Update – Using my Bullet Journal as my Zettelkasten

I had written on this blog about the practice of using my Bullet Journal as my zettelkasten on 19 May 2020. I had forgotten about it in the haze of the pandemic. I re-discovered the post as I was linking my thinking (h/t Nick Milo) in the past week or so.

In the Spirals section of my weekly notes last week, I mention the Antinet and the zettelkasten videos I had been watching on YouTube.

So, after binging on many videos in the last two to three weeks, I seem to have gotten exactly at the point I was at when I wrote my post on 19 May 2020. Before I forget the lessons I learnt, let me summarize the points I made in that blog post again.

• I use many digital tools and hence my data is stuck on many different platforms (like Evernote, Roam Research, etc.)
• Moving a zettelkasten into a bullet journal reduces the clutter of index cards.
• Threading in zettelkasten reminded me about a video about threading in the bullet journal.
  • Index in a bullet journal is the master collection. Similar to an index card in the zettelkasten.
  • Collection threading is done by writing the reference of the page number next to the page number in the next collection.
  • Notebook threading is done by using book number + page number next to the page number.
  • A Tiny Ray of Sunshine has a detailed post on threading.

I have been writing my notes about podcasts, YouTube videos, books, articles, etc. in my bullet journal since I started keeping one. These can be considered as bibliography notes or quick notes.

What would make my bullet journal into my zettelkasten would be to introduce progressive summarization that Tiago Forte talks about in his book, Building a Second Brain.

Another thing needed is to introduce a way to review the content in the bullet journal in a periodic manner and link my thinking.

A thing I noticed that the spirals I go down are naturally linked to each other. This focus reduces the need of too much categorization naturally. I can look through instances by using the index without the need to opening or delving too deep into any particular notebook.