If you are anything like me and read a lot of books-fiction and non fiction-you will find that even though you understand and agree and nod along when you are reading you may struggle to retain or recall much of the material later on.
This is a real shame. It means that you may well be reading helpful non fiction books and learning, and agreeing with, new concepts. But you do not make connections between these new ideas and your previously acquired bank of knowledge because the ideas fade. You only have a general idea of what the book was about, the general gist.
This is where smart note taking comes in and helps. Zettelkasten is one system of smart note taking that is designed and known to help with the note taking. And building connections between what you are consuming now and what you already know.
Operating a Zettelkasten system can be made incredibly complex and laboursome. Or it can be relatively simple. I like simple for it is more likely to be implemented and generate positive results over time.
My goal with my Zettelkasten is to manage my knowledge, both existing and new, and to extract the gold from each and every non fiction book I read by taking notes and putting those notes as “permanent notes” in my own Zettelkasten.
It will be interesting to see how my Zettelkasten builds up over time and how helpful it becomes in my work.