Writing in Zettelkasten

I read the book The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto and specifically a section about how build to a pyramid structure from the bottom-up. She says that starting from the bottom-up is more difficult. I think that it is more difficult to start from the bottom, because you don’t have the raw materials.

The raw materials the ideas to build the structure. When you instead start from the top-down, you notice which (types of) ideas you are missing to answer the question from the note above.

Then I noticed that reading for a zettelkasten is like taking notes about the ideas that you would need as pieces in the bottom-up structure. At some point when you notice that you have multiple notes about the same thing, you can write a new note to group and summarize the lower level notes.

This is exactly what Minto was writing about in her book. This means that the ideas we should write in the zettelkasten, should actually be more like claims, conclusions or beliefs, instead of topics, categories or subjects.

Example from a highlight from Weinberg on Writing:

If you ask them why they don’t write more, they will commonly say they are stuck, or “blocked.” But these are just labels, and explain nothing.

There is the impulse to create the note as a dictionary definition, something like:

Writer’s block

Writer’s block is when a writer is blocked or stuck and can’t write more even if they want to.

These dictionary definitions of words don’t do anything for a zettelkasten. When rephrased as a claim it looks more like this (with a title):

Writer’s block is just a label for a symptom

Weinberg suggests that when people say they’re “stuck” or “blocked” and use these terms to explain why they don’t write more, they are actually just labeling their experience without providing any real explanation.

This title suggests the question “why is that?”, because it is written in the form a conclusion. The body of the note provides (part of) an answer, as writer’s block as an explanation, does not actually explain anything.

This whole note suggests another question: “what does explain why you don’t write more?”, and I guess that’s what the rest of the book is about.