In Söhnke Ahrens’ discussion about the Zettelkasten technique, and looking at the revival of the ideas with Roam, Obsidian, RemNote & Co, there was one aspect that struck a chord with me. It is a key point that I forgot to mention above:
Writing is not the outcome of thinking; Notetaking is the process when thinking takes place.
Thinking does not happen in the brain alone, there is an external dimension to it. Because note taking is thinking, the success of your thinking depends on the way you take notes.
One can use note taking apps to keep or archive ideas but note taking apps can go beyond managing files and support creative thinking and research. I think this is the core of the current wave of interest and the comparison of apps should focus on how apps support this process and most importantly, the ease with which this is possible.
Outlining is a key element in this process, or an example of notetaking as a way of thinking. In research, the process of writing a publication or a long text (e.g. dissertation) is often started with an outline. While many people outline by headings, it is often an good idea to jot down key points of an argument or the results one wants to present, to then start ordering these elements (bullet points, short paragraphs).
Being able to collapse elements in an outline (text below headers, lists etc) and easily move things around, supports this process.
Backlinking is one way to support the discovery of relationships between ideas and concepts, that are stored in separate notes. However, in many instances one has a collection of ideas (bullet points, short paragraphs) in one note, and the process of finding relationships is through rearrangement and ordering of those pieces (inside a note).
I love the interface and design of Agenda and I’d love to use it for this process in which I jot down ideas, collect elements from other notes, and put them together in one note. Here two things help, having a way to overview several notes and having a way to arrange things inside a note. This is where the colapsing helps. For the linking between notes, it would be great to have something like Srivener"s corkboard view. Since notes in the Zettelkasten or Evergreen framework should be concise or “atomic”, seeing the heading and a few lines, in this overview, would probably suffice. This latter process is what writers do with “corkboards” but it also fits an academic writing workflow.