- [<] Status Log - created:: 2022-01-26 based on [this discussion in Discord with Can](https://discord.com/channels/824179057620811806/852260301571358771/935932647312613406). - status-updated:: 2022-01-26 - current-status: #articleseed/thoughts - [S] Marketing - purpose:: can be combined with other [[zettelkasten single-file filing]] and [[Zettelkasten is part of my notes, not all of it]] concepts to form an overarching piece for [[Obsidian Roundup]] about how I adapted zettelkasten. Folgezettels are a useful concept and they provide a useful method. But I think it's important to break apart those two elements of the horizontal and maybe I missed it, but nothing I've seen in any of the articles I've read about them really does that so I'm gonna take a crack at it. To be clear, I don't technically useful because it'll sorting in my notes. I tried it for a while, but it was entirely too much overhead and that kind of hierarchical structure doesn't make sense for my personal notes, no matter how atomic I keep them. But I did learn a lot from the concept the idea of the focus model is that it allows you to sort index cards I hesitate to call them files. It allows you to sort similar things next to each other and kind of follow your train of thought. In a analog based system that is really useful because you only have an index cards worth of space. One of the realizations that I had about files in obsidian, even the endless discussions of outliner versus not outliner is that a block is essentially the content of an index card. Which means that a file is essentially a series of index cards. If you have multiple thoughts on it. A lot of my files are very short, but some of them get long as I expand on the concept. I'm not doing that with one file after the other very often. But conceptually, the idea of continuing your train of thought leader after coming back to the thing and realizing that you have more thoughts is really useful, and I do that all the time. One of the processes that I have when taking notes is that I split everything off into atomic notes each individual highlight an annotation gets attached to a claim statement and just shoved off in a note they look like this. But what will often happen is that later I will find more evidence for that claim and I will add it to the note and then a full because that'll system I would make that you know I would number that and I would put that index card right behind it. But what I do is I just turn it into a little baby outline. And the next block is the continuation. And that makes a lot of sense to me. I believe in that as a useful strip system. But separately, the numbering schema that lumen came up with was something that I hadn't really come across before my time in the personal altagas community. And I do like it. It's useful to use letters interspersed with numbers instead of just numbers, particularly for me because I struggle with numbers, but also because it breaks up the line. And this is really, really handy with the way that I have my dates structured I have two different kinds of data notes. One are my daily notes which I use when I need to, I don't always use them. But they're handy if you're doing a lot of complex things when you're not doing a lot of complex things. I think they're unnecessary overhead but when you have a lot going on, it's very helpful to keep you focused. And all of those data notes I use dashes for. But I also have things like my newsletters, which sort of by definition, are dated the obsidian round up. News is bound to time it doesn't. It's not evergreen content, the newest plugin, state of the meta and articles you know they they can expire in usefulness. So having those dated is really handy. Similarly, feedback letters for my stories that I get from editors, that's dated content that should be ordered appropriately. And my personal newsletter is the iceberg where I talk about stories and the research that goes into supporting those stories. Um it's important for me to know the order the stories were shared in so that I can see what kinds of things are building on things. What I talked about recently how that all kind of the pacing of that goes. And it's also valuable for me to see them in order so that I can find them more easily. So those have a very rigid naming structure. My newsletters, I only send a short story, very short story and afterward, but I don't like the idea of combining those two very separate things into one note. Each afterward is essentially a mini article on a narrow topic. And in some ways, it's similar to a claim statement. I always have a thesis, or at least a central topic that I'm I'm sharing information about and I want to be able to find those more easily. Because they are often very different from the short story I attach them to and a lot a lot of the time. I look at a short story that I wrote and I have to think pretty hard to figure out which piece of pre knowledge I used unconsciously to write it. So I don't do them at the same time. Very often I'm going back and finding something like an atomic note that wasn't necessarily intended to become a newsletter. And I flesh it out with more explanation as I as I do, you know, real targeted thinking on it. So I want to keep those separate, because that makes it easier for me to find again makes it easier with search it makes it easier with linking to the correct context. So I use the focus that'll numbering structure in that sense, where I'll have the date and then I will have the story and then I will short the piece next to it. I'm you know, I'm aware that this would work, even if I didn't have the A but I like to have the analysis after it just for my own peace of mind and like the pattern matching of being able to glance at my notes and see which pieces are queued up that already have an analysis in which don't, which is handy for me and that tiny bit of lower to cognition is useful. But there's also this other kind of full visible that isn't a proper focus at all, but applies the principles of the Fogle's at all, which is that if you have a lot of notes with claim statements about a particular topic, they will sort next to each other. So for example, I've got notes about a Syria and I will say things like a Syria does this a Syria had this, the Syrian culture did. And by the nature of file sorting, they wind up next to each other because I sort my files off medically, you don't have to sort them alphabetically. You can absolutely sort by creation date or however you want. But alphabetically is the easiest way to impose order and I find order helpful. So, I will sometimes have five or six notes that come out of a particular article and they will all start the same way because they are all on the same topic and mostly because it'll you know, I still need the interlinks because it's an I still need maps of content. This isn't a replacement, but it is an additional tool that I think a lot of us. I think a lot of people tend to look at focus on tools, see that they're antiquated see that that particular numbering structure doesn't make sense. In a modern system, replace it with timestamps, and then never think about the rest of it. The rest of the usefulness, which is having things that are like each other near each other, and expanding on the thoughts so I just wanted to take a moment and share that little bit of extra metacognition. Related to fold puzzles and why I'm glad I learned about them, even though I don't use them in their purest form.