PARAZETTEL: Note-taking Lessons, Articles, Templates and More

Minimal Note-Taking: A Guide to Simplicity in a Distracted World

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A fusion of Tiago Forte’s PARA Method and Luhmann’s Zettelkasten (the two most well-known and powerful PKM systems. See where the name comes from now?)

It’s designed to tackle every type of task, and yet be simple enough to fade into the background - so you can focus on crushing real work, rather than reorganising your note-taking systems for the third time that week.

Even just for me, I’ve used it to graduate university (BSc Zoology), start writing online, personally and for a business, as well as manage other projects including travelling and freelance photography.

But others have used the vault for many different things on top of this.

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Read the articles...

PARAZETTEL emerged in 2023 from a writing habit that I built, starting on Medium. This has evolved, and now you can read the articles here too...

Two Claude x Obsidian Tweaks I've Started Using That Actually Help Out

I’ve been obsessed with the combination of Claude Code and Obsidian recently, but the more work I’ve done with them, the more I’ve realised how restrained you need to be in order to use the pairing in a way that’s genuinely functional, and not just prompting for the sake of prompting. This means choosing not to organise through AI, write through AI and get everything jumbled up in one space, but to be mindful, keep the AI’s notes separate, and capture and write our own ideas in our own words the majority of the time. ...

Lessons From Breaking Down Obsidian's CEO's Personal Vault Template

Back in November, as I swanned through Vietnam (working hard or hardly working?), I published my most successful YouTube video of the last 12 months. It’s called ‘Breaking Down the Obsidian CEO’s Personal Vault System’ and is hovering at almost 6,000 views (not bad for a channel of almost ten times fewer subscribers)… Today I thought I’d revisit that topic as I recently, in my private community, demonstrated how to implement Claude Code in a vault that hasn’t experienced it yet (Steph Ango’s vault was the one I chose for the demonstration). ...

How I'm Using Obsidian (and Claude) to Write My First Book

I’ve been taking notes in Obsidian for almost exactly four years now (procrastinating before my A-levels in 2022 was how it happened). And I’ve been teaching about the topic for the last three, so I thought it high-time to announce an upcoming book at the end of last year… Minimal Note-Taking: A Guide to Simplicity in a Distracted WorldPre-order my upcoming book... ...

3 Free Tiers So Good I Didn't Upgrade

Normally I tend towards paying for digital utilities, from software, to content memberships, and I’ve written about this stack a lot. There are a few good reasons for paying for software… Most of the time, when operating a business, you need to use the features that are behind a paywall I also believe that the investment you make into the world comes back around to find you again after some time And also I just dislike the upgrade banners, ads and annoyances But there are three apps that I open every day, that don’t cost me a penny in recurring outgoings. We’re going to talk about them in this piece. ...

Using Obsidian to Build a Software Startup

Since meeting a new friend in Da Nang, Vietnam, a couple of months ago, I’ve been building another startup (software), alongside growing PARAZETTEL. It’s called ProseLab, and today I want to tell you about it, as well as tell you how I’ve been using Obsidian and PARAZETTEL as a system to elevate how effectively I’ve been able to work on the project. With such a mine of context at my disposal from four years of taking notes in Obsidian for different things, it would have been foolish to start completely from scratch. ...

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Hey, I'm Theo Stowell

I teach people how to build personal knowledge management systems that actually help them get work done, not systems that become the work. PARAZETTEL started as my own Obsidian vault when I was a Zoology student, fusing the best of PARA and Zettelkasten. It's since grown into a vault template, a course, a community and a whole philosophy around minimal, practical note-taking.

More about me →