CityReads | Tools of Titans: Luhmann's Slip-Box

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Tools of Titans: Luhmann's Slip-Box

How to use Luhmann’s Slip-Box to improve our writing, learning and thinking?

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.

Two years ago, I introduced a book, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens. This book explains how the slip-box works, which a note-taking technique used by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. This book also uses research findings from psychology and cognitive science to explain why Luhmann's slip-box works. Luhmann used this method and he transformed himself from a beer brewer's son, civil servant, and amateur academic to one of the most innovative and prolific social theorists of the 20th century. Luhmann worked with his slip-box in a way that allowed him to move freely and flexibly between different tasks and different levels of thinking. Being productive is having the right tools and knowing how to use them. The book also gives a contemporary technical implementation of Luhmann's slip-box method, developing a software and application for card management: The Zettelkasten.

The Chinese translation of this book has been recently published. So I revisited the book again to learn the tools of titans that prove to be effective and to apply the Luhmann's slip-box to my own reading, learning and writing process.

Taking notes? Who can't take notes after all those years as a student? So how do you take notes? When you are reading, you often highlight sentences; write comments in the margins; copy sentences ...... More often than not, reading is not accompanied by note-taking, which for writing purposes is the same as not having read the book.

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 were only there to identify each note permanently. 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 example, a note about causality and systems theory carried the number 21/3d7a7 following a note with the 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 note is 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 paper as 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 write it 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 in your 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 with the 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 put one 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 more to 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

Advantages of Luhmann's slip-box

The slip-box is not a collection of notes. Working with it is less about retrieving specific notes and more about being pointed to relevant facts and generating insight by letting ideas mingle. Its usability grows with its size, not just linearly but exponentially. When we turn to the slip-box, its inner connectedness will not just provide us with isolated facts, but with lines of developed thoughts. Moreover, because of its inner complexity, a search thought the slip-box will confront us with related notes we did not look for. This is a very significant difference that becomes more and more relevant over time. The more content it contains, the more connections it can provide, and the easier it becomes to add new entries in a smart way and receive useful suggestions.

That the slip-box generates an excess of possibilities enables it to surprise and inspire us to generate new ideas and develop our theories further. It is not the slip-box or our brains alone, but the dynamic between them that makes working with it so productive.

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