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description: "Practising Luhmann's Zettelkasten in Jotaid: atomic notes, backlinks, and how nodes serve as the index system."
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# Zettelkasten

The slip-box method comes from sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Its claim is plain: **one idea per card, cards linked into a network** — the value lies not in any card but in what emerges once they are connected.

Jotaid's underlying structure fits it naturally. The only thing to think through is where the **index** lives.

## Where the Three Kinds of Note Go

Luhmann distinguished three kinds. In Jotaid:

| In the slip-box | In Jotaid | How |
|-----------------|-----------|-----|
| **Fleeting notes** | Ordinary notes in the Inbox | [Quick Note](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/capture) them without deciding where they belong |
| **Literature notes** | Notes from the [literature template](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/templates) | Source / Author → Core Claims → Key Quotes → **My Thinking** |
| **Permanent notes** | Notes you rewrote in your own words and linked into the network | One idea each, titled with the idea itself |

The decisive step is from literature note to permanent note: **rewriting it in your own words**. That italic prompt in the template — *"Where do you agree, doubt, or extend this?"* — exists for exactly that step.

## One Note, One Idea

The test: can this note's title be written as a **complete claim**?

- ❌ "Notes on attention" — that is a folder name
- ✅ "Attention residue makes task switching cost more than the timer shows" — that is an idea

Once titles are claims, `[[ ]]` links start feeling natural: what you cite elsewhere is **a proposition**, not "that note I wrote about attention".

## The Index: Nodes Are Luhmann's Keyword Cards

Luhmann's box held a special kind of card — the **index card**, carrying one keyword and the numbers of every card discussing it. It is why the system was searchable at all.

In Jotaid you never maintain those cards. **[Nodes](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/create-nodes) are them**:

- Write `[[attention residue]]` in a body and the node exists
- Open it and every note mentioning it is listed under backlinks — **the index grows itself**
- A node can also hold **a body of its own**: the concept's definition, your reading of it, where it borders on neighbouring ideas

This is where Jotaid departs from plain backlink tools: a concept is not merely a link anchor, it is a note you can write, read and keep growing.

## Letting Connections Surface

The slip-box earns its keep by **revealing links you did not plan**. Jotaid offers three levels:

| Tool | Answers |
|------|---------|
| [Knowledge graph](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/graph) | What my network looks like, which concepts are hubs |
| [Co-occurrence matrix](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/matrix) | Which two concepts keep appearing together — **even where I never linked them** |
| [Link predictions](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/predictions) | Which connections I have missed |

The matrix comes closest to Luhmann's "unexpected neighbours": two concepts recurring across the same notes yet never directly related is, very often, the title of your next permanent note.

## Two Things to Avoid

**Do not use themes as a classification tree.** Hierarchical filing is the slip-box's opposite: the moment you start agonising over which folder a note belongs in, the network has degenerated into a tree. Treat a [theme](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/themes) as **the direction you are currently pushing on**, not as permanent storage — links and nodes do the archiving, containers do not.

**You do not need the numbers.** Luhmann's `21/3a1` addresses existed to locate a physical card. Here the title is the identity and `[[ ]]` is the address; copying the numbering only adds upkeep.

## Next Steps

- [Backlinks](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/backlinks) — Nodes and links
- [Co-occurrence Matrix](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/matrix) — Finding unexpected neighbours
- [PARA](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/para) — The complementary philosophy
- [Design Thinking](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/design-thinking) — What Jotaid itself was built around