I’ve been intrigued over the past year with the surge of interest in the Zettelkasten note taking system as popularized by sociologist scholar and systems theorist, Niklas Luhmann.

As someone who makes tons of notes, scattered all over the place (paper and digital on multiple platforms), having something standardized would be a welcome addition to my life. Especially when I scurry through my old notes and find absolute gems I should really follow-up on.

However, the more you look into how people have been adapting his system, the more puzzling it becomes.

Luhmann originally designed his paper slip box system as a thinking partner. A way to connect ideas together and to think through the ideas running through his head.

His methodology is hailed as outstanding because of its forward thinking nature of interlinking notes (rather than being hierarchal) and the fact it helped him write hundreds of essays across multiple disciplines and over seventy books.

Yet, I question how many people assume that rushing to replicate his methods will somehow result in them becoming prolific academics (I also question how many people have actually read his work).

Being a prolific writer, for instance, is a matter of sitting your butt down and spending time at the keyboard. All those words you create add up very quickly over the months until they become mountains over the years.

Likewise, sitting down every night to think through your notes, write your thoughts and find connections with your previous thinking will compound quickly over the years.

But… here’s the catch… you still have to do the work and it needs to be for the long haul.

You still have to sit down and think, write and create.

Instead, what I’m seeing are posts, articles and conversations about how to tag, link, title and what content should go into notes. I fear this is nothing more than people creating an overly complicated system in an attempt to find a shortcut to doing the real work.

In other words—glorified procrastination.

Sure, take his ideas, but do so under the context of a much bigger question:

What is all this for?

Never miss the big picture of what you’re doing.