As far as I can tell, the crosslinking required by the Zettelkasten approach (1) provides two main benefits:
- It forces some retrieval practice of the notes you’ve taken before, which reinforces all the ideas involved.
- Most of the benefit comes from the act of writing, but there’s an inevitable sense of futility that comes about if those writings are inevitably lost to time. By giving each note an ongoing purpose (to be linked to), the Zettelkasten system dodges this particular trigger to stop writing notes.
(1) as used by Luhmann; not necessarily any of the electronic tools
- It forces some retrieval practice of the notes you’ve taken before, which reinforces all the ideas involved.
- Most of the benefit comes from the act of writing, but there’s an inevitable sense of futility that comes about if those writings are inevitably lost to time. By giving each note an ongoing purpose (to be linked to), the Zettelkasten system dodges this particular trigger to stop writing notes.
(1) as used by Luhmann; not necessarily any of the electronic tools