Why is HN obsessed with Zettelkasten? (opens in new tab)

Hacker News really really likes all things related to personal note-taking. See also, emacs org-mode.

Personally, I find it pretty low quality intellectual content for this site.

There's not a ton of visible competition for interlinked-style note-taking. Zettelkasten has become a kind of big tent recognizable name for vaguely-wiki-like heavily-cross-referencing journalling/note taking.

The first time I stumbled upon HN I then couldn't return for years - the idea of how much cool stuff (I necessarily want to learn) is on every page here would give me panic. I preferred to pretend I never seen this and kill the thought every time HN would pop up in my mind because I would have no time to sleep, eat, work or whatever otherwise. It took me some years and I learnt to manage with this obsession but it pretty much explains why would I need systematized notes - I obviously couldn't just remember everything.

I feel that ZK was as much a solution to a 'problem' as it was the manifestation of an individual's personality and mindset; and one that doesn't generalize well. Not to mention full ZK is incredibly inefficient for most people.

Sometimes 'doing things to become more productive' is an easier problem to solve than simply being more productive.

I wonder the same, having no idea what Zettelkasten is/are... it sounds like a solution for a problem I don't think I have.

It gives us (me included) a sense of control of our mountain of todos, ideas, thoughts. In reality, the sense of control is imaginary. I have never really can control these things.

We just desperately want to organize the chaos in our lives.

In times when externals are uncertain people look for ways to keep their internals certain.