DON'T organize your zettelkasten

A Zettelkasten doesn’t need a predetermined filing system to become useful; it can organize itself through links, search, and “emergent” structure—so long as the notes are created and connected deeply. The core warning is against starting with rigid categories (folders, tags, or Dewey-like hierarchies) because those upfront choices can distort how ideas evolve, force everything into the wrong boxes, and eventually run out of categories for the real complexity of thought.

The frustration that drives people to restart their Zettelkasten—building a system, then abandoning it, then trying again—often comes from the fear that notes will become unfindable. The transcript frames that fear as understandable: beginning from scratch can feel like staring at a blank page, with the risk of “doing it wrong” and having to redo everything. But the proposed fix is counterintuitive: don’t plan the structure. Start messy, trust that value increases as more notes accumulate, and focus on making connections rather than sorting.

Instead of pre-categorizing, the method recommends a simple naming convention for two note types: “Source notes” named with author, publication date, and title, and “Note notes” given a short descriptive title (about six to eight words). Beyond that, the system avoids intentional categorization—no folders by topic, no tags, no sequential numbering, and no date-based naming—because a digital setup can rely on metadata and full-text search to retrieve notes later.

A long example uses climate change and Mary Robinson’s book Climate Justice, Hope, Resilience and the Fight for a Sustainable Future. The transcript contrasts how a library would classify the same material under different Dewey Decimal categories depending on whether it’s treated as social science, environmental problems, or climatology. That kind of forced classification becomes a trap: it narrows future thinking by locking climate change into one “type” of problem, even though it also functions as a race, gender, class, political, and economic issue. The argument is that predetermined categories are inherently limiting because ideas don’t stay within the boundaries created for them.

In practice, the transcript demonstrates building in Scrl (a browser-based visual note tool with an infinite canvas and bidirectional linking). A card for the book is created, then quotes and ideas are added. New notes branch off from that source note—such as “Climate change is a feminist issue”—and are linked back using Scrl’s backlinking and drag-and-drop text movement. The key mechanism is networked organization: when a central idea like “climate change” is linked from many other notes, it becomes a hub that helps retrieval and supports new connections that weren’t predictable at the start.

The takeaway is that organization should emerge from how ideas connect, not from how they are sorted at the beginning. The “mess” of many open cards and ongoing linking is presented as the engine of recall, thinking, and inspiration—turning the Zettelkasten into a research partner that grows more powerful over time.