managing your notes builds your memory, and your notes help you store and develop ideas in-progress.

looking things up is at some point a waste of working memory