We write when we need to remember something, be it an idea, a quote or the outcome of a study. We write when we want to organise our thoughts and when we want to exchange ideas with others.

wonder why there always seem to be a few who get a lot of good writing done and still have time for a coffee every time we ask them.

Getting something that is already written into another written piece is incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrieve it from there.

Self-discipline or self-control is not that easy to achieve with willpower alone.

We know today that self-control and self-discipline have much more to do with our environment than with ourselves (cf.

And nobody needs willpower to do something they wanted to do anyway. Every task that is interesting, meaningful and well-defined will be done, because there is no conflict between long- and short-term interests.

But moreover, it describes how he implemented them into his workflow so he could honestly say: “I never force myself to do anything I don’t feel like. Whenever I am stuck, I do something else.”

A good structure enables flow,

It is certainly not the lack of interesting topics, but rather the employment of problematic work routines that seems to take charge of us instead of allowing us to steer the process in the right direction.

Having a clear structure to work in is completely different from making plans about something. If you make a plan, you impose a structure on yourself; it makes you inflexible. To keep going according to plan, you have to push yourself and employ willpower.

It is a huge misunderstanding that the only alternative to planning is aimless messing around. The challenge is to structure one’s workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward.

The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible and to follow a few basic principles.

It is not about redoing what you have done before, but about changing the way of working from now on.

Even the best tool will not improve your productivity considerably if you don’t change your daily routines the tool is embedded in,

Like every change in behaviour, a change in working habits means going through a phase where you are drawn back to your old ways.

Routines require simple, repeatable tasks that can become automatic and fit together seamlessly

What we can take from Allen as an important insight is that the secret to a successful organization lies in the holistic perspective.

Only if you can trust your system, only if you really know that everything will be taken care of, will your brain let go and let you focus on the task at hand.

reading and following his diverse interests in philosophy, organizational theory and sociology.

Instead of adding notes to existing categories or the respective texts, he wrote them all on small pieces of paper, put a number in the corner and collected them in one place: the slip-box.

He not only stressed that he never forced himself to do something he didn’t feel like, he even said: “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f.)

It is about having the right tools and knowing how to use them – and very few understand that you need both.

Strictly speaking, Luhmann had two slip-boxes: a bibliographical one, which contained the references and brief notes on the content of the literature, and the main one in which he collected and generated his ideas, mainly in response to what he read. The notes were written on index cards and stored in wooden boxes.

Whenever he read something, he would write the bibliographic information on one side of a card and make brief notes about the content on the other side (Schmidt 2013, 170). These notes would end up in the bibliographic slip-box.

In a second step, shortly after, he would look at his brief notes and think about their relevance for his own thinking and writing. He then would turn to the main slip-box and write his ideas, comments and thoughts on new pieces of paper, using only one for each idea and restricting himself to one side of the paper, to make it easier to read them later without having to take them out of the box.

He did not just copy ideas or quotes from the texts he read, but made a transition from one context to another.

The trick is that he did not organise his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers.

If a new note was relevant or directly referred to an already existing note, such as a comment, correction or addition, he added it directly behind the previous note.

If the existing note had the number 22, the new note would become note number 23. If 23 already existed, he named the new note 22a. By alternating numbers and letters, with some slashes and commas in between, he was able to branch out into as many strings of thought as he liked. For

Whenever he added a note, he checked his slip-box for other relevant notes to make possible connections between them. Adding a note directly behind another note is only one way of doing this. Another way is by adding a link on this and/or the other note, which could be anywhere in the system.

The last element in his file system was an index, from which he would refer to one or two notes that would serve as a kind of entry point into a line of thought or topic. Notes with a sorted collection of links are, of course, good entry points.

Notes build up while you think, read, understand and generate ideas,

If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words.

Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write with to capture every idea that pops into your mind.

Put them into one place, which you define as your inbox, and process them later.

Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing.

Be extra selective with quotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean.

Keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place – your reference system.

Go through the notes you made in step one or two (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how they relate to what is relevant for your own research, thinking or interests. This can soon be done by looking into the slip-box – it only contains what interests you anyway.

The idea is not to collect, but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions.

Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible.

Look to which note the new one directly relates or, if it does not relate directly to any other note yet, just file it behind the last one.

Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to the index.

Even if you don’t have anything in your slip-box yet, you never start from scratch – you already have ideas on your mind to be tested, opinions to be challenged and questions to be answered.

Focus on the essentials, don’t complicate things unnecessarily.

Something to write with and something to write on (pen and paper will do) ·       A reference management system (the best programs are free) ·       The slip-box (the best program is free) ·       An editor (whatever works best for you: very good ones are free)

To collect the references (duh) and the notes you take during your reading. I strongly recommend using a free program like Zotero, which allows you to make new entries via browser plugins or just by entering the ISBN or digital object identifier (DOI) number. Zotero also can be integrated into Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and NeoOffice, which allows you to insert quotations without

I strongly recommend using Daniel Lüdecke’s Zettelkasten.

If we try to use a tool without putting any thought into the way we work with it, even the best tool would not be of much help.

There is no such thing as private knowledge in academia. An idea kept private is as good as one you never had.

And truth is always a public matter.

If writing is the medium of research and studying nothing else than research, then there is no reason not to work as if nothing else counts than writing.

You quickly learn to distinguish good-sounding arguments from actual good ones, as you will have to think them through whenever you try to write them down and connect them with your previous knowledge.

Even if you decide never to write a single line of a manuscript, you will improve your reading, thinking and other intellectual skills just by doing everything as if nothing counts other than writing.

Fleeting notes, which are only reminders of information, can be written in any kind of way and will end up in the trash within a day or two.

Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way.

Project notes, which are only relevant to one particular project.

Fleeting notes are only useful if you review them within a day or so and turn them into proper notes you can use later.

Permanent notes, on the other hand, are written in a way that can still be understood even when you have forgotten the context they are taken from.

In Zotero, you can collect literature in project-specific folders without taking them out of the reference system itself. All this keeps the permanent notes from the project-related notes clearly separated and allows you to experiment and tinker with them as much as you like within the boundaries of each project without interfering with the actual slip-box.

Every intellectual endeavour starts from an already existing preconception, which then can be transformed during further inquires and can serve as a starting point for following endeavours. Basically, that is what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the hermeneutic circle

We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts.

our interest, curiosity and intuition, which is formed and informed by the actual work of reading, thinking, discussing, writing and developing ideas – and is something that continuously grows and reflects our knowledge and understanding externally.

Who can blame you for procrastinating if you find yourself stuck with a topic you decided on blindly and now have to stick with it as the deadline is approaching?

Sometimes we feel like our work is draining our energy and we can only move forward if we put more and more energy into it. But sometimes it is the opposite. Once we get into the workflow, it is as if the work itself gains momentum, pulling us along and sometimes even energizing us. This is the kind of dynamic we are looking for. A

The only thing that matters is that they discover something that gives them a good experience

And the only chance to improve in something is getting timely and concrete feedback.

fear of failure has the ugliest name of all phobias: Kakorrhaphiophobia.

Having a growth mindset is crucial, but only one side of the equation. Having a learning system in place that enables feedback loops in a practical way is equally important.

Reading with a pen in the hand, for example, forces, us to think about what we read and check upon our understanding. It is the simplest test: We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words.

The same goes for writing permanent notes, which have another feedback loop built-in: Expressing our own thoughts in writing makes us realise if we really thought them through. The moment we try to combine them with previously written notes, the system will unambiguously show us contradictions, inconsistencies and repetitions.

But if facts are not kept isolated nor learned in an isolated fashion, but hang together in a network of ideas, or “latticework of mental models” (Munger, 1994), it becomes easier to make sense of new information.

watching television reduces the attention span of children (Swing et al. 2010).

it is obvious that we are surrounded by more sources of distraction and less opportunities to train our attention spans.

focused attention, we focus on one thing only, something we can sustain for only a few seconds.

“sustained attention,” which we need to stay focused on one task for a longer period and is necessary to learn, understand or get something done. This is the kind of attention that is most certainly under threat from an increase in distractions.

To be able to become an expert, we need the freedom to make our own decisions and all the necessary mistakes that help us learn. Like bicycling, it can only be learned by doing it.

The first step is to break down the amorphous task of “writing” into smaller pieces of different tasks that can be finished in one go.

The second step is to make sure we always write down the outcome of our thinking, including possible connections to further inquiries. As the outcome of each task is written down and possible connections become visible, it is easy to pick up the work any time where we left it

Next to the attention that can only be directed at one thing at a time and the short-term memory that can only hold up to seven things at once, the third

The smartest way to deal with this kind of limitation is to cheat. Instead of forcing ourselves to do something we don’t feel like doing, we need to find a way to make us feel like doing what moves our project further along.

it is safe to argue that a reliable and standardised working environment is less taxing on our attention, concentration and willpower, or, if you like, ego.

By always using the same notebook for making quick notes, always extracting the main ideas from a text in the same way and always turning them into the same kind of permanent notes, which are always dealt with in the same manner, the number of decisions during a work session can be greatly reduced.

Breaks are much more than just opportunities to recover. They are crucial for learning. They allow the brain to process information, move it into long-term memory and prepare it for new information

To have a walk (Ratey, 2008) or even a nap[24] supports learning and thinking.[25]

all you really have to do is have a pen in your hand when you read.

If you understand what you read and translate it into the different context of your own thinking, materialised in the slip-box, you cannot help but transform the findings and thoughts of others into something that is new and your own.

While the notes themselves are formulated so that they can be understood on their own, they are at the same time embedded in one or more contexts that enrich their meaning.

Luhmann describes this step as follows: “I always have a slip of paper at hand, on which I note down the ideas of certain pages. On the backside I write down the bibliographic details. After finishing the book I go through my notes and think how these notes might be relevant for already written notes in the slip-box. It means that I always read with an eye towards possible connections in the slip-box.”

The only thing that matters is that these notes provide the best possible support for the next step, the writing of the actual slip-box notes.

And what is most helpful is to reflect on the frame, the theoretical background, methodological approach or perspective of the text we read. That often means to reflect as much on what is not mentioned as what is mentioned.

Here, everything is about building up a critical mass of useful notes in the slip-box, which gives us a clear idea of how to read and how to take literature notes.

You can type a literature note directly into Zotero, where it will be stored with the bibliographic details. You might want to write them by hand, though.

Confirmation bias is a subtle but major force. As the psychologist Raymond Nickerson puts it: “If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration”

The classic role model would be Charles Darwin. He forced himself to write down (and therefore elaborate on) the arguments that were the most critical of his theories. “I

Instead of having the hypothesis in mind all the time, we want to:   ·     Confirm that we have separated tasks and focus on understanding the text we read, ·     Make sure we have given a true account of its content ·     Find the relevance of it and make connections.

One of the most important habitual changes when starting to work with the slip-box is moving the attention from the individual project with our preconceived ideas towards the open connections within the slip-box.

It is the practice of looking for the gist and distinguishing it from mere supporting details.

Extracting the gist of a text or an idea and giving an account in writing is for academics

But this dynamic can only start if we ourselves deliberately decide to take on the task of reading and being selective about it, relying on nothing other than our own judgement of what is important and what is not.

take notes – not excerpts, but condensed reformulated accounts of a text.

Rewriting what was already written almost automatically trains one to shift the attention towards frames, patterns and categories in the observations, or the conditions/assumptions, which enable certain, but not other descriptions.

The

With practice comes the ability to find the right words to express something in the best possible way, which means in a simple, but not simplified way.

The most important advantage of writing is that it helps us to confront ourselves when we do not understand something as well as we would like to believe.

“Manipulations such as variation, spacing, introducing contextual interference, and using tests, rather than presentations, as learning events, all share the property that they appear during the learning process to impede learning, but they then often enhance learning as measured by post-training tests of retention and transfer. Conversely, manipulations such as keeping conditions constant and predictable and massing trials on a given task often appear to enhance the rate of learning during instruction or training, but then typically fail to support long-term retention and transfer” (Bjork, 2011, 8). When

On the other hand, most people feel that writing a page a day (and having a day a week off) is quite manageable, not realising that this would mean finishing a doctoral thesis within a year – something that does not happen very often in reality.

He would start every morning at 5:30 a.m. with a cup of coffee and a clock in front of him. Then he would write at least 250 words every 15 minutes.

But it only means that he wrote six notes a day from the day he started to work with his slip-box until he died.

you could settle for three notes a day and still build up a significant critical mass of ideas in a very reasonable time.

Taking permanent notes of our own thoughts is a form of self-testing as well: do they still make sense in writing? Are we even able to get the thought on paper? Do we have the references, facts and supporting sources at hand? And at the same time, writing it is the best way to get our thoughts in order. Writing here, too, is not copying, but translating (from one context and from one medium into another).

A common way to embed an idea into the context of the slip-box is by writing out the reasons of its importance for your own lines of thought.

But the first question I asked myself when it came to writing the first permanent note for the slip-box was: What does this all mean for my own research and the questions I think about in my slip-box? This is just another way of asking: Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest?

That the slip-box is not sorted by topics is the precondition for actively building connections between notes.

3.    Make sure it can be found from the index; add an entry in the index if necessary or refer to it from a note that is connected to the index.

In the Zettelkasten, keywords can easily be added to a note like tags and will then show up in the index. They should be chosen carefully and sparsely.

Luhmann would add the number of one or two (rarely more) notes next to a keyword in the index (Schmidt 2013, 171).

We can provide ourselves with a (temporarily valid) overview over a topic or subtopic just by making another note. If we then link from the index to such a note, we have a good entry point.

Assigning keywords is much more than just a bureaucratic act. It is a crucial part of the thinking process, which often leads to a deeper elaboration of the note itself and the connection to other notes.

The first type of links are those on notes that are giving you the overview of a topic. These are notes directly referred to from the index and usually used as an entry point into a topic that has already developed to such a degree that an overview is needed or at least becomes helpful.

On a note like this, you can collect links to other relevant notes to this topic or question, preferably with a short indication of what to find on these notes (one or two words or a short sentence is sufficient).

Luhmann collected up to 25 links to other notes on these kind of entry notes.

original lines of thoughts were often interrupted by hundreds of different notes. This second type of note keeps track of the original lines of thought.

links that indicate the note to which the current note is a follow-up and those links that indicate the note that follows on the current note.

The most common form of reference is plain note-to-note links. They have no function other than indicating a relevant connection between two individual notes.

The search for meaningful connections is a crucial part of the thinking process towards the finished manuscript.

He advocates looking out for the most powerful concepts in every discipline and to try to understand them so thoroughly that they become part of our thinking.

It is such an important skill to see differences between seemingly similar concepts, or connections between seemingly different ideas.

Make sure that you really see what you think you see and describe it as plainly and factually as possible. Double-check if necessary.

To be able to see what we see instead of what we expect to see is indeed a skill in itself, not like a character trait of being “open-minded.”

Another seemingly banal tip relates to a distinguishing feature of extraordinary thinkers:

highly recommend treating a digital note as if the space were limited. By restricting

The restriction to one idea per note is also the precondition to recombine them freely later.

A good rule of thumb for working with the program is: Each note should fit onto the screen

Literature is condensed on a note saying, “On page x, it says y,” and later stored

It is the one decision in the beginning, to make writing the mean and the end of the whole intellectual endeavour, that changed the role of topic-finding completely.

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.

Remember: Luhmann’s answer to the question of how one person could be so productive was that he never forced himself to do anything and only did what came easily to him. “When I am stuck for one moment, I leave it and do something else.”

The trick is not to try to break with old habits and also not to use willpower to force oneself to do something else, but to strategically build up new habits that have a chance to replace the old ones.

The goal here is to get into the habit of fetching pen and paper whenever we read something, to write down the most important and interesting aspects.