[mulholio]

I've gotten a lot of use from a version of Zettelkasten in Roam recently.

The general idea is this.

1. Take "Literature Notes" in your own words as you consume content. These are little summaries of ideas in the text that are usually 1-3 lines. For paper books, I do this in a little Muji notebook. For digital resources, these go straight in Roam. 2. When you have finished the resource, copy your notes to one page and summarise them in "Permanent Notes". 3. Keep your Permanent Notes in one Permanent Note page and link everything together.

The best guide I found for getting this kind of system set up was https://www.nateliason.com/blog/smart-notes. The original "How to Take Smart Notes" book is also good, but much less concrete.

Really, I found step 1 to be the most valuable. I was previously processing highlights from articles and books and that weirdly took more time. Writing little notes as you go along saves only what is relevant and it's much more direct for your use cases.

As a word of warning though, I really haven't gotten this stuff to work very well for programming (or disciplines where you need to exercise knowledge rather than archive it in a system). I either find I need to memorise the stuff more directly with Anki, or having to practice skills in a real world context.