In this episode, Edmund Gröpl, a retired engineer, discovers how life is often circular. He shares his in-depth knowledge of Zettelkasten (card file in German) and how he links sketchnotes using Obsidian. Edmund shares how he is integrating Zettlekasten and sketchnotes in a new book.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.

Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.

Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

Intro
Welcome
Who is Edmund?
Origin Story
Edmund's current work
Sponsor: Concepts
Tips
Tools
Where to find Edmund
Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

Book: Zettelkasten by Niklas Luhmann

How To Take Smart Notes

The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roan

Writing Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick

The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde

The Sketchnote Army Podcast

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

Tips

Benefit from self-organized learning groups.
Attend a LernOS sketchnoting circle.
Zettelkasten with Obsidian is your second brain for sketchnoting.
Take useful notes!

Credits

Producer: Alec Pulianas
Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with my friend Edmund Gropl. Edmund, how are you?

Edmund Gropl: Hello, Mike. Nice to see you. And I put one sentence on paper. Thank you so much for having me.

MR: You're so welcome. I'm glad to have you. I'm excited because I know that you're really into this intersection between Zettelkasten and sketch notes. I'm really curious to hear in the section where we talk about current projects, where you're at with that. Because I think one of the things that I struggle with is I produce lots of sketch notes, but the challenge I find is organizing them in a logical way.

I think your episode, your interview with us may be really helpful for me to think about how do I do that in a good way. I've got some fits and starts. I'm really personally looking forward to learning and getting some ideas from you. Before we get to that, let's start first with who you are and what you do.

EG: Hello, my name is Edmund. I'm here from Germany, living in the Frankfurt area. To make it short, I'm a husband, I'm a father, and I'm a grandfather.

MR: Congratulations.

EG: Thank you. Thank you very much. Husband since 41 years, father then 33 years, and a grandfather since 10 months.

MR: Wow.

EG: Both three are really exciting.

MR: Well, then congratulations to you for setting an example for us for consistency and reliability, and loyalty. It's always good to see those qualities in people because we need that. We need those models and examples to follow. Talk to us a little bit about, you mentioned to me that you were an engineer. I don't know much more about that. Why don't you talk a little bit about your time as an engineer and your specialty and what was interesting to you in the work that you did?

EG: If you're in business, it's very important to talk about your profession, about being an engineer. Since two years, I'm retired, and therefore I have a lot of time and I have my head free thinking for my own, not for the company, not for the customers. It's exciting, what is changing. Is it the same as I did years ago as an engineer, or is there's some new stuff?

What I didn't expect that it's a really new phase in life, redefining yourself, and you are not a retired engineer. You are your person as your own. If I look at my hobbies, I love swimming, climbing, drawing, going outside, and so, and these are my hobbies. and it's all the stuff I mostly liked when I was a child.

MR: Interesting.

EG: Yes. It was climbing on trees. it was playing outside, it was swimming in the gym with my parents, it was drawing, not mathematics, and all the other stuff which came important to me afterwards. That's back to the roots and life seems to be a little bit like a mirror to see what was at the beginning comes back at the end.

MR: Rediscovering childhood in a way.

EG: Yeah. I didn't read it in a book, and it was not a plan. I had no idea what I would do as a retired engineer, but that was it. In the last years, I was working for a big company as a data scientist. I came here from Darmstadt near Frankfurt, and here it was the time when I came as a young man studying software and systems engineering.

Therefore, my head is all full with these engineering tools and concepts and methods and all this way of thinking. Sketchnoting was for me, very surprising to get in contact with all the other guys worldwide. Artists, illustrators’ facilitators, and so on and so on. It was really an enrichment of my life to have contact with different people with different professions and so on.

That's in short to say about my life. It was one year ago. Do you remember, Mike? It was in March last year. There was a session from you in the internet about sketchnoting, in March 3rd or so?

MR: Interesting. It's not one that comes to mind.

EG: Eventbrite was the platform where you announced it.

MR: It must have been interesting. That must have been—oh, that's a good question. We'll have to look and see. On the top of my head, I don't remember. The reason is there's been so many events that I've been doing that it's not surprising that I don't remember what it was.

EG: I was really happy that I could watch your presentation about sketchnoting, about drawing, and all this stuff. Real life, it was Mike, personally. It was not a book, it was you in person. There were a lot of visitors in your presentation. There was this chat by, near all these pictures, and there was one of the participants from New York City. Her name was—there was only a short form, Caroline New York City and she posted Zettelkasten and Sonke Ahrens.

I thought, okay, it was a session for Mike Rohde, it's about sketchnoting, there's some new stuff about sketchnoting. I have a whole bunch of literature about sketchnoting. I think all the books of all sketchnoters worldwide in different languages are on my bookshelf. I said, okay, Zettelkasten, it must be amazing. I bought this book, let me show you. It's a Kindle book, "How to Take Smart Notes."

MR: Interesting.

EG: Yes. Sketchnotes, smart notes, smart sketch notes. I started reading, and I was disappointed.

MR: It was all text.

EG: Yes. It's only text. The whole book is full of text. No sketchnotes at all.

MR: Interesting.

EG: And it was about note-taking. Then this boring stuff at the beginning, because only text, I said, okay, if it's not said what is the best way for note-taking, and I translate it in what is the best way for sketchnote taking or taking sketchnotes. I read all this book about note-taking with a sketchnote metaphor in mind, and that was an amazing book.

This book from Sonke Ahrens it's not written from an engineer or from a writer, it's a German sociologist as well as this Niklas Luhmann. Let me say in short, who invented this Zettlekasten method.

Sonke Ahrens explained it in his own language, and it's an amazing stuff. It's worth reading twice or three times this book. It's about 250 pages. What I learned reading one book about sketchnoting is not okay. I read the book, I'm now a sketchnoter.

It needs a lot of practice. With the note-taking, it's the same as taking sketchnotes, it needs a lot of practice, but you need to know a lot of principles behind, and I say hidden principles. In the first moment, you couldn't see these principles.

Mike, I looked at your book first. It was amazing, the sketchnotes, the ideas, but it needs maybe one or two years, I came back to your book and say, okay, now I understand it. You have no chance to understand it from the beginning. With note-taking, it's nearly the same.

That is my hobby since one year. Since your online session about sketchnoting. To mix it a little bit up to say, okay, that's Sonke Ahrens and that's the Mike Rohde, put it together and that's my hobby since nearly one year. 362 days is my Zettlekasten hobby.

MR: I had no idea that a workshop that I was teaching had sparked you along this path. That's really exciting to hear. That's pretty cool.

I know we're gonna talk more about what Zettelkasten is, how you've overlapped it or integrated it with sketchnoting, but I think I wanna go back. We've gone back one year to last March.

Now, let's go back to when you were a kid, and as you grew up in school and as you went to university, and as you worked in business as an engineer. I'm really curious, what were the moments in time, because you talked about when you were a kid, you liked drawing and now here you are again at the end drawing again in retirement years.

What was it that kept drawing alive? Or maybe it didn't stay alive and it had to be resurrected later. Talk about your path from a little boy to now. What were those key moments that brought you to where you are now?

EG: It's not drawing as a child, as a senior citizen, or so. It's at school first. I loved drawing most. Then they said, "Drawing is for small children. You are growing up and the really intelligent and clever ones, they can write and they can calculate. Drawing is only for the small ones."

But that was at the beginning of the school, but in mathematics, there are also some specialties where you can draw with a pencil, with a ruler, with a circle. It's not freehand drawing, but it's visual. I learned in mathematics also in physics, that all the visual stuff was for me, easy to understand.

For example, I'm really good in mathematics and physics and chemistry, for example. There was a lot of stuff I had to learn by heart that was not my idea. The visualization of elements, it was a little bit boring. Mathematics and physics was much more exciting too. In physics, to draw the experiments from the teacher on the sheet of paper and to say, okay, that's the motor, that's the battery and have it with symbols and the wires you can draw.

This physical stuff was the way I learned. That was also a reason for becoming an engineer. Engineering is also stuff with drawings there. There are concepts, there are diagrams, all this visual stuff, and that helps a lot. Coming in my professional life, after I was a systems engineer from university, I had to communicate with others, with the colleagues, with my boss, with the customers.

Then my drawings were these engineer drawings. I would not like to explain it too much in words. I will draw this system. We want to sell you this system that solves your problem, and so on. Or this process diagrams, flow diagrams and all this stuff. That was all visual. Therefore, I'm sure there are different styles of thinking maybe we are all born with. If you're more visual thinker, it's easier to become an engineer or an architect, and it's easier than to become a lawyer or something like this.

MR: I know the physicist that I've spoken with Rob Dimeo and others who talk about physics is really dependent on visuals, and so, they find it a real natural companion to sketchnoting, which is pretty interesting that you mentioned it as well.

EG: That's the side when I came to sketchnoting—and let me show you one book, I think one of my first sketch noting book was from Dan Roam.

MR: "The Back of the Napkin." Yep. Great book.

EG: It was a lot about the concepts itself. And I understand the concepts with a mind of an engineer, but years later, after Dan Roam, that was your book, I had a sketchnoting workshop over five days learning sketchnoting from a guy from Berlin, if I remember, Dick Hanaman.

MR: Dick Hanaman. Okay.

EG: Dick Hanaman from Berlin, he's giving sketchnoting workshops.

MR: Great.

EG: That was one of the books he recommended. With this book and with this workshop, I learned the stuff behind it, what does it mean to draw a line in this or in this way, why are there thicker and thinner lines, how to focus the attention on a special part of the drawing, and that was not in this book. Then came the book of Mike Rohde. I was happy to understand after years what drawing really means. I was working for a big company with more than 200,000 employees.

MR: Oh, wow.

EG: There's an internal platform or an internal community of self-organized learning. If you have some interesting stuff in engineering, in whatever, in the internet, you can post that you will held a session via Zoom or a special tool to show others, oh, there's interesting stuff for you about databases, proclaiming, and so on. And I offered Sketchnoting sessions, and it was two weeks after my first sketchnoting workshop and I held this session with 400 colleagues.

MR: No pressure. Edmund, no pressure.

EG: It was a feeling like flying in the air.

MR: Wow.

EG: I was able to draw a sticky man and write my name on paper. It was not only one session, it was repeatable. Week after week. That was really a nice feeling to say, oh, that's the right direction, and therefore I banned all my PowerPoint from my presentations, used the flip chart with the Neuland markers. It is the only ones I can use because I can use them for drawing and for writing. If the paper is white, the pen is black. What we had in the company before was you can't use this stuff. I always had my own Neuland markers with me.

MR: Me too.

EG: And the corporate material or markers most times they were old, two or three years old.

MR: Dry.

EG: Dry. You have to throw them away. That was it all with Neuland. Also, as an engineer, drawing on a whiteboard, it was the same with the dry markers years before, but with the Neuland markers for the whiteboard, I was the king. If we had a meeting, blah, blah, blah, this and this. Then Edmund uses his Neuland marker, went to the whiteboard, and explained how it works.

MR: What we just talk about, Edmund would visualize it for you.

EG: Yeah. It was amazing. It was all I think a little bit by excellent. It was not planned in my career.

MR: Organic, maybe a good way to describe it, which is always good because you follow it because it's interesting. You didn't follow it because somebody told you to, or you had to because of your job. You did it because you were interested and you came to love it, it seems like.

EG: Most of the stuff by accident, and what was the term I got from the internet? Serendipity. To be open to see things you wouldn't expect. As I told you, it was the same with Zettelkasten. It was, you were sketchnoting session in the internet.

MR: That's funny.

EG: The girl from New York said, Zettlekasten and Sonke Ahrens. Really cool stuff.

MR: You just never know what's going to send you in the new direction.

EG: Yeah.

MR: Which is great. That's a great thing about life, right, if you're open to it. Which I would argue that people that stay in the sketch note community are very open and interested and curious people, I think by nature. Probably something else you share in common when you go to an event with other sketch noters, everybody's curious and loves to learn and loves to share. Those combination of things seem consistent to me. That makes a great community because there's just endless things you can learn about and endless things to do, which is exciting.

EG: It's really my experience learning and talking with sketch noters, it's just another family. It's not the engineering style. It's another mindset. And I love it. They are from different professions. That's a big difference to my typical work as an engineer or as a data scientist.

MR: You also have the international component, so not only are they from different walks of life and different interests, but they're also from different countries. Even then you have another perspective change, right? Even in countries in Europe as well as the United States and around the world, everyone has a little bit different view on things so you can learn some new things from those people from other places. At least that's what I've experienced. My life is so much richer because of the community for sure.

EG: In this community, I really love this sharing mindset and this lifelong learning. And being curious, there's new stuff. There's a new app for drawing, could you please tell me a little bit about it? For these digital tools, they freely give away a digital brush set.

MR: Right. Yeah, it's a great community, and we're glad you're part of it. Thank you for your contributions for sure. Speaking of contributions, I'd like to hear a little bit more about Zettelkasten, how it integrates or overlaps with sketchnoting.

Probably, the best place to be would be to give us some history. Where did the term Zettelkasten—it seems to me like a German word from what I've done. Maybe take it from there and give us a backstory. Obviously, we know how you came across it. How do you then apply the Zettelkasten idea with sketchnoting?

EG: You are right. Zettlekasten is a German word, and I think if you translate it right, it's a slip box. Typically, a slip box is a wooden box, small ones with a lot of note cards. This German, this Niklas Luhmann, this professor from Germany, a sociologist from Germany from the last century. He had a wooden Zettleksten with about 90,000 notes he'd taken in his life.

MR: Wow. He must have had more than one box for that.

EG: Yeah. It's a small format, and there's only written down his idea he got while reading a book while reading an article. Not reading in the internet. That wasn't invented at that time. When he was ready with creating this note card, he put it in a Zettelkasten.

MR: A slip box. Yep.

EG: In the slip box, yes. But you would say, okay, what's the way coming back to this Zettel or to this note card some days, weeks, or months or years later? That was the system we all know if you're familiar with the internet, he put a number on top of his note card, an identificater, an ID. It was written the date and the time when he created this note. And whenever he put some ideas on paper, he linked this note with another ID of another note card.

For example, if you would say ideas not art, and put it only here on this note card, then he should put a link to the note card of Mike Rohde, with a Mike Rohde Id and maybe a must be an ID from this book.

MR: Got it.

EG: Then he put it in his Zettelkasten. Later on, if he was working on an idea, he want to write an article, or was writing a book yet idea, okay, there are some note cards. They're important for this stuff. I got them from my Zettelkasten. With these two or three cards, there are a lot of connections to the other note cards in the Zettelkasten.

MR: Then you pull those note cards, right?

EG: He put this on his desk, rearrange it a little bit.

MR: Card sorting. Yeah.

EG: Card sorting and say, okay, all the ideas are on the table. It's an easy stuff for writing. He was never sitting with a blank sheet of paper. Always starts with his notes. Note cards he captured days, months, or years ago. Niklas Luhman, it is said he was very productive in his life. I'm not good in remembering numbers, about 400 articles and 90 books. It's unbelievable for a lifetime.

MR: Wow. The thing that makes me wonder is there must have been some kind of index. When you do the ID on the card, you must have to also—I think about the bullet journal. When you put entries into your book, you're supposed to add that to the index so that you can find it later.

Is there an index component to this as well? Or do you have to just rifle through your slips? How would you know by the ID whether it's the thing you need, you'd almost need some organizing structure where you would say things about this are these numbers and things about that, or something. Tell me about that.

EG: You have different types of notes in your Zettelkasten. The main part of the Zettelkasten are so-called permanent notes. Let me say there's a phrase to call them atomic notes because on one Zettel, there's only one idea. There's not an article or a story. One idea. Okay. And there are other types of notes. For example, structure notes and structure notes says, okay, that's my topic. That's about—

MR: Gardening. Let's say.

EG: It's about gardening. On this structure notes, you say in gardening, you need tools plants and whatever, soil and you put a list of important stuff for gardening. What are the 10 most important tools for gardening? Put it on this paper. And link it with a note card you already have in your Zettelkasten.

MR: Got it. There is some manual, identification and crosslinking and such that you would do. That makes sense.

EG: In book writing, it's an index. This structure notes are indexes and there are table of content. You have some structures like the structures in a mind map. In outlining of an article, for example, you have some main ideas, some sub ideas, and so. These structures are on special cards, but on the structure notes, they are only structure information, no content. The ideas are on separate permanent notes, and you have the structure notes.

MR: In the physical box of cards, box of slips, I would assume, maybe in the back is where all the content notes are or the idea notes. And maybe in the front is where the indexes and structure notes live. You would maybe first go to the front part of the box to look for topics and say, "Okay, I need card number, this, and card number that and this."

And based on that, then you'd go in the back and pull those because they would be in some order, then you could pull 'em all out and then lay them out and do what you will, and then return it all back to the box, assuming you didn't add some notes. If you added notes, then those would go in. Indexes would be updated and the new slips would be put maybe in the back, I suppose.

EG: Yeah. These are the main types of notes. How to create the note, if I'm reading a book and I'm note-taking, I use my Zettels, and if there's important information on page 56, I put my idea with this important idea from the book on the literature note card. Literature note card only means it's the content I read in the book with my own words. It has an unique identifier, and with a digital tool, it would be a title.

You don't need these numbers anymore. From a hindsight, you have to order and to sort them ad you have no search function. Today, you only have the title, you have the content in your own words, and you have a link to the source. Literature note—

MR: Easily do with these tools that exist now, right? Linking is easier.

EG: Yes, the only must with the literature note is to have a backlink to the source itself.

MR: The book itself and the page number itself.

EG: The book also to the author. And the literature note is not a permanent note. Maybe on the same day or little bit later, you will take you a literature note, look at it and say, "Okay, are there any connections in my mind, which may be important?"

Maybe it's a phrase from your book, Mike to focus attention in your sketch note. And you said, okay, there's a connection to attention, and there are a lot of note cards, they are connected to attention. You put this on your—if you are started to link your literature note with other already existing permanent notes, then you transform this literature note to a permanent note. And the literature note vanish.

MR: Doesn't need to be kept yet.

EG: Yeah. With a linking to other notes, you have two possibilities. One is the link, like a hyperlink in the internet and the other possibility to link to other concepts, ideas, or whatever is tagging as you do it in Instagram, in Twitter, and—.

MR: The hashtag.

EG: —whatever. It's all the stuff we already know, but did it on paper. We are really lucky to have the computers and you have modern tools for this idea of note-taking. My favorite tool is called Obsidian. It's one of the favorite tools from a lot of writers. Starting with a steep curve in, if you ask at Google trends about Obsidian, it's a very slow line and rising high in the last month or years.

It's a really great community. It's a little bit this sharing style, like the sketch noters. If you are in an Obsidian community with other guys using this tool and using the Zettelkasten method, and you ask a question, you are sure there's an answer within a few minutes. They really help each other. What is behind as I said to you in the beginning using sketchnoting seems to be easy, but you need a lot of experience.

MR: It's a learning curve. Yeah, for sure.

EG: It's not so steep learning curve. The same is with notetaking. It seems to be easy, as I told you, only a few types of notes. Use it on paper or use it on the PC with Obsidian tool, but it's really learning, learning, learning. In my professional life, most part, I need a lot of time in my business for note taking, with sketch notes without sketch notes.

What, for me, was fascinating. If you have a note card, you can draw on it. There's no need. Like Niklas Luhmann, I think he wasn't a visual thinker. I do not know him personally, but only writing text or note cards. He couldn't have read your book in this time.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

EG: There was no drawing at all. Unbelievable. But today, I think use a note card, put your drawings on it, and you have a mixture of sketch noting and note-taking with a Zettelkasten method integrated in the Obsidian tool.

MR: Tell us a little bit how you do that, because that's the part where—I've got a text editing tool. I use Ulysses for writing. It can do some linking, but it's not optimized like Obsidian is, which I've considered, but for now, it's been great for writing. I use folders and structures.

It also does tagging, so I could do some of it, but I'm really curious to see like bringing in the visuals into Obsidian. I would guess that you could attach images. You could do a drawing, take a photo and attach it to one of these cards and then use your linking and tagging to make sense of how it fits in the greater whole. Talk to us a little bit about how you make that work.

EG: It's a little bit like linking a drawing to a note card. It's like building a webpage, there's the written stuff, and then there's a link to a jpeg or PNG or whatever file. For me, that's the same for drawing. I typically us my iPad with the Concepts app. I can export it in this—

MR: It's an image.

EG: Yeah. It's an image at the special formats. Then they are linked in the Zettelkasten tool. I can reuse. Also, it's only a link to the image. There's one place, they are all images. It's big box with thousands of images. And there's one link to one note. If I use the same image in another note, there's only a link to this image.

MR: One link. Got it.

EG: One link and one—you say you have a tool using folders.

MR: Right.

EG: I was trained my whole life working with folders. I'm not sure if it's a German invention to put all stuff in folders. I had these folders before the PC was invented. In the living room, wherever you look, there were folders with different Zettels here. And it was a nice feeling putting all the stuff in the folders. It looks pretty. When I had the idea, coming back to an idea, which was the right folder, where did I put it in? and I lost a lot of time my life for searching.

MR: Searching for things.

EG: The most confusing thing was this folder structure with sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. It was this tree-like structure, and you never which branch and which leaf and couldn't find it. What was really hard for me, learning the Zettelkasten method there, I would say no folders. All these permanent notes are in one folder. That's a crazy feeling. If you do it at the beginning and you'll say, okay are there the right links? Do I have a link to the source? Do I have a link to the author?

And then you put it in this box, in this permanent note box, and it vanishes, and it's gone. From your life, you have no experience, is there a chance to get it back? Although I knew it's easy to get it back. There's a perfect search function, full text searching in this tool. You can look at the links. You have a craft view. You have a crafted representation of this network. You can filter this craft view, and it's really easy with all these tools coming back to an idea. But using folders the whole life—

MR: It's very comforting

EG: It's a brainwash to put something in this black hole.

MR: Like putting it in the sea.

EG: I will never get it back.

MR: Interesting. Well, I suppose, if I were to think of the one thing that's close to folders in this method would be tagging. You could have multiple tags. In a way, you're marking it in a folder, but it can be in more than one folder. That's the beauty of tagging where with a folder, there's only one, and if you can't find that folder, it's lost.

I guess now with tools like Ulysses as an example, I can do searches and find things. Ideally, and probably the way I would go about it is probably use tagging to start tagging. Then I guess the challenge around tagging that I've seen in my lifetime is being consistent with tagging. Because maybe one tag is icon and then you accidentally say icons and now you have two tags.

So, forming a manageable set of tags is probably a challenge because if the tags get out of control, then you could potentially have more processing stuff. You probably have to be disciplined about tagging, I suppose. To have a pretty structured tagging organization otherwise could get outta control, just like folders could.

EG: It's really important point you talked about, this tagging and what you need at most at the beginning of working with a Zettelkasten, to have some kind of architecture for your text. What is important, what needs to be tagged in which way and not to have an idea of all the text from A to Z, but you have this taking architecture.

For example, I have texts about hashtag type. And in Obsidian you have not only one level of tagging, but two levels of tagging. You can say hashtag type slash note slash sketchnote.

MR: So, modify in a way.

EG: Slash book. It's not about the content of the note, but it's more a little bit like metadata. If you come back, for example, oh I'm not sure what it was, but it was from a book, and then I could use this hashtag-type book. And then I have a list of books, and then I say, okay, but only the last two weeks. Then the list is very short and say, "Okay, that it was."

You can find things and have no—you wouldn't be able to have a prompt, a search phrase. In Google, for example, you need some phrases to find the stuff. With your tagging architecture, you can search for stuff where you have forgotten the phrase.

MR: So, probably tags for someone who, like you and me, have been trained to use folders for our whole lives, and that's a comfort for us. Probably the bridging mechanism to Zettelkasten might be tagging and then linking as well. Because in a way, tagging becomes like your representation of what the folder means. It's a metadata. It's the thing that defines the category.

EG: In my architecture, I have for example, this taking of types, and as a process engineer, one of my jobs in the past, there was input, computation, and output. Then I have the tech input, and I can say it's from the internet, it's from the book, it's from YouTube. Sometimes, I only have an idea where it comes from. And other texts are about output to say, okay, I put it to Twitter, to LinkedIn, to Instagram or whatever. That's not about the content of the note, but only where it comes from, where it goes to.

In this architecture, there several metadata sets I can extend at the end. The list of output, it's infinity to extend it, but this main structure it's very important to have it at the beginning, but when you have hundreds or thousands of notes and you have to change all this text, it's not so much fun.

In Obsidian, there's a plugin. There's a plugin, if you say icon or icons, you can say, please change all text icons to icon, and that's makes it easy.

MR: Yeah. Interesting. Is there so you think the Sonke Ahren's book is a good place for someone to start who's maybe interested. Are there other resources you might recommend? Are there classes or YouTube videos or something that might be helpful to get people started on this? Secondarily, once they've established the base, is that a Zettelkasten structure then is there reference for how to integrate visuals into it?

Because it sounds like a lot of what I've seen is more text oriented, like linking and writing and so forth, it's all text, and there's not so much emphasis on integrating images. I think for sketch and visual thinkers, having that additional information would be useful. In addition, like once you set up the structure, then how do we integrate images into it would be helpful.

Some of the things you've hinted at like there's a big folder that has all the images in it, and then you just link to it. And I suppose that's part of the whole box, right? So, you have one folder that's got all the text and it's all linked together, and then one box with images or something, and then you link them together.

EG: I have one folder. The folder is called visuals. They're all my images. I have a folder, as I said, a permanent notes. They're all this permanent notes stuff. Other stuff, for example, I collect a lot of PDF files. Maybe I have books in PDF format or table of content from a book I have on paper in PDF, and all this stuff of value in my assets folder and I can link them easily.

MR: All between each other.

EG: Some of the sketch notes I have in PDF formats from others.

MR: I see.

EG: Assets for example, are the sketch notes from others I collected as an example, as a source of inspiration. In the visuals, I have these drawings from myself. As Niklas Luhmann did writing it down with your own words, it's drawing with your own pencil.

MR: Yeah, same thing. Just a visual interpretation.

EG: There's no difference. Therefore, the only difficulty with this book of Sonke Ahren, believe me, there are no pictures.

MR: Yeah. Exactly.

EG: Most of the sketch noters can draw, and therefore, it should be possible.

MR: Now, I know that you offer, as part of your show notes that you pre-sent to me, there's something about an e-book. Is the e-book address using Zettelkasten for visuals and sketch notes? Is that what the book is about?

EG: Yes. My idea was using the Mike Rohde book and using the book from Sonke Ahrens, put it together, but not to repeat it. But to say, what does it mean if you put it together? I give a lot of hints and advices how to structure the folders, how to use the architecture for the tagging.

MR: That sounds like exactly—

EG: That's more important. If it's more, oh, sketchnoting, then there's a link maybe to your book or maybe a link to a YouTube video. All the details are links to the internet, to some Zettelkasten videos or to sketchnote videos, or other material. And it's one overview. It's a book, would say a structure note with a lot of sketch notes and with links to all this stuff you need to put together.

MR: Got it.

EG: It's a book full of references.

MR: So basically, if someone is listening to this and getting excited about the idea of, say, picking up Obsidian, which by the way is free for personal use, sets up Zettelkasten so that they can manage their sketch notes. That this would be the next step would be to get the book that you've created in order to structure it and start working with it and integrating it. Would that be the right way to think about it?

EG: And the idea of my book is not writing it and publishing it in two or three years. I'm fascinated from this idea learning in public and publishing all the stuff. If I'm sitting here at the weekend writing a chapter in this book, then it's published in a pre-published version. I published already 15 versions. Most, it's one more chapter, some more links, and so on. It's growing and growing. What is really nice, the sketch noters and the Zettelkasten community, they all help me writing this book.

MR: Oh, great.

EG: I don't understand this sketch note. What do you mean with a sentence? I got feedback and okay, it's not printed this book. It's a PDF. It's on GitHub. It's freely available and all this feedback, there's an update and I can improve it. I earned my money as an IT engineer with HR projects. And we put running software to a customer a few days after he agreed with us the contract, and we were improving and improving. Today, it's possible also with books.

MR: It's a mindset. It's a living book in a lot of ways. It's almost like software documentation, right? As you build the tool, like pieces are removed and replaced or depreciated, or things or features are added. In software, you have to document this stuff so that it's tracked, and you can go back in time and look at the old version and see, oh, that's right. We had that feature, and because of this and that, we removed it. It's no longer in the documentation.

I suppose, in this case, you're doing more adding, but I suspect at some point maybe something would disappear or whatever, and you might have to replace it or something. Like a link, say somebody website in five years goes away, you might have to find a new link to that or something.

EG: With Zettelkasten, I started in March '22, with your even bright workshop.

MR: That's funny.

EG: And then I started writing the book because the idea is not to take notes and to put all these Zettels, as I said in this box. It's a black hole. What do you need? That's very important for all who want to start with the Zettelkasten. You need the goal. What do you want to do with all these ideas in this box?

MR: Right. How's it gonna be applied?

EG: That's not the final destination. That's an asset. As a proof of concept, I have to write a book. Otherwise, all these ideas would vanish in this Zettelkasten box. And they're beautifully linked, nicely teched, but it doesn't make any sense. What I found in the internet, I think nearly as great as the sketch noting book from Mike Rohde, as great as Sonke Ahrens Zettelkasten it's about "Writing Useful Books." It's from Rob Fitzpatrick. You see, it's full of highlighted text, every page full of nuggets.

Yes, yes, yes, the idea that non-fiction books are problem-solving books. You need to know the problems of your potential readers and to show them on the first page, which problem are you looking at, and how you can help them. And if you read the table of contents, there are a lot of promises from the author, how he could help you to solve your problem. And then, this as very short in writing, as you see, it's a small book.

MR: Yeah. It's quite thin.

EG: Quite thin, but full of value. Other books 500, 600 pages. I stopped in the middle of the book. I had no time in life to read it to the end. And that's the third book in my project, using the contents here of these right useful books to get the Zettels out of the Zettelkasten to create project notes, to create consistent chapters and sub-chapters, and to deliver result from all this syncing behind.

MR: I think the other challenge too, that it's important to have a purpose would be if you just did the Zettlekasten just to do it without a purpose in mind, it would just go into an ocean. I think eventually your motivation to maintain it because it takes work to do the linking and all this, even if you get into a rhythm, it takes work. Just like sketchnoting, it takes more work to do sketch notes 'cause you have to really think about it and you're analyzing. So, it takes effort.

Unless you have a purpose for it, eventually you're gonna, "Uh, I don't want to put a link, I'm tired, I don't wanna write a link, or I don't wanna do a tag." Then the next thing you know, then you're not adding thing. You know what I mean? It's like, would degrade ‘cause you didn't have a purpose for it.

By having a purpose, like in your case, writing a book, it meant that you had something that you were doing. And now everything that goes into your Zettelkasten is likely for future additions of the book, or maybe now some new project that the Zettelkasten serves a purpose for, I would guess.

EG: As a process engineer, in my Zettelkasten, I measure the input, I measure the output, I can measure the productivity, the relation between output and input, and I can see is it working. Is the process working? Are there some bottlenecks in the Zettelkasten? What takes the most of my valuable time? Is there connection between the idea at the input to the book at the output? Is it a little bit complicated or is it directly connected? How long does it take to get one idea in and one idea out? If I take this book, it's from 2012. If I would use one concept to improve my output, that 10 years between your idea, your shared to my idea, I shared.

MR: The application.

EG: Yes. And my idea is to shorten it a little bit. Reading a book, reading another book, connected and having an output and an output of value to solve a problem of my readers. That's more than note taking.

MR: It's another level up.

EG: It's a philosophy that connects really the organizational part with the Zettelkasten, the visual part with the sketch notes and the value part from "Creating Useful Books" from Rob Fitzpatrick.

MR: Overlap of three things.

EG: Combining three things and say, okay. That's for me, it makes sense. It's not only a machine, I'm focused on the wheels, didn't have a look at the motor, but I want tto build this car, and it's really working. You can use it.

MR: Well, this is great. Thank you, Edmund. And you know, if you've been listening to this discussion, you're getting ideas in the end of the show, of course, have contact information for Edmund so you can reach out directly, but we'll also have links to his book and the other books that he's mentioned so you can do your own work and download obsidian and those kind of things, and try it out. I think this has been very helpful. I'm hoping that it will inspire some people to maybe organize their sketch notes using this method. That would be great.

EG: I hope it solves one or another problem from all these guys taking notes their whole life, being a student, being a professional. And so, take their notes, but having ideas to improve this process. Taking sketch notes, not only the written stuff. Remember the old stuff, finding back to old ideas, combining with news, and having the chance to give the ideas a chance. They can meet in a Zettelkasten although they came from very different sources.

MR: Right. The opportunities are pretty great there. Well, this has been interesting. Let's shift a little bit now. We'll talk a little bit about tools now. Let's start with analog tools and then we'll talk about digital tools. You've hinted at some of these things already, but let's go more in detail. Starting with analog

EG: I already mentioned it I only used this Neuland and the reasons I gave you.

MR: They're all there.

EG: The only Markers, they really work in a professional context. That are my fine liners on paper. Is it?

MR: Yeah. The little guys. Yes. Staedtler,

EG: It's Staedtler. I think it's from Germany, but it's a way. The Neuland markers they also sell the Staedtler stuff.

MR: Yes.

EG: It's the same is only a branded Neuland on it. But it's the same. Perfect quality for me. That was my life before I got an iPad.

MR: Tell us about how the iPad changed you. You mentioned that you've made a shift from one application to another. I'd love to hear not only what those two tools were, but then the rationale for switching and what led you to the new tool that you're using now.

EG: With my iPad, I looked at the internet and to all the sketch notes and they told me there's only one tool you can use, it's Procreate. I had a lot of experience with Photoshop in the past, and it was not so difficult to understand how to use the Procreate tool. But I struggled a little bit with my canvas. Is it designed for a letter format or for a large poster? It is pixel-based the Procreate and enlarging your drawing means there is all this—

MR: The jackety edges.

EG: Yeah. It's not so nice. The Procreate, if you say, okay, I'm not sure which format is the best, I plan for the highest resolution and can reduce it if I need. But then the fights were getting bigger and bigger. With a Concept app, it's a vector-based format. I can resize as I like it. At the beginning, at the end, and the canvas is infinite. If there's not enough place, there's place for an extra drawing and I put it together.

What I learned is, it's very easy to handle an object library in the Concepts app. Most of my life, I was working with PowerPoint. PowerPoint means use it as a tool putting different visual objects together. This PowerPoint style of working I can use with a Concepts app. If I drawing a house or a special icon, some eggs are very easy, a square or triangle. I can put it on the surface as well.

But if it's a little bit more complicated, a stopwatch or so with some details, it costs me a few minutes to do it well. Then I can go to the library, put it together, and it's all my shape. It looks like freshly drawn from Edmund. It's not a library I bought.

MR: You made it yourself.

EG: I can say from Microsoft. I would say, okay, there are a lot of visuals, but they are not from me. And it makes it very personal to use my own icons, my own drawings. What I have to learn is to write my name with nice letters. And that's not so easy, it takes me most of the time to learn this architect's handwriting.

It's all in Concepts. It's now not so difficult to, produce nicely looking stuff. Not only for me but also for others. Also, I'm not an illustrator. I'm not a professional artist. And graceful enough, that was the phrase I got from Mauro Toselli.

He said, "The sketch notes must be graceful enough, not more." There's no need for, but if they're really ugly, someone would say, okay, it's hard to read. I do not really understand. Is it a horse or a dog or so? It must be graceful enough. That's possible very easily with pre-drawn objects I use most times.

MR: Interesting.

EG: Therefore, if you say there's a better tool, okay, I will have a look at it, but at the moment, I'm pretty happy with my Concepts app.

MR: That's good. That's good. We'd like to hear that. It's always about finding what fits the way you work. Some people, Procreate just works the way they like to, and they don't have these challenges of sizing in vectors, and it works fine for them, which is great. But if you have other needs, it's great that there are other software out there that can do what you need to do. It's important that we have variety, and we definitely. We are very lucky that the iPad has lots of options available to us.

EG: It's the same iPad, it's the same pencil, and everyone can use the tool which fits to his own personal styles.

MR: Yeah, I still use the app Paper, by WeTransfer, which hasn't really changed too much, but I've become pretty fluent with it, so I can work really quickly. If I do illustrations, I have to move to another tool like Procreate or Concepts. But for really super quick ideas, for me, it's just really efficient.

I've learned that in my career when I'm faced with a heavy deadline, it's wise for me to choose a tool that I'm fluent in because I'm speedier in that tool than if I tried the perfect tool for it, but I don't have familiarity with it yet. That's a lesson I've learned

EG: As I learned in my profession, whatever tool you are using, you have to use it really professionally, and you have—it's not only starting with the tool and being very fluent or very efficient, you must know your tool very well.

MR: Yes. Yep. Well, that's great to hear. Really simple tool set both on the analog and digital side. Let's shift a little bit more, and let's talk about your tips. The three tips that you might share. I always frame this, imagine someone's listening, they are visual thinker, whatever that means to them. And they're excited about the space, just like we talked about our excitement about the community, but maybe they've hit a plateau or they just feel they need a little bit of inspiration. What would be three things that Edmund would tell them to kind of encourage them and break them out of maybe being stuck?

EG: Starting with sketch notes, that was always the question, how to find a personal motivation going on improving your skills. One of the motivation as I showed you are books. I love it to learn from books. But what is even better learning from other people? With my company where there's self-organized learning groups, we're growing up. I learned this self-organized learning groups are the best to improve yourself.

One of your podcasts Mike, there's a team about LernOS. They had a 12-week journey, different stuff. There's also a learning journey for sketch notes, and you have self-organized meetings every week and having a Zoom meeting or so, sharing my report or whatever.

It's little bit like there are some examples, some exercises you can do together, but you can do as a homework for the next meeting. That's the way I like to learn. It's better than sitting with a blank sheet of paper at home and reading the book and—

MR: Struggling. Yeah.

EG: Struggling.

MR: That, by the way was for those listening is season eight was an episode with Karl Damke and Raffaelina Rossetti.

EG: Rossetti. Raffaelina Rossetti is her name. Yeah.

MR: You can learn about that movement there in the podcast.

EG: There's a link to the internet also where the Sketchnoting Guide is, and so, and it's amazing stuff. Getting the right people for the sketchnoting Circle. That's my next advice. Typically, they are distributed around the world. That's not your neighbor, the sketch noter, or the other neighbor on the other side of the street. They're somewhere in this internet universe.

Some years ago, I found this Sketchnote Army Slack platform you established, Mike. And there's one folder with announcement of LernOS sketchnoting groups, and that's sub organized to find others. They're interested to have on Friday afternoon five o'clock or so, the next 12-week we want to join this sketch noting journey. And they're from different countries, different professions, different skills in drawing that's not only the beginners or the specialists. It's like these schools and former times they are the small and the older, the grownup children, and they help each other.

MR: The one-room schoolhouse, we would say in the United States. Back in the days.

EG: This one-room schoolhouse you have in the Slack rooms. You find all these people and it's this mindset sharing things, learning together, and so, you would never find them in real life.

MR: Yeah. That's two points. That's number two.

EG: Two points. The last one, I want to repeat, Zettelkasten is my second brain. Zettelkasten it's also your second brain. You have a lot of experience in note-taking, different tools, but looking at this concept to get a step higher in efficiency, in effective note taking, and making things easier than they are.

MR: Great. Well, those are three great tips. Thanks so much for sharing those. And definitely, encourage you to do all those things, both the LernOS and explore Zettelkasten. So Edmund, what's the best way for people to reach out if they have questions about Zettelkasten and sketchnoting or something else, what's the best place to go?

EG: Mike, you said you are sharing some links about me.

MR: Yes. We'll definitely share links.

EG: It's very easy because I look at my posts nearly every day in LinkedIn. In Instagram, you'll see some of the sketch notes, the newer ones. Most of them are sketch notes before they are published in the ebook. On Twitter, there's a chance for communication very fast. Is it one year ago, Mike we had this discussion about sketch note manifesto?

MR: Yes. That's been around. I think Mauro has been talking about this for years.

EG: Yes. That was an idea from him and I mixed it a little bit up with atrial development. Then we had a discussion about it. That's the style of communicating and Twitter. And yeah. I also have this in your link list a Linktree. Yeah. All the other stuff are from Masterton or from the forums about Zettelkasten. There's a Zettelkasten forum and Obsidian forum. Also, there are new ideas I discussed with others, and they also get the feedback. I'm learning with all these guys.

MR: I'll look on the Link tree. You have several links here, LinkedIn, Instagram, medium, Pinterest, Masterdom, and on Twitter, and eBook.

EG: On all platforms, there are links to the GitHub platform. There's the PDF file of the actual version of this e-book, "How to Take Useful Notes."

MR: Yeah, I see it here. We've got links for all these things, everyone. So we'll put 'em in the show notes so you can see and jump and look at all these things that Edmund has been talking about. Especially, if you really want to get into this Zettelkasten with Obsidian and using your sketch notes, making a way to organize 'em.

I'm inspired, I'm gonna do some looking at this because I think there's an opportunity for me to level up, like all the work I've done and make some sense of it. It might be interesting to see, looking back over it what connections there are. Maybe it's a big job though, Edmund. I don't know. That could be a lifetime just organizing all this junk I've made.

EG: I will tell you the story. Maybe I published the story about the new situation before Mike Rohde's podcast and afterwards. Or is it worth a sketch note to say, that was my life before and that was the life after?

MR: Yeah. Well, as a process engineer, you're gonna wanna know what's the input, which is doing the podcast. And the output is, are you suddenly getting more downloads of your book? And questions about doing Zettelkasting with sketch notes. That would be ideal because you're a pioneer in this space. I think Chris Wilson is another person in the space that's explored, we talked about in his interview, he was starting to play with Obsidian.

EG: I listened to this podcast from him. It was the first time I saw some sketch noter using the Zettelkasten.

MR: You two need to get together and do a workshop for everybody, so you can sort of walk them through. That could be interesting

EG: If you know a female sketch noter from Denmark, Ingrid LiLL.

MR: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah.

EG: He is also starting with the Zettelkasten.

MR: Oh, there you go. Now you have three people to your merry band, so you can maybe do some kind of a teaching.

EG: It's a very small community.

MR: That's okay. Sketchnoting community is small, but getting bigger every day. So you have to start somewhere, Edmund, you have to start somewhere.

EG: It's the 1% of the sketch noters using Zettelkasten.

MR: Yeah, exactly. That's okay. If it works for you, then you can do it

EG: All things I believe ever starting small.

MR: Yes. The best things start small. Well, Edmund—go ahead.

EG: No, no.

MR: I was just gonna say thank you so much for your participation. I see you on LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter. You're always so kind and you have such kind words, and I just love that. You could have easily retired and just gone to Majorca and like, just enjoyed your life and not done any of this work, but yet you choose curiosity and sharing and giving, and I really appreciate that and I admire that. So, thank you for giving back to the community and making it a better place. That's so much what we need.

EG: Thank you for having me.

MR: You're so welcome.

EG: It was really fun. Also, the story in the beginning you told before the podcast, it was a wonderful evening.

MR: Yeah. I told him my German experiences that made me fall in love with Germans and Germany. Maybe I'll tell that story sometime. Well, everyone, this has been another episode of "The Sketchnote Army Podcast." So until the next episode, we will talk to you soon.

EG: Thank you. Have a nice evening. Bye-bye, Mikey.

MR: See ya.

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

Mentioned by

Mentioned in 1 episodes

The AI-powered Podcast Player