The key principle of a Zettelkasten is that each note is intended to represent a single idea. The notes must, in most cases, be short and concise, so it's easier to link with other ideas.

Linking ideas is the central principle of a Zettelkasten; They stablish connections between diffferent ideas and helps to see unexpected relationships between seemingly unrelated information.

The structure of the Zettelkasten is built overtime, and the notes constantly reviewed and improved when needed. Most importantly, not all notes have the same purpose.

Types of notes

• Fleeting notes

Quick and temporary notes to capture thoughts and snippets of information.

• Permanent notes

Considered developed versions of fleeting notes. Contain a single idea or concept.

• Literature notes

Notes created to capture key insights and reflections of books and articles.

• Reference notes

Notes that contain bibliographic details, citations and links to external sources.

There are more types of notes in the original Zettelkasten System. However, those are the main ones relevant to explaining the origin of this blog.

I've been using the Zettelkasten system with the program Obsidian for almost a year, in order to develop my knowledge base and enhance the quality of my university notes. I want to be able to, in 3 years for now, have a distilled material for all the knowledge I acquired in my Software Engineering degree.

But I also always wanted to create a blog and help other students reach distilled, easily accessible resources for study, mainly computer science related (but not limited to it). So I decided to code this blog, transforming my markdown notes into blogposts with useful content for everyone.

However, instead of using Fleeting and Permanent Notes, I decided to create the "Distilled notes" category. The Distilled Note is concise like a fleeting one, but about only one topic and always permanent. Used to quickly remember a specific concept or related concepts. Also, I created a "Daily Learning Update", to help keep me consistent throughout the years and document all my thoughts as I learn more and more about computer science.

The rest of the notes remain the same as the original Zettelkasten system. And this is how I plan to keep increasing my knowledge and, in the future, organizing all of this information into a more easily visualized way.