Yes, you do need to take notes #zettelkasten

UPDATED 25 JULY 2021. Added links to both my #Zettelkasten content on Roam and to the #Quick Capture service on Roam. Added shout-out to Chris Byrne.

I USED TO BE a casual reader until I figured out I remembered things better when I highlighted them. I think I need to take notes as I read (or hear or view) things. Let me explain how I do this.

I noted something while scrolling Twitter so I liked the item. This post shows an image that the Readwise app created from the tweet I liked. Readwise.io shows me snippets I've liked or highlights I've made or annotated. The images show up in a set of cards pushed to my phone once a day. The images look like the one accompanying this post. They're part of my daily digital [Zettelkasten] routine. Some people call this [Personal Knowĺedge Management]. Others say it is a form of digital literacy. And others, like Chris Byrne, trade screenshots with me from content their instance of Readwise makes.

I want the things I share to sit outside of silos so I tend to put simple throwaway things on Insta and I'm using FB only for high school reunions, family announcements, and funeral arrangements. I personally believe Facebook will pivot into the metaverse next year and Instagram will become short form video service spun off on its own before 2025. I'm preparing for a world in which we need to pay for more of the content we value, especially for content that alerts us to important items.

I like to use online power tools to dynamically discover backward links. For this discovery process to work, the content has to be in open file structures without paywalls and be unconstrained by password controls. And I need to be able to use a suite of tools that work inside the mobile devices I carry.

My Note-taking Tools

• Share sheets that open Instapaper inside my mobile apps quickly grab content from premium sources.
• Readwise.io helps me master concepts.
• Feedly's AI serves me useful alerts and also ports content to boards that fold into Teams channels.
• Inoreader is so extensible and folds into Readwise just like Feedly.
• Otter.ai generates text on my handset from podcast episodes and YouTube clips.
• I use Thought Stream (free app on Android) when viewing streaming video services.
• I used an Android shortcut to create a Roam Research Quick Capture tab on my Note 9.
• My Note 9 extracts text from images I capture on my handset.
• Zotero feeds into my Zettelkasten routine too, complementing the ORCID profile I have.
• Office Lens can extract and save pages of information from print publications.
• Calendar reminders prompt me to archive relevant snippets into Roamresearch for back-linking and lightning-fast cross-checking.

My Digital Archives

I have two years of content from social networks that several Machine Learning processes are analysing. Directory structures from 24 years of blogging are inside my core repository. More than 300 Moleskines need to be processed into my digital collection. I'm asking Microsoft Lens to grab this short post and will watch to see if a small image like the one on this post shows up a few weeks from now among a set of cards that rotate in a slideshow as part of my Daily Review.

Bonus Link: MindstoneHQ. "Learn faster, Remember more."

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media students how to do these things on the Clonmel Digital Campus of the Shannon Technological University. Are you using any sort of note-taking techniques to enhance your digital literacy?]