Home  >  101 Zettelkasten  >  101.002 Zettelkasten - Reading is for fun writing is for learning

“Nothing counts other than writing.”

Reading is for fun. Writing is for value. Organizing your writing is for knowledge and expertise. Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what you are doing.

If we accompany every step of our work with the question, “What is interesting about this?” and everything we read with the question, “What is so relevant about this that it is worth noting down?” we do not just choose information according to our interest. By elaborating on what we encounter, we also discover aspects we didn’t know anything about before and therefore develop our interests along the way. P137

In the past I have been guilty of not taking notes at all, relying on memory to retain important information, which fails all the time and is hugely subject to recency bias. I have also been guilty of taking too many notes - highlighting all the seemingly relevant parts of a book and then not doing anything about those highlights - useless!

Now, I must take only 101.007 Zettelkasten - RAW NOTES on those things which seem very important and are worth the work of integrating into the 101.009 Zettelkasten - LIT NOTES and 101.010 Zettelkasten - PERMANENT NOTES. There is a significant amount of work involved with each note, so I must choose wisely.


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