2023 Zettelkasten Obsidian Workflow ⚡️ Simple Set Up

the best and worst part about obsidian and zettocastin is how simple they are there's no regis structure so you can use it the way that you like it you can start anywhere but at the same time it means you have to start somewhere and it's really easy to get overwhelmed and to overthink how should i set it up in a way that's right in a way that's effective and so today i want to share with you my current zettacastin workflow in obsidian with the goal of wanting to take the inputs i have and turn them

into output so i'll share with you how to use tags how i search how to try to distill the ideas and then connect them if you're interested keep on watching my goal very simply is taking the input i consume and turn them into output and i want to do this in a systematic way i do not want to reinvent the wheels because that's what i was doing before i found myself going back to the same source again again trying to find the same point i couldn't go very deep into each of the points and when

i'm writing sometimes i'm writing the same things over and over again without just having a blog already ready to plot into different parts of things that i'm writing about so doing things systematically not reinventing the wheel is very important so to me xerocasting is the perfect system and if you still don't know exactly what it is i did another video on this so please check it out now with the goal in mind here is my note-taking process there are five steps to this cycle the first one is of course capturing notes the second one is

to process the notes the third one is to connect them the fourth one is producing output and the fifth one is gathering the notes on reactions on conversations that spurred from the output okay first capturing notes this instead of casting means two things one is capturing fleeting notes and the other one is literature notes quick reminder if leaving those with anything that pop up in your mind as you go through your day maybe it's in the shower maybe when you're walking and they disappear so fast so you want to capture them and the second one

is literature notes which from anything that you consume you want to take notes and be able to remember them and record the sources so what exactly will you write down on the notes i'll share something a little bit controversial in the community you let me know if you agree with this or not and that is i think you should write down everything that is interesting to you without judging it without thinking you know is this useful uh is this even a good idea or not and the reason for that i have too the first one

is the zerocasting method teaching us how to observe our thoughts becoming aware of when we have fleeting thoughts and being able to capture those and being aware of other people's ideas and being able to bring them together so just at a very basic level we need to practice noticing thoughts and trying to write them down and the second one is i think we are unable to judge the quality of an idea at one point in time meaning that the zettacast system is built to connect ideas and it's built to connect ideas over time so it's

allowing the space for us to learn to grow to see ideas from different perspectives and to be able to build on them continuously so there's an element of time in the zettacasting system so even if at the current moment we might think okay this idea i'm not sure if it's interesting or not whether it's useful or not whether it can connect to any of my other ideas doesn't matter you know a year down the line five years down the line it might suddenly make sense like oh this is a another layer to a different concept

that i didn't understand before so i think even if at this moment we don't know if it's a good idea or not if it interests you that is a signal and i i think uh it should be put into your zebra castle because in the end you know we have plug-ins in the tool where you find all of the orphan ideas that is not connected to anything you can always purge them but it's not difficult at all but if you want to retrieve that fleeting idea you had from five years ago that's very difficult um

so let me know in the comments you know does that make sense do you have a different take i would love to know let me show you an example with a book i'm reading called range why generalists triumph in a specialized world so as we read this or with any type of content you're consuming really there is a idea then there are evidence examples of the idea is connected to some of the other ideas and they bring it back to the main point again so how do i take notes on this well at the beginning

there is a um idea about the sampling period so the idea is that in sports there is something called the sampling period where kids during that time is trying a bunch of different sports they don't have rigid rules they're not practicing you know 10 000 hours and this actually helps them perform outperform specialized kids who start with only one sport and try to get better at it and it's an interesting idea because a specializing too early hurts long term performance and this is counterintuitive right it's not we're supposed to have grit and we shouldn't be

so scatterbrained um but the sampling period suggests that it is necessary for specialists later on to perform it so what i did was write down the idea first capture it all of this happens in the next step of trying to process the note in a way that makes sense so let me get to point number two and explain what happened here why we're capturing notes in the first place which is to find it again that is the purpose of capturing notes and so how do you find your notes now for me at the beginning when

i thought about this i thought okay i should just just structure it like folders that similar to the castings that uh lumen had which is you know a folder for fleeting notes a folder for literature notes but i think a lot of people can relate to this how you organize information doesn't mean how you retrieve the same information and i realized well how i retrieved my information was actually in two ways tags and search so there is no need for me to have any folders because i never use them when i set them up so

now everything is saved in my root folder whenever i want to try to find something i search for it in the search bar here and also i look up tags so let me then go on to step number two of how do you process your notes so we can find them more easily here i do two things the first one is a make my note atomic and the second thing is make it more search friendly when i capture notes i actually don't necessarily try to make them atomic because the point with capturing notes is that

i want to get into the habit of capturing and if i feel the friction of oh maybe this is not atomic enough i'm not doing it properly then i will be less likely to capture notes as a habit so i've given myself the permission to just capture notes however i want to do it and then i'll have the processing part which to luma is very important because you want to internalize the points and use this step as the point where i turn them atomic and i make them more searchable let's come back to the range

example and i'll show you how i process the note so remember we started with just this note so all of this was gone and this was capturing the note now we want to process it and there are two things i want to do the first one is to make this note atomic and the second one is to make it search friendly so let's start with making this atomic with lumen's idea each idea should fit on an index card so that is as small as possible but how do we do this in reality for me there

are three categories i like to use to make sure each one of them is their own atomic note and they are questions ideas and supplementary tools so in the example of range around the sampling period there's a whole chapter dedicated to this right there is the idea which is sampling period then there are multiple examples scientific studies anecdotes that support this idea of why the sampling period exists and why it's important and so i want to first make sure that each anecdote is a note by itself the reason i want to do that is because

then i want to link it to this idea because those studies can be linked to different ideas at different times as well i want them to be their separate building blocks instead of attached specifically to this idea of sampling period in the book there were a list of four anecdotes that support this idea so for the ones that are interesting i've created separate notes for them the ideas and the supplementary tools exist to answer questions and again these questions each are note of itself because there are going to be so many ideas so many examples

that can contribute to these questions right so we want them to be separate from the sampling period note the zettocastin method is training the flexibility of our thinking right looking for connections knowing that each idea each anecdote each question can connect to multiple things now let's talk about the second part which is making a note more search friendly i've mentioned before i search in two ways one is with tags and the other one is with keywords those are the only things i use so let's start with tags tags for me does two things the first

one is to categorize my notes so as i've said before in my notes there are three categories there's the questions the ideas and the supplementary tools for all my question notes they're tagged with questions so if i ever want to bring up all of the questions i'm thinking about then i can simply look at the tag question then for idea notes there are two tags in order to categorize the type of ideas they are one is paradox and the other one is counter-intuitive this is because they are the theme of my writing i write about

paradoxes i write about intersectional thinking i write about counter-intuitiveness and so whenever i want to reference back to a list of counter-intuitive ideas i can already categorize them with tags in my obsidian so as you'll notice probably again somewhat controversially i don't tag my notes with topics like i don't know this one could be sports or education learning whatever it is and the reason for that is because when i create output i don't think in topics it does not help me if i have a list of everything that's related to education because i write about

intersectional thinking so i'm trying to go remove the somewhat arbitrary i think arbitrary boundaries we have with subject matters but it doesn't mean that you know if that works for your workflow definitely change the type of tags the idea is that the tags should help you create output right it's in a way that makes sense to the way you're thinking about how you're going to take these ideas and where what you're going to use them for then for the supplementary tools i break them down currently to quote anecdotes scientific studies when i'm writing when i'm

creating output later down in the process these are always the things i look for is there a quote that can express this idea succinctly are there anecdotes that i can bring to lighten up the story is there some sort of scientific study done that gives evidence gives authority to the ideas i share so the first use of tags is just to categorize so later i can search for them in a systematic way the second use of tags for me is to check status again it comes back to the goal input to output so i need

some sort of status tag for different ideas the main ones i use are number one build so this indicates to me that this is an idea i want to build on over time the second one is check it's basically a note to self that if i'm in a hurry and i'm trying to jot down note things might not be as accurate or as specific as i want them to be so it's a reminder to check the note and expand where i left the note the third one i use is to read or to watch and

these are reminders to self of interesting things that i want to make sure i have the time to read and to watch and then take notes on them as you know a lot of the time when we're consuming one thing they usually refer to other sources and instead of losing those sources because we're in a crunch and we don't have time to check it out right away i want to make sure i record them somewhere so that i know whenever i have time and i want to read something i can just go back to this

list of to read or to watch so that's status in terms of input as an example right i put build here because i think this idea is really interesting sampling period i want to spend more time making connections fleshing this out a little bit more and i also put check next to this point i made about we think we need to specialize to get a good job but in the long term it limits your earning potential so i want to make sure that this is a correct statement and i'll have to look up you know

earning potential is there any scientific study done on this that tracked that when you specialize you actually earn less over time and there is something in this book i just need to find it so that's why i put check next to it now for output status the source of my outputs that currently benefit most from my obsidian on the zeta casting is my newsletter intersectional thinking and my twitter account so whenever i see an idea i think is perfect for twitter or perfect for newsletter i would tag them for example this one i want to

write about in my newsletter so i would give it the tag newsletter which then means whenever i'm writing my newsletter i don't have to sit there and wonder oh which idea should i write about i already have a list of ideas with the tag newsletter that is ready for me to develop and i mentioned this in this video here as well if you want to check it out but basically uh let me show you i use a dataview and i've start my writing idea tracker so because i've tagged everything i just use dataview to give

me a list of all the names of the notes i have that are for twitter for example these are all the twitter ideas that i want to visualize these are all the newsletter ideas that i want to write about so i never have to start from scratch right remember i don't want to reinvent the wheels so this is the perfect way to use tags for details of how to do this you can check out my plugin all right the second part about making a note search friendly is keywords there are two ways i make sure

keywords are in my notes the first one is in the title the reason you want to put a specific keyword in there that helps you retrieve it is because as your vault grows as your xenocasting system grows you might start to almost duplicate ideas and what you want to do instead is build on existing ideas so the way to do that one is for the title of the note to remind you what the idea is so here's a very brief uh but i think important distinction between search and quick switcher but quick switcher gives you

a list of all the titles of your note so whenever i create a new note i first open quick switcher and i look for the keywords to see if i already have any notes that's on this topic on sampling period if i type in the sampling period there is nothing there so i can create this note knowing i haven't worked on this before but if it's something that i've taken a lot of notes on let's see identity for example there is a lot that's here identity multiple identity dissonance of identity so i want to look

through the title of my notes that already exist before i create my new one in this way i'm already priming myself to connect ideas on a similar topic so that's number one putting the key words that you think you will search for later down the line the second thing about search is of course within the note the search function will be able to reach this is intentionally putting some keywords in there to make sure that when you're searching for the idea it pops up for example i'm reading this other book on the zen mind the

beginner's mind so one of the notes that was interesting was in the books that they said the buddha is someone who has followed the path who has returned from sickness or is sickness vastness is-ness emptiness the full complete one and i thought it was interesting not fully understanding what it means but i specifically added buddhism behind this because the idea comes from the buddha and i want to later on away you know whenever down the line that i'm writing about notes on buddha or buddhism i will most likely search for bud right now i will

put in the first few letters of buddha and buddhism so i want to be able to find it i want this to show up because otherwise it doesn't have anything on buddhism only zen and similarly i put in the title buddha to make sure that it doesn't matter how i search this note will come up and i think as you can already see zero cassidin is training you to not only observe ideas being able to capture them being able to recall them and preparing for the future to be able to retrieve this information later down

the the line so really is at least to me it's just a way of thinking about information and being able to grapple with it over time to me that's really powerful that this note-taking system is teaching me how to be more aware of knowledge so to recap four key keywords you absolutely want to almost think like writing seo type notes because you want to be able to find it again and these words are typically at the topic level so for example for this one i'm adding buddhism as a like a general word that's not too

specific so that i'm more likely to find this note later on when i'm trying to make connections all right step three connecting the notes right this is the most exciting but also a very frustrating uh step but hopefully as you can see in the first two steps we are already priming ourselves to connect so hopefully this way of doing it should be easy but let me explain so when we first capture notes they were like little stars floating around by themselves and then we started to break ideas down in the concept of question the idea

itself and all of the supplementary tools like anecdotes like scientific studies and things like that so already you have connected nodes just by processing the note itself just by breaking down the idea and this step we want to connect now laterally right so instead of just following the logic of how the idea came to be how can we connect it to something that is related or seemingly unrelated and one fabulous tool i've mentioned this in my previous video video on atomic and smart notes is the idea compass or the compass of zerocasting thinking with my

friend faye who came up with this idea and let me show you how it works so let's go back let's go back to the sampling period as you can see i have the compass written out here there's west similar east opposite uh north the theme or question and south what does this lead to or if you think better with this type of visual right this is the idea in the middle and you're going in different directions let's start from west this is i think one of the easiest ones because it stretches your thinking about what's

similar what are the things that support this idea so already we've done the supporting idea part right that's the anecdotes that's the studies those are the tools but also we can think about what other concepts are similar to this idea or that's related to this idea and so for me one that came to mind was the pie shaped person right we've heard or the t-shaped person whatever it's people who have breath but also have a depth and this is directly related to sampling period and this takes this idea that's specific in sports and apply it

to all sorts of other disciplines right at work you know in design and creativity we want to think about this as well so actually let me see if i have a note or creativity that i can add create trouble trade intelligence also this reminds me of the polymath let's see if i have anything on learn like a polymath definition of polymath yep right uh also this reminds me of nobel prize scientists who typically typically well excuse me have an artistic um hobby let me see if i have that yup no nobel prize in heartlessness that's

what i mean so in this way we can already stretch our thinking in the similarity point of view right so we've taken an idea in sports we've now applied it to music we've applied it to science we've applied it to education like parent parenting we've also stretched it to similar ideas of the pisces person the teacher person like creativity polymath what this means for innovation and even if you don't have any notes in your obsidian what you can do is just hit double bracket and uh create one let's say innovation um yeah multi-disciplinary approach for

innovation if you didn't have this note you can just write it out and add something to it put a placeholder and you know tag it check or build and you can build on the idea over time okay so that is going west then going east similarly by thinking about the opposites what does the sampling period go against well i think it's the general theme of we should be focusing we should have grit we should you know not be so scatterbrained there's the matthew principle the case for focus grit 10 000 hour rule the important thing

is that we might write these first as opposites but as we explore these we could have realized that there's nuance to these seemingly opposite ideas and in the end they might be talking about the same things and so these are just prompts for you to put some ideas out there in different directions and in the end as you explore them they could no longer be opposites and that's the best part i think about um instead of casting is it helps you and not just zerocasting but this idea compass is a helps you think in different

directions trying to see the whole elephant as uh my friend michael scalar says in his newsletter okay moving on north right these are the themes these are the questions so going up then we want to go south right what does this lead to so now we know sampling period is a thing and it affects long-term performance by sacrificing short-term specialization what does it lead to well i'm actually working on a piece on personal monopoly versus the niche and i think there is a paradox about personal monopoly or niching down which is without having a personal

monopoly you feel like you can't create even though actually to get to a personal monopoly you need to create first this helps you see the full picture of not just connections but where do ideas sit there's an inherent hierarchy and if you're interested in understanding you know how exactly the world works and because ideas are not all created equal how do they fit with each other this is a great exercise and for those of you who actually want to dive into this idea of the idea compass in detail faye and i did a workshop for

nick milo's linking your thinking conference so there's a recording for that i'll leave the link down below and i want to emphasize again the point really is not about connecting the ideas per se it's about training your brain to think in that way so even if at the beginning you know you might have just one connection don't worry you're not doing it wrong you might not even have any connections and again that's okay it's just training ourselves to think in connection so whenever we create a new note we automatically think how does this fit into

everything else i understand about you know the topic or the world or whatever it is let me know if i should expand on this idea of connecting your notes the idea compass is just one tool now let's talk about step four of creating output right you've already have so many ideas you can't already share these ideas okay so let me show you an example of step four creating the output and also step five of how to then capture the reactions and the conversations you have from uh sharing ideas and you know capturing that serendipity that

happens so one all right let's use friendship and likes so there is a quote i've i saw in a book i was reading called bewilderment and it says that friendships will measure out now in shares and likes and links so i hashed a tag tagged it twitter first and wrote down what i thought about it so i felt the need to support my friends with likes and shares i almost felt like it was in order to remain friends you know i need to support their journey and i'm wondering you know what does this act replies

it's got me thinking so i created a visual on twitter that looks like this you know changing the definition of friendship to the emotion one has towards another measured by the number of likes and shares they provide and from posting this a twitter friend of mine then reached out and told me about um the idea of ship you know like shipping today means like ship a product the same way we're shipping friends and i thought that was really another interesting take on how much our society has changed and so then it gave me some ideas

to work on in the future and that's really to me a very easy way of turning what you're consuming into something that is your own right in the zettocastin thinking it is basically turning the literature notes the fleeting notes into a permanent note that you shared and um and then being able to build on that of course this is just a simple example when i write my newsletters it doesn't happen so fast like this and i have a few more steps i do but um this video is already getting so long so i if you're

interested let me know in the comments i can share specific um ways i do step 4 creating the output and step 5 capturing the comments the essence of the zettocaston workflow in obsidian is the atomic note so check out that video and i'll see you in the next one bye