What is Zettelkasten Note-Taking? 📝 Why It Works & Knowledge Theory 🧠

Obsidian can be incredibly helpful for making new connections a major perk compared to the physical zel Casten system the main benefit is that you're standardizing a system of building blocks like Lego where you can reuse your notes in an infinite number of ways you don't have to think about the organization or structure which frees up your mind to focus on the ideas and learning the goal of zetel cassen is to Keep track of where information came from and your own ideas so you can build on external information with your internal ideas I've personally used a

mod version of zle Casten to publish over 150,000 words in the last year alone or approximately three non-fiction books worth it's been the best way by far that I've ever found to manage my knowledge hello my name is Callum also known as Wonder loots and welcome to today's video on zetel Casten and Knowledge Management Theory an overview of my molecular zetel Caston notetaking system in obsidian modern tools enable us to keep track of information and knowledge better than ever before which is very much need needed in the information overload society that we live in to

use these modern tools to their full potential it helps to take a look at how we can update successful physical systems to the modern digital world we can customize a digital system So that it is unique to each of us so that we can learn and keep track of knowledge in the most natural way possible a personal Knowledge Management System one of the best known systems of Knowledge Management is the zettle Casten system developed by Nicholas Lumen one of the most prolific writers of all time publishing more than 70 books and 400 academic papers Nicholas

Lumen credits his publishing success solely to one invention the zetel Casten Zetel Casten is a structured notetaking system where you can keep your external information separate from your internal knowledge the word zettle Casten comes from zettle or slip and Casten box in German a slip is like an index card a small structured piece of information that you can use to store your notes on and the box is a way to keep those index cards organized so that you can find them easily in the future to make Connections between them to build out your ideas this

framework produces an external scaffolding for your mind a second brain so you can focus more on the ideas and following insights and intuition rather than trying to think of where should I put my note and how can I find it again it really adds a lot of potential to Knowledge Management because you really don't have to think about the structure since you've preset the structure of front today I'm going To map Len's physical zle Casten system to my molecular zedal Casten system in the digital ecosystem of obsidian I'm going to try and do this as

simply as possible as I know that zedal casting can be kind of a confusing concept and a lot of people tend to over complicated I'm going to do this by focusing on three main elements read or watch consume information think take notes and work with your notes and write publish information based on the knowledge that You're keeping track in inside of your zle Casten system in obsidian we consume more information in one day than a person in the 1500s did in their entire lifetime understanding how to work with your knowledge and work with information is

more important than ever and that's what I'm aiming to do with today's video here's today's outline what is zel Casten notetaking an overview of how Nicholas Lumen built his physical system and then extracting the key insights so We can introduce them into a digital system the goals of zle Casen and Knowledge Management why you should care about zal Casten the benefits of using a note-taking system like this a zetel Casten workflow in obsidian canvas mapping zetel Casten to my system which I call molecular zetel Casten mapping both zetel Casten and my molecular note taking to

the code method from building a second brain capture organize distill Express outlining the goals of effective Personal Knowledge Management so that you have a direction to use your notes simplifying the creation process Theory and mental models of personal Knowledge Management the knowledge feedback loop how you can consume data and information Forge it into knowledge and then share it with other people as information again Cal's eight laws of not taking what I try to keep in mind as I'm taking notes to simplify my system to help reduce the feeling of information Overload I'm splitting this video

into two parts this one is going to deal more with the theory and understanding of zetel Casten how it works and why you care about a system like this in the first place and in the second part I'm going to walk through more practical examples and a templating system on how I actually use my molecular zedcast andem system okay let's take a look at what zle cassin is to simplify zetel cassin as much as possible it's easier To think about it as two different systems we have an external management system and an internal management system

the external system helps you keep track of sources and information from outside of yourself and the internal system is more of an idea generation box something that's based solely on your own ideas and insights the goal of zetel cassen is to keep track of where information came from and your own ideas so you can build on External information with your internal ideas originally Nicholas Lumen had two physical slip boxes he had one as a reference manager slip box and one as an idea generated slip box or a thinking slip box these two systems made it

a lot easier in the physical world to keep track of where information came from than a digital system where we can just copy and paste all of the time so I'm going to modify this in a digital system so that it becomes easier to keep track Of what is external and what what is internal in the physical system Nicholas Lumen needed a way to keep track of index cards the zetel in his zle casting so he used a reference manager system where he could file index cards one after another and then use a separate reference

system to identify where the information was coming from that way he could always look at his main slip box the idea generating slip box and he could find the specific reference back In the reference manager system this is something we don't have to worry about in a digital system because obsidian takes care of all of that which I'll get into in a little bit now the original zle Casten system had three main note types the first were fleeting notes these are quick notes think jotting it down on a Post-It note then there are literature note

which is key information from sources as you read a book you extract the ideas and the concepts and Put it in your own word as a literature note this is part of the reference manager system and then the third type of note is the zle which is a permanent note and that is the type of note that goes inside of the main slip box or your own idea generation slip box these are key insights that have been crystallized in your own words also known as knowledge now let's look at each of these note types in

more depth fleeting notes are quick notes these are thoughts That you have while on a walk or while having a conversation with someone you've had some experience it Sparks an idea and you want to quickly jot it down and you're not concerned about the format at all Fading notes are meant to be destroyed in the sense that you convert them into literature notes or permanent notes zal which is why they are fleeting they don't form part of the permanent system of literature notes or permanent notes literature notes are Atomic notes each note is meant to

have one single concept you've extracted a quote and written it in your own words this could come from a podcast a book a video a conversation the idea is that you take the information that you just consumed and you distill it into a form that will remind you of that note in the future that will REM remind you of that key idea or key concept of the information that you consumed and these are always linked back to the original Source which is why they're called literature notes I personally think of them more as Source notes

literature notes are understandable in the context of the source so that you can go back later and know exactly where the information came from this is why they form part of the reference manager slip box in the zcast and system and the third type of note is the permanent note these are crystallized insights or knowledge That come from taking the concepts that you've reviewed inside of the literature notes and your fleeting notes and you combine them together to form a permanent piece of knowledge inside of your main slip box inside of your idea generated slip

box this could have one or more Concepts but typically you want to keep them as short as possible because the point of using permanent notes is that we'll be able to sequence them in the future to produce other Types of content you can kind of think of them like building blocks or Lego blocks permanent notes are understandable out of context but they're linked to the original sources via literature notes for example have you ever gone back to a note that you wrote six months ago and you have no idea what it was you were writing

it for or where the idea came from permanent notes try to solve this problem by decontextualizing the information so That it is understandable in and of itself without needing to go read something else and if you want to recontextualize it if you want to go back and find out where the information was inspired from where the knowledge occurred you can go take a look at the reference manager slip box as the literature note system the most simplified version of zedel cassen the easiest way that I found to understand it is to keep in mind that

there are Always two systems we have an external slip box for information from sources and we have an internal slip box which is a conversion of those external sources mixed with our own ideas so that we always know which was our idea and which came from someone else you can think of the external slip box as the thoughts of others in information that you're consuming from external sources these are converted into literature notes which are kind of like the Permanent Source notes for information extractions from the sources you then have some kind of reference manager

for citations to keep track of the literature notes in the sources and Link them together a digital system also enables fleeting notes to be put in sources because we're dealing with the Abundant world of the digital realm but I'll get into more of that later and then we have a second slip box for internal thinking thoughts of my own a Thinking box or an IDE generator box this box stores our permanent notes which I call molecules or think of as linked Concepts this box stores thoughts ideas and crystallizations of insights that apply to your own

projects problem or life you can think of it of keeping track of your actual knowledge and ideas now this system might seem like Overkill and to be honest I thought so at first too but the more I looked into this the more I recognized that we consume more Information than ever and by having a system that allows us to keep track of what is external and what is internal we can then take the time to focus on the internal to review our own thoughts and ideas which really boosts originality and Ingenuity and allows us to

find and build on our own ideas using an external mind a second brain or a digital brain helps us deal with information overload as part of our personal Knowledge Management System we can filter and Process information from others convert it into our own knowledge so that we're not feeling over whelmed and then share the value of that knowledge with other people the zle Casten system allows us to keep track of the information that we're getting from external sources and how we've modified it inside of our second brain to produce knowledge that's applicable to our own

lives zetel Casten also helps us measure productivity by tracking the number of permanent notes Created an indication of truly understanding concepts rather than looking at my entire note base or the entire internet when looking for new information I can in instead constrain my search to my existing knowledge system this greatly simplifies my review of information that I've consumed in processed in the past and reduces information overload it's not possible to be overloaded by knowledge we just get overloaded by information here's a Quote from the book how to take smart notes most organizational note-taking decisions can

be made upfront once and for all by deciding on one system so let's create that system let's structure a system so that we never never have to think about where the notes are going or how we're going to organize it we can take all of that energy that went into deciding on the organization system or perhaps triggered organizational paralysis analysis paralysis and instead Use that energy and time to build up our own ideas based on a secure knowledge system I want to note that in the second part of this video I'm going to be walking

through my templating system in obsidian how I converted zetel Casten into what I call molecular zetel Casten and the templates and inboxes for this system I'm going to produce a zip file of this vault as a starter kit for molecular zcas and that will be available to the paying members of my YouTube membership at the lowest tier which is currently $2.99 Canadian around $2 us so if you find this information valuable and you want to support me for the hundreds of hours that I put into building this system I would have really appreciate if you

would consider joining the community it's also a great place to talk about this with other people so that we can each build and customize the system ourselves okay now let's take a look at zle Caston more in depth I want To talk a bit about the main benefits of zle Caston the more you understand why this system is valuable and how it applies to your own life the more you align it with your own goals the more practical and less abstract this system becomes here are some of the key principles of using my molecular zedal

Casten system which is the digitized version of zetel Casten along with a few of my own note types the zetting system allows you to Leverage The Generation Effect when you take information and you convert it into your own word the process of translating this into your own words helps you remember it and makes it more applicable in the future using a zetting system allows you to offload your working memory you don't have to remember everything you can instead store it inside of your second brain which drastically reduces your information overload because instead of focusing on

the working memory trying to Keep everything in mind you can instead focus more on the insights and the ideas themselves the molecular zoc cassm system in obsidian allows for an emergent growth opportunity there's exponential growth 2 to the nth power each connection you make between a different note allows for more connections to other notes and over time you end up building a critical mass of notes that can lead to whatever it is you're trying to do you can think of This kind of like bamboo for the first three years all you have to do with

bamboo is water it it doesn't really come above the ground but then in the fourth year all of the sudden it explodes and it generates up to 90 ft or 30 m within 2 months a zcast and system and my ular zle Casten system is kind of like this bamboo at first you're just adding more and more notes you're building out your literature notes and then you're building out your permanent Note inbox but over time eventually you'll make enough connections that something will become very emergent it will appear and you'll be shocked that you never

did this in the first place I actually attended a lecture series as part of the Hinton lectures by Jeffrey Hinton The Godfather of AI where he talked about the emergent property of data for a long time for literally billions of parameters it seems as though nothing has happened all of a Sudden you hit a billion parameters and it goes vertical there's an emergent property the zalasin system is kind of like this especially when applied in obsidian the zetoc Casten system also allows for original Insight synthesis I'll map this to Bloom's taxonomy later which structures a

system for original thinking using obsidian in particular allows you to literally map your knowledge insights and wisdom the graph view the visualization in obsidian can Be incredibly helpful for making new connections and is a major perk compared to the physical zel Casten system and finally the main benefit is that you're standardizing a system of building blocks like Lego where you can reuse your notes in an infinite number of ways you don't have to think about the organization or structure which frees up your mind to focus on the ideas and learning the more critical mass you

begin generating inside of your Permanent note slip box the more note sequences you can make in different combinations which helps you generate a lot of new and interesting ideas all of what I'm talking about so far fits under the category of PKM or personal Knowledge Management now that I've explained a little bit more about the zle Casten system with a touch of obsidian let's give a brief overview on my molecular note system that I use inside of obsidian my system modifies The original zle Casten system to take into account the code method of note taking

by Teo Forte and building a second brain stands for capture organize distill and express this takes the original zle cting system and and modifies it for the digital world in a way that really allows you to take advantage of tools like obsidian and notebook LM systems that you can truly begin to augment your personal Knowledge Management rather than dealing with an Atomic notetaking system like zetel Casten I've modified mine to be molecular to level up the existing system to take into account a few different note types let's take a look similar to zle Casten we

have the capture component which is fleeting notes and in my system these are Source notes daily notes and new notes then we move on to the organized component of code organization nodes like topics and tags in the original zle cting system he Didn't use topics or tags because he was writing on index cards and it would be difficult to go through and structure new folder systems in obsidian this is completely mot and opens the door to a lot better organization distill my distilled notes are atoms which are literature notes and molecules which are permanent notes

this is very similar to the original zle Casten system finally we get to the express part of code publishable notes which I call Alloys Because I have a material science background and when you get a bunch of atoms and molecules and combine them you can build Alloys in Metallurgy effectively what I'm doing is I'm using the code method from building a second brain and the zle Casten method to structure three different boxes we have the inbox the consuming box where we read and watch videos and consume podcasts we have the thinking section which is the

slip box where we take Notes and modify them and then we have the outbox which is the publishing component I use my topics and tags in a way that allows me to structure for emergence inside of my obsidian which leads to Untold value and unpredictable value I talk more about the tags versus topics system that I use to structure my molecular note taking in another video so I recommend checking that out if you're interested in how to modify your system for emergence okay now let's Actually take a look at the zle Casten system itself where

I'm going to map this in the canvas tool in obsidian and then I'm going to convert it into my molecular note system before touching more on personal Knowledge Management theory that I hope will help make this system feel a lot more concrete and less abstract let's dive in okay so here's where I left off after my beginner obsidian tutorial so I thought this would be a good Vault to work on to show You the benefits of a zle Caston system and how I apply that zle Casten system to my own system called molecular notes I

first came across the concept of molecular notes from reasonable deviations tocom Robert Martin took some of the concepts from zedel Casten and applied his own system to it so I've taken Robert's system of molecular notes and added my own thoughts to it where I've expanded to include an additional category and bring in some more Concepts From zle Casten so before we get started I just thought that it would make sense to change the default theme to adom because this is my preferred theme and since we're going to be working with atomic note taking I thought

that seemed fitting okay and I'm also going to try something a little different here I'm going to create a new canvas and I'm going to use the canvas to walk through the various features of zedcast and my own molecular note system so that you Have a bit of a map of what's going on with this system you can see a bit of a workflow here and hopefully that will help you visualize how all of the pieces of this system come together so what I've done here is I've taken some of my favorite Concepts on Knowledge

Management and I've applied it to the code method which I talked about last time so I can drag a note in here you can see that code has four different elements to it it has capture organize Distill and express before we get too deep into this I thought it would be helpful to explain the zcast and Primitives next I will map zedel castom to molecular notes which is to molecular notes which is my system for operating and then I'll create templates for each of the note Primitives okay so now if we take a look at

my notes here I've expanded on the code method capture organized distill and express and I've included the different note types from The zle Casten system that I just explained and I've mapped the zcast and system to my own ular note system so you can see here that there's a few different note types each of these note types are indicated by a tag a hashtag I'll get more into tags when I get into the actual creation of templates as a part of this molecular system but I do have a separate video that goes deep into the

comparison of tags versus topic notes and how I use each of those so if You're confused at all about topics or tags as we go through this I recommend checking out that video and the edcast and system if you recall there's two different slip boxes there's the reference slip box and then there is the the main slip box the reference slip box is made up of bibliographic notes which come from sources and also literature notes that are tied to a citation that you got from the source but are an extraction so this is what I'm

going to Call an atom because it's a singular Atomic concept that I've pulled out of a source note now Source notes are a type of fleeting note because I just jot down whatever thoughts come to mind as I'm reading the source and then I go through and extract the insights and the ideas I had into my permanent slip box which is my main slip box and also into atoms so I use the source as kind of the raw material that I then mine atoms or extract atoms and also extract the ideas And thoughts and combine

them with atoms to create molecules this provides a really simple way for me to keep track of where I got ideas from the direct source because it's tied to the reference system but also a way that I can keep track of my own ideas as I go through and create that source so then there's also a daily note which is another type of fleeing note and basically that's just a way where I can go and click a button on the side and it Will create a new note for me so this is like a Dumping

Ground where I'll drop thoughts ideas Concepts things I want to look into questions any thought that comes to my mind any fleeting thought I'll add here as a fleeting note both daily notes and Source notes are considered part of the capture system organization is done through topics and tags which again I talk about more in another video and then I go through and distill those captured notes those Fleeting notes into atoms and molecules so both atoms and molecules can be consider considered a type of permanent note in the sense that I've distilled their Essence down

to the core concept so that I can use it as a building block elsewhere and then finally we get to the express section which is what I call an alloy because Alloys are made up of multiple molecules and these are everything that gets published it's part of what I build in public so this could Go into my digital Garden this could go into my newsletter into my YouTube videos and eventually because I'm keeping track of all the citations I can also use it to print academic papers or write a book while keeping track of my

sources if you would like to consider this more in the digital Garden analogy you can think of the source note or the daily note the fleeting note as a place where I have idea seeds and over time I cultivate those seeds into atoms and Molecules so that they become trees which are a more refined version of the fleeting node an expansion on the seed as I cultivate those trees over time they begin to bear fruit which are the Alloys that I then share in public again I know that this is a lot of information so

I'm going to break through it step by step so that each pie piece becomes a lot clearer here are the basic zedcast derivatives that I just talked about fleeting notes literature notes Permanent notes and then bibliographic notes and if you remember there are two different slip boxes that we're dealing with we're dealing with a reference manager slip boox and we're dealing with an idea generator slip box or the main slip box so let's just sort these different Primitives fleeting notes fit under the reference manager slip box because they're notes that we take as we read

sources so as you're reading a book perhaps you write down quotes you write Down key insights that you've pulled out of the source material you've watched a YouTube video and a quote jumps out at you or a thought jumps out at you and you quickly jot that down under a fleeting note and as a part of that fleeting note you keep track of where it came from using a bibliographic note like a citation so this could be the name of the book the author of the book and it is an easy way for you to

go back and tie this to your fleeing note so you Know where that quote came from then you go through and you extract literature notes which are key insights Atomic notes key ideas singular Concepts so in a sense we have both fleeting notes and bibliographic notes and they go together then afterwards you go back and you review your fleeing notes in your bibliographic notes and you extract key insights one by one into their own independent notes into a literature note a note that came from literature or from A video or any other source of information

that you want to be able to reference the specific place that you got it from but you don't want to go back and reread all of your fleeing notes you want to distill and condense it into your Atomic noes into your literature noes then we get to the idea generator slip box and this is where you take the literature noes and you review them and you add them into your permanent node selection this could Involve linked Concepts ideas thoughts plus Source material which in this case are literature nodes to help keep these in mind and

to use this as a way to map to my molecular node system I'm going to color code them and then the whole point of using this type of notetaking system is that we have a goal of publication we're writing for print so we want to take the key insights the distillations that we've added into our idea generator slip box And we want to take that and express it in some form of publication as we come across new sources we take fleeting notes and track where we got the notes from we go back and review those

notes and extract key ideas singular Concepts in atomic notes or literature notes and then we go back and review those Atomic notes and Link them together and add our own thoughts and ideas to create a permanent note something that we are writing in a format that is designed for Expression designed to be shared so that we can combine multiple permanent notes in a note sequence and then publish it for print that's a quick overview of the zle Casten system if we quickly compare that to code we have a capture system with fleeting notes where we

jot down new information ideas and information that we get from Source material we organize it by by putting it into a system that keeps track of the information with bibliographic notes and Then we distill the key elements into literature notes and then Express them into permanent notes which form the basis for true expression the public expression which is print now let's apply this to my system which has a couple more Primitives I also have fleeting notes as part of my system I have Source notes I have topic notes project notes atoms which are literature notes

and molecules which are permanent notes and finally I have Alloys which Are publishable not in my system as well I have two different organization methods I use these two different slip boox styles from the zle Casten system I just adapt it to be a little more practical for a digital ecosystem since again zcast was designed for physical so I'm going to keep the red color to match the reference manager and for myself rather than just having a single box where I SAR all of my permanent notes without an indication on how they relate To other

notes by topic I use specific topic notes to keep better track of this so I'll make that orange and I also use project notes as a place to keep track of my goals because one of the best ways to use a writing system like this is to have an idea or a question or a goal in mind and then use your existing reference manager system to identify key insights that can be applied to the project and by tying specific Concepts to your project you can produce Permanent noes because you're making it real and applicable fre

you specifically for myself a fleeting note can be a source note but it can also be a daily note so let's add that in here my fleeting notes come in two different categories and both of these are capture methods the C and code then after going through my fleeting notes I extract the key insights into atoms which are the equivalent of literature notes in the zoc Casten system and I apply topics to My Atomic notes to my atom notes then I go through and I pull out the key insights that have derived in the atoms

then inside of my source notes I also include fleeting notes so for example if I'm writing down a quote I might take a note alongside that quote so in that case it's not necessarily a fleeting note as it relates specifically to an atomic note as part of the reference manager system but it's actually a thought or idea so sometimes my fleeting Notes actually directly go into my molecular notes as well I'll show you in a little bit how I actually structure this inside of my source notes when we get into the templating section and it'll

make a little more sense there once we got go through and we've built up a an idea generation slip box in the molecules I go through and I combine them and I publish them so these publish notes could be a newsletter could be a YouTube video could be my digital garden And again I'll get into that in a little bit so you can see how this system is actually quite similar but I've just included a couple subn notes like these daily notes and Source notes and project notes that produce fleeting notes that then can be

used as both inspiration for the atoms the literature notes that I'm pulling out of my sources and the molecular notes the permanent notes of my key ideas and how they actually apply to the literature notes that I'm Extracting from the sources to help you see this a little bit better let's go back to that graphic I showed you at the beginning of code and how this all ties together and then I'll get into the templates that I use for each of these note types to help speed up my system okay so now I hope that

you've seen a little bit better how these different concepts fit into the buckets of capture organized distill and express so we have daily notes and Source notes which are a Form of fleeting notes and also the source notes tied to a bibliographic reference a citation we use topics for structure again I'll get into that later and then we have a distillation component where we distill The Source material into atoms and then use that distillation to apply our own ideas and thoughts plus the atom to create a molecule to create a combination of multiple Concepts together

that form a permanent part of my collection of my Main slip box my idea generation slip box then I use these molecules which are tied back to the citation to The credibility of the atoms and I can write and express these ideas or create YouTube videos for them so to show a quick workflow I could read my book I could take notes on my books and extract quotes I can tag those quotes with a particular topic that helps me understand structure and then I can extract I can distill the literature Notes as atoms and as

molecules from a combination of these fleeting notes and atomic notes and use those based on my projects and my questions and my ideas the things that I'm pursuing with this research to produce something in a publishable format okay so now that you've seen a little bit more about Z Casten you might feel a bit confused I know I did when I first started researching this I found that it was very helpful to actually take a step Back and look at the goals of why I was trying to build a system like zle Casten and why

it appealed to me in the first place by looking at these goals and listing them out I was then able to map what it was I was trying to do in a practical way in my obsidian so that my notetaking system really took off and became a lot more valuable for me so here are some of the common goals that I keep in mind when structuring my note taking system one of the things I've Realized is that each person has different goals in mind they have different things that they want to achieve with their note

taking system so that makes it really hard to come up with a one- siiz fits-all solution so if you can keep in mind your specific goals as you go through and as you watch me create this note taking system this molecular zle Casten it'll help you have an emotional connection to this system because you'll be able to see how can Actually practically be used in your own life and if you can see how it can be used in your own life as a practical purpose all of the sudden the system starts to make a lot

more sense it's hard to deal with in the abstract it's something that you just have to understand by doing so with that in mind I want to share a quote the quote is from Richard Fineman and it's notes aren't a record of my thinking process they are my thinking process the zcast And system will start to make a lot more sense if you start to think inside the box if you use this system as an act ual thinking box rather than going to the internet to go look for new information I can instead go to

my permanent notes my molecules and look through the information that I've already distilled this is knowledge that I've already included inside of my system and it becomes a lot easier to process it because I'm not going to get information Overload since it's not information at this point it's actual knowledge the next goal is to create standardized system the thinking box you can think of this as Lego for your thoughts if you have a standardized system you have a system in place that you don't have to think about that you just go and you know that

you can fit all the different pieces together you can truly have Atomic notes that you can plug together in any different way to build whatever It is you want by standardizing the system up front you can save a ton of time in actually using your system because you don't have to think about where things go you can actually just focus instead on your ideas and your understanding and looking for insights rather than oh where should I put this note where should I organize this the next goal is to solve the blank page problem which is

another way of saying never start from scratch because once You've gone through and you've created your Lego blocks you've created your Atomic notes you begin building up your molecular system of your permanent notes you'll have hundreds or thousands of pieces that you can use and put together in any different combination that you want to you can think of it as you have an idea a new project comes to mind and that's kind of like the instructions of a Lego kit and you can use the same pieces in a Lego kit to build a castle Or

a house or a boat you can build whatever it is you want and you can reuse the pieces so rather than starting from scratch inside of your thinking box you can go back and reuse your atoms and your molecules your literature notes and your permanent notes so that you can just piece together the ideas in new ways and that will help you derive new insights and come up with new things to publish and the next main goal is to generate intuitive and organic growth so The idea here is that as you build up your box

as you build up your notes you'll eventually start to have an intuition on how different things connect together how you can use topics and how you can use atoms and sources and molecules to produce the Alloys to produce the fruit of your work the key here is that this is something that's only going to work for you intuition is not something that you can tell someone else it's something that you have to do Yourself to develop a personal system there's a reason that it's called personal Knowledge Management because everyone is going to have a slightly

different system that they use to generate this type of insight so if you can follow your own intuition and make connections between them notes then you'll be able to generate a system that works uniquely for you and finally a main goal is to reduce working memory by offloading all of your thoughts and Ideas and knowledge by introducing quotes and notes and linking everything together in a way that you can instantly go and find whatever it is you're looking for you can significantly reduce your working memory as you go to create new things as you work

on original thinking or work to solve your problems intuitively by offloading all of this into your second brain into your molecular zedcast and system you can take all of the energy that you normally Would have taken trying to remember things and instead apply that to New Creations and understanding once I understood my own goals better for note taking to be honest I was still a little confused at the value of zle Casten and how I could practically implement it so I decided to do some research into personal Knowledge Management Theory or the study of knowledge

epistemology by looking at some of the main theories of knowledge and how that fits into modern Knowledge Management I was much better able to map the zle cast and system to what made sense for me in a practical sense as part of my molecular notetaking system let's take a look at a few of the common theories that I personally found to be the most valuable I want to walk through a couple different Graphics that I personally find very helpful that I hope will make these Concepts a little more concrete and less abstract to show you

how information can actually be Converted into knowledge and knowledge can be converted into wisdom and then wisdom can be applied based on insights that you're deriving through the use of your thinking box your zle system let's take a look at one of my favorite Graphics this is called the data information knowledge wisdom chart or in this case it goes a little bit deeper into insights and impact but the idea here is that we start off with data and data is something like the name of a Book or an author it's a note that we've created

but it doesn't have any information in it it's just a blank note this could be considered like a ghost note for example if I were to go to one of my existing notes like the code note and I wanted to create a new note called Data information knowledge wisdom you can see here that there's a difference in the color this emergent structure is a note that I have already written in but this data Insight knowledge wisdom Note is a ghost note it's one that doesn't have any information in it it's kind of like this data

point where it's a blank note that doesn't have any color and if we look here at the local graph you can see here that the emergent structure note is filled in it looks more like one of these information dots than the data information knowledge wisdom note which is just a grade out note a ghost note so I think this is actually where obsidian when you start To compare the knowledge graph on how you can use obsidian to this type of graph here you can really start to understand the concrete nature of forging Knowledge from information

by making connections between dots now if we go back to the graph here once we've gone through our sources and we've pulled out quotes and we've added notes we've effectively taken that empty data point and we've added information to it we've filled it with something when we Go through and we extract information from the source into a literature note which I'm calling an atom we now have a piece of information that came from an external Source the more atoms you build in here sure they might be connected to a source but they're not connected to

each other because it's just a singular concept the connection is where the ideas really start to shine and that's where we start to get into knowledge you can see here that the different Information dots we have now are linked by lines which is exactly like the knowledge graph in obsidian you can see here that we've got pieces of information singular notes that have been connected to one another to form linkages and again this is how you introduce Knowledge from information if you take a single quote from a source you turned it into some form of

atom and then you link multiple quotes together now all of the sudden you're starting to Get into knowledge because you're applying that information that applied information that connected information is like taking the atoms and adding your own ideas or thoughts or insights and you link them together you bridge Concepts together this is what I call a molecule or in zle Casten this would be a permanent note so once you've begun creating your idea generator slip box your thinking box you can then go back through and you can just take a look at The knowledge that

you already have consumed it's something that is a lot harder to feel overwhelmed with because it's knowledge not information so as you go through this knowledge when you're looking through your slip box your main slip box you might begin to identify insights and these are usually derived from your projects where you might have a question or a problem that you're trying to solve and this problem or this question can operate as a guide that can Lead you towards insights which are unexpected connections it's where you take the context and you apply it to your knowledge

and you start to realize like oh perhaps these two notes are actually related to each other let me see if I can make a connection let me see if I can follow the path to get from one note to another and then produce this Insight between them and that's what's called wisdom because you're taking knowledge and you're actually Applying it to your life that's what wisdom is it's when you take something that is applicable in one situation and you use that knowledge and apply it in another situation and by doing so the more you begin

to develop wisdom the greater impact you have and this impact it can be published it can be something that's shared so not only is this wisdom having an impact on your own life but it's also having an impact on someone else's life we can take these external Data points we can convert them into information and then we can link that information together into our own internal system to create molecules or permanent nodes and then apply those molecules to our problems in our projects in our life to generate insights that can produce wisdom that help us

publish information publish that knowledge in a way that it's information for other people so it ends up becoming a source and we end up having this nice Little circle it's a great feedback loop this is what's called a personal Knowledge Management System here so I seek I go and I try and derive information from sources I make sense of it by processing it distilling it into atoms and molecules and then I share those ideas with my community and that helps them seek and sense and then we end up all building together in a very helpful

way this is also known as the Continuum of understanding where you Gather Parts you collect Concepts like the data points the blank notes you then add information to those notes you add quotes and You Begin connecting them to form holes which are knowledge and then you join those holes together to form wisdom so you look to the Past what other people have done to produce data and information and then you take that information and convert it and process it into knowledge yourself so that you can apply it in the future as another Form of that

graphic you can see here that we can take data we can process that data into information by asking questions and organizing it to describe who what where and when then we can take that information and we can apply Theory to it which is a framework that we're getting from someone else from a book for example and then as we go through and we actually experience that theory ourselves we can combine our own experience with that theory to produce Knowledge which is the collective information that is actually relevant to our lives as we go through and

look at that knowledge we can process it and we can begin to generate other understanding we can derive insights on how it's actually applicable to our own lives and then we can use that applicable knowledge to produce wisdom which is where we actually try to apply that knowledge to the Future so that we can do what works best for us you can See here it's also split again into extrinsic and intrinsic so the data and the information comes from external sources but the knowledge and understanding is from an internal source and then we apply that

through wisdom which becomes an extrinsic source for someone else and then the final framework that I wanted to talk about here is called Bloom's taxonomy so this is a very well-known method of getting to original thinking to True creation so You start at the bottom where you need to remember information you recall basic facts and Concepts so you can think of this like the atoms then you take those atoms and you use your own words to explain them this is where you take that information and you convert it into knowledge you begin to understand what

the concepts are because they actually have an applicability to your own life you can then apply that knowledge that understanding in new situations which is Like wisdom because you're taking that knowledge in making it more practical the more knowledge you apply and the more knowledge you accumulate inside of your thinking box the more you're able to draw connections between new ideas and you're able to analyze how the old knowledge applies to these new situations you begin to evaluate the impact of those connections and how this is changing your life and overall you end up having

an entirely new experience Something that's fairly unique to you where you're able to go through and distill all of that remembering understanding application analysis and evaluation to truly produce some new or original work as you can see with Bloom tonomy the point is to Elevate each type of thinking until we get to the Apex to the top of the pyramid which is originality the whole goal of using personal Knowledge Management is to help us make sense of our own ideas and how It maps to the rest of the world as we consume information we want

to be able to filter and process it in a way that it actually has practical value for us I worked as a patent agent and an intellectual property lawyer for many years the whole point of what I was doing with my job was I would talk to inventors and engineers and scientists and I would have teams people discussing their ideas I would work with them to help distill the key elements The Core Concepts of their idea the idea core and then we would use that idea core to structure out the rest of the patent the

more you can do this in your own life the easier it becomes to actually build on your existing insights and compound your knowledge because you have it within the purpose of trying to structure your system for original thinking also I recognize that this is a lot of information but what I'm trying to do is show you a few different Theories because I never never know what might resonate with one person or another hopefully by looking at this concept of Knowledge Management from different perspectives one framework will resonate with you and help the zle Caston system

click now that you've seen the Frameworks let's go back to the molecular zle Caston system in a simplified format so you can see here I've separated this into an external box and an internal box the external box is The reference manager and this is where we take sources and we have these sources are experiences that we've had like reading a book watching a movie listening to a podcast and we can reference specific quotes from that source with a particular citation and I use a specific citation manager called zoto but I'll get into that in another

video then we go through and we distill the information from those sources into atoms into permanent notes then on the Internal side as we have ideas we can add those to fleeting notes as we have thoughts we can begin to accumulate potential connections between atoms as we go through and reread the atoms in our specific folder that contains all of the at the external slip box we can piece them together with new ideas and insights to produce permanent notes in our own words this would be a molecule now let's apply personal Knowledge Management that hourglass

shape that we Saw above to the zle cting system so that we have a flow here this is my molecular workflow I go and I seek new experiences new information this comes to me in the form of data it could be the source name the author the topic and it's some external source that I am capturing as I I consume that data I capture what resonates I write down quotes and I write down Concepts and ideas that are derived from that particular Source I seek that Information and I capture what resonates in the form of

information now this is a contextual experience because that information those quotes are still tied to the specific Source themselves this is all an external system then what I do is I decontextualize I extract the atoms from their context and apply it to my own life this is an internal application that makes connections between atoms in a way that it removes it from the context it decontextualizes this is Where I apply that information to my own life and make connections based on relevance and thoughts and ideas based on the projects and questions that I have then

I go back through and I try to make sense of those notes I try to go through my molecules through my knowledge box and identify new insights so this could be where I'm reading through a note on digital gardening and I have an idea on how digital gardening can apply to the zle casting system so I Have a new insight I feel called by some form of intuition because I've gone back through and read my own words that relate to a problem that I'm having towards a goal or a purpose that I have in a

project I can take that insight and I can apply it to the knowledge and I can write a path for future me to follow I'm producing what's called a wisdom Bridge so that when I come back to that Concept in the future I know exactly how to walk that path again because I've Already distilled the essence down to its purest form in a way that's going to be the most applicable to me then I can take those insights and knowledge that wisdom and I can recontextualize it I can add back the information the reference to

the particular source is where I got it from because I'm keeping track of my citations here and I can share that wisdom and knowledge as information to other people so it forms an external source of information and Data for someone else this is where I have three different methods of doing this I have cultivating publishing and printing cultivating is taking my notes and even if they're only 20% or 50% ready to be published I publish them anyway into my digital Garden I have a whole video on digital gardening and how you can convert your obsidian

Vault into a digital Garden for free as a publication system so if you're interested I recommend checking that out Or I can publish it in a more refined format I can take it and I can add it as a newsletter or as this YouTube video that would be a published format and finally if I wanted to I could get into academic writing where I'm actually printing something where I need to have all of the citations organized because I need to have the output be highly credible for it to be accepted as either an academic paper

or book as I publish this information I can generate data on What other people find impactful and I can use that as a form of information that helps me decide what to produce next time so we get this really nice feedback loop of the flow of knowledge okay so now that we've gone through more of the Frameworks and you've seen how the flow of knowledge Works in my zle casting system I thought I would apply a couple laws here just to I just want you to keep this in mind as we go through and create

the templates for each of the Different notes because it's really easy to get overwhelmed with all of this so sometimes it's it's helpful to have a few rules a few laws that you like to apply that you can default back to if you're starting to feel overwhelmed the first law is that we value connecting over collecting when you connect notes together you begin to have nonlinear growth you can have emergent properties and patterns come into existence by virtue of connecting your knowledge Together by connecting an atom to an idea to form a molecule or multiple

atoms together to form a molecule this is in contrast to just writing down a quote which is how most people take notes this is traditional note taking where you just write down quotes and it can be really difficult to derive a lot of value from that because it's been removed from its context and you tend to just read it in a linear format by making connections between notes we're Introducing a nonlinear pattern here and that has a lot more potential to have exponential value another law is that projects guide your insights so projects could be

questions that you're trying to solve problems you're trying to solve just things that you're trying to get more information on Research into so that you can have a direct application to your own life if you're just writing down notes if you're just collecting quotes but you're not actually trying to Keep track of your insights on how those quotes can apply to your life then this whole system is far less effective it's really hard to put into words how effective it can become if you use projects to guide your insights another law is that less is

more we don't want to have a ton of information here we have enough information with the internet the goal is to try and reduce and distill the information to its core so that it can be far more applicable And related to the connecting over collecting we have create over copy you want to write your own words when you're writing down notes you don't want to just copy something verbatim this is called the generation effect where by writing in your own words by converting a quote into something that actually has meaning to you you're far more

likely to remember that information as knowledge if you just copy it down it's likely to just flit out of your head related to Less is more simplify you always want to keep distilling if the system feels too complicated for you to the point that you're not actually going to use it that means that it's too complex and that you need to simplify it the goal here is to make it practical for you the next law is that we want to build in public this relates to my commentary on digital garden and cultivating so if you're

interested in learning more about that again I recommend checking out my Digital garden video but the idea here is that rather than striving for perfectionism we can instead share information as knowledge for other people and help guide them to make their own connections even if it's not at a point that we would typically think of it being ready for publication there's a lot of value in helping people along the way cuz they might only be a step or two behind you rather than trying to spend months to draft an article that's in its Perfect format

and related to simplification we want to recalibrate for insights what I mean by that is as you go through and as you start to build out your molecular slip box your thinking box you might find that one type of system works better than another if that's the case go with it the whole point here is that we're trying to experiment for a way that works best for you you want to follow follow your own intuition and then recalibrate your System as you identify those key moments of intuition and finally we don't want to have any

orphan notes and basically what that means is that if we're dropping something into our molecular slip box into our idea generator box we don't want to just add an orphan note a note that has no connection to any other note the only notes that should go into the molecule box into the idea generator box is a note that we've already made a connection to another note that way we Can begin to generate note sequences and we can link those con together connect the dots between our thoughts over time and that's where we really start to

get this nonlinear value this emergent property coming into existence so now it's time to get into templates okay I think that that's enough theory for the moment I realize that this has been a lot of information before we get into the templating and the Practical element of building my molecular zle cast and System including Source templates fleeing note templates literature note templates and permanent note templates along with how I use all of those different note types to build out my publishable notes my Alloys I think it's worth taking some time for you to go through

and think of your own goals of what you're trying to do with this system the better an idea you have of these goals the easier and more practical this type of system will be And the more helpful my templated system will be because you'll understand how to modify it to meet your own needs so stay tuned for part two of this video where I get into the templating and the actual practical implementation of a zle Casten system in obsidian which I'm calling molecular zcas if you found this video valuable I would love if you would

please consider subscribing the more people that subscribe the more I build up my YouTube the more time I can spend Making videos like this so I really appreciate any support you might also find it valuable to share with a friend I found that talking about this system with a few other people has been the most beneficial for me as it starts to make it seem a lot more tangible and real word of mouth is by far the best way to help me grow so again I really appreciate your support if you're confused at all with

the system please feel free to leave a comment M below and I'll go through and answer them I think the more we talk about this the easier it starts to help many other people understand personal Knowledge Management and hopefully reduce information overload which can then boost the mental health of everyone in society if you're interested I will be taking my template system that I talk about in the next video and I'll be packaging it as a zip file as a vault starter kit for molecular zle Casten and I'll be making That available on the cheapest

tier of my YouTube membership which is $299 Canadian or $2 us so if you found this valuable and would like to support me so that I can continue to make more videos please consider joining my membership finally if you're interested in learning more about what obsidian is and how it can be structured in different ways and how you can use obsidian to form part of a digital Garden to help you share your knowledge and to cultivate it over time Along with artificial intelligence that can boost this entire system I have a playlist here that goes

in depth on obsidian digital gardening personal Knowledge Management and augmenting it all with AI thanks again for watching and I will see you in the next video