CityReads│How to Take Smart Notes:Luhmann’s Slip-Box

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How to Take Smart Notes: Luhmann's Slip-Box

Smart notes are not just another way to collect stuff; their aim and goal is to foster and support creative and innovative output.

Sönke Ahrens, 2017. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Sources: http://www.markwk.com/smart-notes.html

https://strengejacke.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/introduction-into-luhmanns-zettelkasten-thinking.pdf

The first step in nearly “every intellectual endeavor” is to take a note. Writing notes is critical for how we learn, develop ideas and ultimately, create, and if you want to become a better writer or creative of any type, you need a better system and process for your notes.

Inspired by Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998), a well-known German social scientist and his method for managing his research and writing, Sönke Ahrens has written a book How to Take Smart Notes that could completely revolutionize how you go about this deceptively simple task. Ahren explores how to be more productive, creative and organized using a system of deliberate note taking.

How to Take Smart Notes builds onthe 'slip box' technique (Zettelkasten) used by a professor of sociology, Niklas Luhmann, in the late 20th century. It's well known to academics in Germany and in the sociology field, amongst others, but has made little impact beyond those borders. Sönke's book is a detailed explanation of the technique but also builds on the evidence in areas such as education, multi-tasking, ego depletion and willpower, and problems such as confirmation bias. We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains. It's a complete system that can allow anyone to build their own 'second brain' in a Zettelkasten to think more deeply and bemore productive. Smart notes are not just another way to collect stuff; their aim and goal is to foster and support creative and innovative output.

Luhmann & the slip-box

It is the 1960s, somewhere in Germany. Among the staff of a German administration office is the son of a brewer. His name is Niklas Luhmann. He went to law school, but he has chosen to be a public servant, as he did not like the idea of having to work for multiple clients. Fully aware he is also not suited for a career in administration, as it involves a lot of socializing, he excuses himself every day after his 9-5 shift and goes home to do what he liked most: reading and following his diverse interests in philosophy, organizational theory and sociology.

Whenever he encountered something remarkable or had a thought about what he read, he made a note.  After collecting notes for a while in the way most people do, commenting in the margins of a text or collecting handwritten notes by topic, Luhmann realized his note-taking was not leading anywhere. So he turned note-taking on its head. Instead of adding notes to existing categories or the respective texts, he wrote them all on small piecesof paper, put a number in the corner and collected them in one place: the slip-box.

He soon developed new categories of these notes. He realized that one idea, one note was only as valuable as its context, which was not necessarily the context it was taken from. So he started to think about how one idea could relate and contribute to different contexts. Just amassing notes in one place would not lead to anything other than a mass of notes. But he collected his notes in his slip-box in such a way that the collection became much more than the sum of its parts. His slip-box became his dialogue partner, main idea generator and productivity engine. It helped him to structure and develop his thoughts.

And it led him to enter academia. One day, he put some of these thoughts together into a manuscript and handed it over to Helmut Schelsky, one of the most influential sociologists in Germany. Schelsky took it home, read what this academic outsider had written and contacted Luhmann. He suggested that Luhmann should become a professor of sociology in the newly founded University of Bielefeld. As attractive and prestigious as this position was, Luhmann wasn’t asociologist. He didn’t have the formal qualifications required even to become anassistant for a sociology professor in Germany. He hadn’t written a habilitation, the highest academic qualification in many European countries, which is based on the second book after the doctoral thesis. He had never helda doctorate or even obtained a sociology degree. Most people would take theoffer as a huge compliment, but point out the impossibility of it and move on.

Not Luhmann. He turned to his slip-box and with its help he put together a doctoral thesis and the habilitation thesis in less than a year – while taking classes in sociology. Shortly after, in 1968, he was chosen to become professor of sociology at the University of Bielefeld – a position he would hold for the rest of his life.

In Germany, a professor traditionally starts with a public lecture presenting his or her projects, and Luhmann, too, was asked what his main research project will be. His answer would become famous. He laconically stated: “Myproject: theory of society. Duration: 30 years. Costs: zero”. In sociology, a“theory of society” is the mother of all projects. When he finished the final chapter, almost exactly 29 and a half years later, as a two-volume book with the title “The Society of Society” (1997), it stirred up the scientific community. It was a radical new theory that not only changed sociology, but stirred heated discussions in philosophy, education, political theory and psychology as well.

In 30 years, he published 58 books and hundreds of articles, translations notincluded. Many became classics in their respective fields. Even after his death, about half a dozen more books on diverse subjects like religion, education or politics were published in his name – based on almost finished manuscripts lying around in his office.

After doing extensive research on Luhmann’s workflow, the German sociologist Johannes F.K. Schmidt concluded his productivity could only be explained by his unique working technique. Luhmann regularly mentioned the slip-box as the reason forhis productivity. From as early as 1985, his standard answer to the question of how anyone could be so productive was: “I, of course, do not think everything by myself. It happens mainly within the slip-box”. It is the way Luhmann and his slip-box worked together that allowed him to move freely and flexibly between different tasks and levels of thinking. It is about having the right tools and knowing how to use them.

How did Luhmann's slip-box work?

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. 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 kept them usually brief enough to make one idea fit on a single sheet, but would sometimes add another note to extend a thought.

He usually wrote his notes with an eye towards already existing notes in the slip-box. And while the notes on the literature were brief, he wrote them with great care, not much different from his style in the final manuscript: in full sentences and with explicit references to the literature from which he drew his material. More often than not, a new note would directly follow up on another note and would become part of a longer chain of notes. He then would add references to notes somewhere else in the slip-box, some of them which were located nearby, others in completely different areas and contexts.

The trick is that he did not organise his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers. The numbers bore no meaning and wereonly there to identify each note permanently. By alternating numbers and letters, with some slashes and commas in between, he was able to branch outinto as many strings of thought as he liked. For example, a note about causality and systems theory carried the number 21/3d7a7 following a note withthe number 21/3d7a6.

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 noteis only one way of doing this. Another way is by adding a link on this and/or the other note.  By adding these links between notes, Luhmann was able to add the same note to different contexts.

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.

That’s it. Actually, it is even simpler than this, as we now have software that makes it much easier: we don’t need to manually add numbers on notes or cut out paperas Luhmann had to.

How to write a paper with the slip-box?

1. Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write with to capture every idea that pops into your mind. Don’t worry too much about how you writeit down or what you write it on. These are fleeting notes, mere reminders of what is in your head. They should not cause any distraction. Put them into one place, which you define as your inbox, and process them later. I usually have a simple notebook with me, but I am happy with napkins or receipts if nothing else is at hand. Sometimes I leave a voice record on my phone. If your thoughts are already sorted and you have the time, you can skip this step and write your idea directly down as a proper, permanent note for your slip-box.

2. 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 inyour own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be extra selective with quotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean. Keep these notes together withthe bibliographic details in one place – your reference system.

3. Make permanent notes. Now turn to your slip-box. 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. Does the new information contradict, correct,support or add to what you already have (in the slip-box or on your mind)? Can you combine ideas to generate something new? What questions are triggered by them? 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. Throw away the fleeting notes from step one and put the literature notes from step two into your reference system. You can forget about them now. All that matters is going into the slip-box.

4. Now add your new permanent notes to the slip-box by:

a)Filing each one behind one or more related notes (with a program, you can putone note “behind” multiple notes; if you use pen and paper like Luhmann, you have to decide where it fits best and add manual links to the other notes).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.

b)Adding links to related notes.

c)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.

5. Develop your topics, questions and research projects bottom up from within the system. See what is there, what is missing and what questions arise. Read moreto challenge and strengthen your arguments and change and develop your arguments according to the new information you are learning about. Take more notes, develop ideas further and see where things will take you. Just follow your interest and always take the path that promises the most insight.

Build upon what you have. 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. Do not brainstorm for a topic. Look into the slip-box instead to see where chains of notes have developed and ideas have been built up to clusters. Don’t cling to an idea if another,more promising one gains momentum. The more you become interested in something,the more you will read and think about it, the more notes you will collect and the more likely it is that you will generate questions from it. It might be exactly what you were interested in from the beginning, but it is more likely that your interests will have changed – that is what insight does.

6. After a while, you will have developed ideas far enough to decide on a topic to write about. Your topic is now based on what you have, not based on an unfounded idea about what the literature you are about to read might provide. Look through the connections and collect all the relevant notes on this topic, copy them onto your “desktop” and bring them in order. Look for what is missing and what is redundant. Don’t wait until you have everything together. Rather, try ideas out and give yourself enough time to go back to reading and note-taking to improve your ideas, arguments and their structure.

7. Turn your notes into a rough draft. Don’t simply copy your notes into a manuscript. Translate them into something coherent and embed them into the context of your argument while you build your argument out of the notes at the same time. Detect holes in your argument, fill them or change your argument.

8. Edit and proofread your manuscript. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder and turn to the next manuscript

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