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meowerplay's review
Sooooo dry, repetitive, and overwritten. To be honest, I got more out of the reviews for this book than I got from the first quarter of the book itself.
sohcahtoa's review against another edition
Read the sample, thinking about buying the kindle book.
_ash0_'s review against another edition
5.0
Zettelkasten sounds like a very interesting system of note taking that I hope to implement for my own knowledge management. My notes are scattered across multiple notebooks and journals and have been pretty much useless as I never refer to them or reread them. Hopefully this system will make my notes more manageable and accessible to me.
The book is very academic and not easy to read and understand but very interesting.
The book is very academic and not easy to read and understand but very interesting.
soroushtorkian's review against another edition
5.0
paulrules's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars.
Luhmann's Zettelkasten has intrigued me for a while. This book was helpful in some areas, but was more of a collection of stories, anecdotes, or other research (seems to be true of most books on writing). Perhaps I am just an engineer, but would have liked more concrete examples. Most of the time, the advice was "you have to learn by doing." Thanks, very helpful. I'm not looking for a "here is exactly what you do," but more examples would have gone a long way. There are still too many differing opinions (which the author complains about!), and I didn't feel he gave enough guidance to clear things up.
If you want to skip over the "here is why this method is important", start with chapter 10 or 11.
Luhmann's Zettelkasten has intrigued me for a while. This book was helpful in some areas, but was more of a collection of stories, anecdotes, or other research (seems to be true of most books on writing). Perhaps I am just an engineer, but would have liked more concrete examples. Most of the time, the advice was "you have to learn by doing." Thanks, very helpful. I'm not looking for a "here is exactly what you do," but more examples would have gone a long way. There are still too many differing opinions (which the author complains about!), and I didn't feel he gave enough guidance to clear things up.
If you want to skip over the "here is why this method is important", start with chapter 10 or 11.
roemied's review against another edition
5.0
This book is about far more than writing notes.
It will also teach you how to learn, remember and come up with new ideas.
It will also teach you how to learn, remember and come up with new ideas.
bovolon's review
5.0
I read this book twice. The first time I read it as a regular book, found it interesting, tried to implement some principles on Roam and later Obsidian, got disappointed since I'm not an academic... So, for me, a 3-star book.
Then I read David Kadavy’s Digital Zettelkasten, and by comparing it with this book the method finally clicked. So I came back to Taking Smart Notes, this time actually taking smart notes while reading it, and was surprised to find such a dense amount of ideas on its pages. Much more than note taking, the author has a lot to say about reading, learning, writing, thinking, biases, decision making… and much of it can be connected to other ideas on our own slipboxes.
My suggestion: read it once. Understand it. Learn to take smart notes. Then come back to it. You may be surprised by what you can find within, while applying the very principles discussed within. Highly recommended.
Then I read David Kadavy’s Digital Zettelkasten, and by comparing it with this book the method finally clicked. So I came back to Taking Smart Notes, this time actually taking smart notes while reading it, and was surprised to find such a dense amount of ideas on its pages. Much more than note taking, the author has a lot to say about reading, learning, writing, thinking, biases, decision making… and much of it can be connected to other ideas on our own slipboxes.
My suggestion: read it once. Understand it. Learn to take smart notes. Then come back to it. You may be surprised by what you can find within, while applying the very principles discussed within. Highly recommended.