Learning to take notes well as a skill was the leading factor in me starting multiple businesses and graduating from university. It made me friends and money, and kept me sane.
Using such a title as the one that this piece has was always going to be a risk, but I’m holding fast because I actually believe it to be true, and in this piece I’ll tell you more as well as let you know how you can learn this all from me in more detail.
Let’s dive in…
How PARAZETTEL came to be
I’ve never needed a diagnosis to know that my unbroken attention is fragile - struggling to keep tabs on what’s important with all the bullshit designed to distract that exists in the world is proof of that…
First it was video games and YouTube videos, and later other social media like Instagram and Twitter, until I landed on a very unconventional (but still effective) distraction…
‘Productivity porn’ – searching for the perfect system, forgetting that I didn’t really have any suitable work in mind, copying my university notes from Notion to OneNote, instead of really studying.
I was eighteen at the time, before even starting a degree, but at the same time I began to realise that this wasn’t working out as I’d expected (I was switching systems and apps on a weekly basis), and I began to learn.
As a reward for completing my A-levels my mother bought me Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain, and I read this, Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, and Sönke Ahrens’ How to Take Smart Notes (about Luhmann’s Zettelkasten).
This, combined with a growing genuine need to learn to take notes well for university, pushed me into making a decision about where I was going to take notes, and how.
The app ended up being Obsidian, a relatively new player in the space at the time, and the system was a prototype version of PARAZETTEL inspired by all the new content I was reading.
And it worked! I began taking notes through my degree, and felt so in control that I chose in the new year (January 2023) to start writing on the internet as well as for university…
To start with, the topics that I covered were wide-ranging, until I published a piece about using the earliest GPT API to generate articles within Obsidian. After this piece became popular, I realised the knowledge that I’d accumulated over the whole time stressing about what system to use, and doubled down on the niche.
This led to me writing regularly through the start of 2023, alongside the degree. Through the summer, I developed and launched the first iteration of PARAZETTEL for Obsidian. I now had a business! People were coming to me to learn how I took notes.
That vault template is no longer available, but it was the very core foundation of my first income on the internet. Its different versions supported me through my second and third years of study, through a year of travel in Asia and in Europe after that.
Knowing that it’s now unavailable for purchase begs the question ‘what’s next?’ And I’d like to cover that a little later in this piece but for now, we’ll cover the rest of the story…
Aside from the function in the business I’ve already described, as well as my degree, this practice of note-taking has taken me elsewhere too…
Throughout three years I’ve…
- Started a writing software business called ProseLab with a friend I met in Vietnam, managing development and marketing from its own Obsidian vault.
- Taken on some work as a freelance photographer, and managed the client information, as well as delivery and logistics from my vault.
- Written over 100 issues of a personal newsletter and built personal websites for photographs and essays, and more.
So, to cut a long story short, mastering the skill of note-taking and information management has played a real and positive role in my life.
Instead of going on and on about my story though, I’d like to give you the main ideas to help you do the same, and explain where you can find more of this teaching, to get started with building a note-taking system for yourself.
We’ll start with the pointer that forms the basis of everything we’re going to talk about next. What’s the reason you’re here and want to take notes?
You need a reason for a system
If you’re looking to start taking notes in your own PKM system, whether that be in Obsidian or something else, you better have a damn good reason for doing so.
Luckily, the instance back when the one important thing in my life was doing flashcards and practice questions (rather than managing knowledge) back at the end of my pre-university study is an outlier…
Most of the time we’re going to find reasons to have PKM in our lives, whether for employment, running a business, academia, or even for personal means, so you’re going to have a reason to take notes, it’s just that you have to have it outlined pretty concretely too.
Finish the sentence – “I take notes to __”
Like me, for example, I know that…
I take notes to manage and grow PARAZETTEL, Obssistant, and ProseLab, as well as to help myself think, write personal essays, and track personal growth.
Now there are a couple of more concrete reasons in that list, and some less defined, but the important part is that you’ve outlined this true to yourself and your goals, and keep it in mind when you’re building.
The second point elaborates on this a little more…
Minimal Note-Taking is crucial
Minimal Note-Taking – the idea of only adding a feature or element of complexity to your system when it’s absolutely required – is crucial.
I’m not writing a book about just this topic for nothing. It really underpins everything that I do when it comes to taking notes - decisions about the structure of the system, what I take notes about and how I talk about my infrastructure and provide my insights in articles.
This idea comes largely from Cal Newport’s idea of Digital Minimalism - you’re only to add a digital tool to your stack when it provides overwhelming benefit.
I like to say you strike not when you feel the itch, but when the pain of not having some kind of feature or technology becomes too much to bear.
It’s the same in Minimal Note-Taking. You might be able to think of a use for a certain plugin or feature in Obsidian, but just because you can, does it mean you should implement it?
Likely not.
Have a real think about all you need to take notes, and start from there, building up. We tend to overdo things, so starting pretty much from the simplest viable system makes sure that we’re only solving the real issues that come up with the most efficient patch to do so.
Think something like - one inbox to capture ideas, a space for projects, and somewhere that you can build an evergreen web of ideas. That’s how the first PARAZETTEL vault looked, before it even gained the name.
It can be even less – I have one friend who’s been taking notes in Google Docs his whole life, only recently asking me to help him transition over to using Obsidian + an AI agent.
You can build, improve and change your system of course, but these changes need to come from an overarching prioritisation of simplicity, and happen slowly and steadily so you don’t lose your way…
Evolving, rather than transforming
This is one other idea that provides the basis of how I approach note-taking.
It comes from the clear opportunity cost that can be found by switching what’s in the system to something completely new.
For a long time I drew the comparison between biological evolution examples and note-taking (talking a lot about the Irish elk, an extinct deer species that evolved massive antlers too fast to be sustainable), but here’s the gist of things…
If you’re always changing very quickly, to a new app, for example, or a brand-new system, you’re never going to get the opportunity to settle down into learning what your current system can offer you.
It’s for this reason that I recommend adjusting slowly - picking one simple and effective place to start as suggested by Minimal Note-Taking, and then building things up slowly from there.
I’ve written before about why you should build your own system slowly rather than copying somebody else’s.
This way, things never really feel as though you’re switching systems or pivoting hard. It feels more like you’re evolving slowly and naturally (this is key).
Looking back a few months or a year, your system might feel completely different, but because you’ve gone about developing it in a sensible way, you’ve not put your own work under stress.
But how do I recommend you learn about all of these in more detail?
Introducing PARAZETTEL Foundations
You can find all of this information here, spread out across my articles and other posts on the internet.
However, realising that with my products and other bits and pieces in the past that I’ve made things quite difficult to learn from, I’m building out a new, simpler and more complete starting point for those learning to build a system for the first time…
It’s called PARAZETTEL Foundations.
One thing I realised after continuing to offer products around Obsidian and the wider PKM space was that I was getting spread thin.
People didn’t know what to expect when they got hold of my products, and I was spending all my efforts trying to keep the email sequences and website pages for all the different offers working.
So I’ve cut things back, and now I’m focused on teaching all the principles that got me from switching from app to app with no intention of building PARAZETTEL, the template, and achieving all of the things off the back of having a working system (see the story part of this piece).
It’s housed in the PARAZETTEL Skool Community, where you can find the other bonus courses (aside from the old PARAZETTEL for Obsidian vault, which has now retired), and is delivered to you over time as you join, so that you’re not overwhelmed.
If you want to check it out, you can go straight to the page here…
PARAZETTEL Foundations
Helping knowledge professionals, students and creators master PKM and note-taking with PARA Method, Zettelkasten and a touch of *useful* AI.
We’re releasing Foundations in a couple of days at the time of writing, so when you click you’re likely going to be one of the first on the inside to see and try out the new content, and get your note-taking system up and running.
It’s an exciting time for PARAZETTEL and the related resources and if you want the ideas I talk about to change your life as well as mine, I hope I can see you on the inside of Foundations!