

If the existing note had the number 22, the new note would become note number 23. “If a new note was relevant or directly referred to an already existing note, such as a comment, correction or addition, he added it directly behind the previous note.

The numbers bore no meaning and were only there to identify each note permanently.” “The trick is that he did not organise his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers. And it was fun to work with – because it worked.” It helped him to structure and develop his thoughts.
SMART NOTES AHRENS GENERATOR
His slip-box became his dialogue partner, main idea generator and productivity engine. But he collected his notes in his slip-box in such a way that the collection became much more than the sum of its parts. Just amassing notes in one place would not lead to anything other than a mass of notes. So he started to think about how one idea could relate and contribute to different contexts. He realised that one idea, one note was only as valuable as its context, which was not necessarily the context it was taken from. “He soon developed new categories of these notes.While other systems start with a preconceived order of topics, Luhmann developed topics bottom up, then added another note to his slip-box, on which he would sort a topic by sorting the links of the relevant other notes.” “By adding these links between notes, Luhmann was able to add the same note to different contexts.It is mainly a matter of having an extensive latticework of mental models or theories in our heads that enable us to identify and describe the main ideas quickly.”

SMART NOTES AHRENS FREE
It is free and comes with a friendly, supportive community. Nowadays, I use and value Roam Research, but would probably go with Obsidian if I had to start over today. Alternatives of stand-alone Zettelkasten programs include Zettlr and The Archive.

My program of choice used to be ZKN3 by Daniel Lüdecke, which is free and developed explicitly to emulate the Zettelkasten, but it lacks the flexibility of newer apps. But because changing tools midway is always a hassle, it is worth giving the right tool a bit of thought. As long as the principles of Zettelkasten are well understood, they can be implemented with a wide range of tools, both analogue and digital.
