PKMS/Zettelkasten

Zettlr ships with a set of features that allow you to maintain your own “Zettelkasten”.

What is a PKMS/Zettelkasten?

A “Zettelkasten” is a method of maintaining a repository of small (“atomic”) notes that contain ideas you had, thoughts on lectures, some snippets from papers you’ve read. The system is named after the “Zettelkasten” (English: “slip box”) of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. (His original Zettelkasten can be visited at the University of Bielefeld.)

The idea is that, rather than maintaining a few big documents that contain notes on books and papers, you split up all ideas into small pieces and instead of collecting them centrally, link them with each other. If you then follow a trail of links, you can construct entire chains of thoughts that you can – almost naturally – chain together into a full paper.

PKMS is the abbreviation for Personal Knowledge Management System, which is the category to which a “Zettelkasten” belongs. Many modern apps use the term PKMS, rather than Zettelkasten.

Should I Start a Zettelkasten/PKMS?

In short: it depends.

Many people hear of this system, and wonder if the tales of its efficiency are true. In our experience, for some people a PKMS or Zettelkasten actually helps in being more efficient in writing, but for some people it makes their work actually slower and less efficient.

Our suggestion: Try it out, and if it just doesn’t seem to “click” for you, don’t bother starting one.

Regardless of whether it works or not, Zettlr supports all important methods required to successfully set up a Zettelkasten for yourself!