In Coming home, I wrote about my adaptation of the POSSE model (“publish on your site, syndicate elsewhere”). Alan Jacobs responds with a thoughtful counter-proposal: “POS, not POSSE. Skip the syndication.”

Fair enough. In fact, POS is the strategy I employed for the better part of two years, when I (quietly) left Twitter but continued to blog and send the occasional newsletter. The decision to return to some kind of presence on the platforms—and ultimately the syndication that I’m using now—was not taken lightly. But this opens up an interesting line of questions: why do we look for readers? And where do we find them?

The first question has a variety of answers. I’m going to set aside, for the moment, the fact that some of us apparently want readers because we see them as a resource to be mined, following the now cliché startup wisdom that if you have an audience, you can figure out how to monetize it. The more compelling and interesting reason that most writers seek out readers is, I think, less utilitarian: we receive our writing as a gift, and so it must be given in turn. We write because something needs to be expressed through us, and only by giving the writing to a reader is that need fulfilled. Here, I’m following Lewis Hyde who writes that

the gift that is not used will be lost, while the one that is passed along remains abundant.

Hyde, The Gift, page 26

That’s the why. The next question is trickier. Over the years, there have been various ways to share your writing and for readers to find it—listserves, blogrolls, webrings, Google Reader (RIP)—as well as a good old fashioned email or even hitting up your friends on AIM or IRC. But as the platforms got bigger and sucked us all up into their network effects, most of those other methods have atrophied. Now if you want to find your readers, there aren’t many options beyond the Nazi platforms, or the cool kids platform, or the desperate workers platform, or the anarchist anti-platform. I first developed a readership on Twitter; later, when I knew my days on Twitter were numbered, I made an effort to move those readers over to a newsletter list. I have no idea how I’d start from scratch today.

As Erin Kissane notes:

The networks we use to communicate across fields and distances, to find our friends and learn from people unlike ourselves—and to organize ourselves to respond to acute crises and long, grinding institutional failures—are the same networks that are making so many of us miserable and/or deranged.

This is perhaps the greatest conundrum of our current technological era: the desperate need to connect with one another, because it is our only hope of survival; combined with the fact that nearly all the means of connection available to us are deeply—possibly irredeemably—fucked. Syndication, as I am currently experimenting with it, is then an effort to try and navigate that terrain, to find some productive way to play in the outskirts, to let the work out into the world while (hopefully) minimizing the misery that is reflected back.

That misery has lots of sources. I wrote before about how the too-much-ness of the social stream, on whichever network, is a kind of writer’s block, inasmuch as it overwhelms the senses and drowns out the solitude necessary for writing. In another vein, Jacobs notes the ways in which your writing will eventually reach people who don’t understand the context, but will engage with it anyway, and expect you to engage with them in turn. Which is a troublingly common and entirely exhausting experience. And of course, for many of us, the risks are even greater. I think often about what Kathy Sierra memorably dubbed the Kool-Aid point: the moment at which a woman is seen as being listened to. That’s a moment when the annoying reply guys often turn into something significantly more sinister.

I bring up the harassment that remains omnipresent on all the platforms because I think it is instructive. It’s important to note that this kind of behavior isn’t merely driven by feelings; it has deep roots in matters of wealth. As Kate Manne explains, sexism is the set of beliefs that positions women as inferior, while misogyny is the system that steps in to enforce those values should any woman get out of line. Effectively, sexism is the law, misogyny the cop. But of course the law exists in order exploit women’s economic output—to extract their labor without paying for it. Sierra’s heartbreaking discovery that a woman becomes a target the moment she is seen to have developed a following is because a following has economic value. Cue the cops.

Which brings us back to that other reason for finding readers. Because, yes, readers bear a relationship to, if not money directly, then the well-being that money can buy. Jacobs himself notes that his choice to forego building a larger audience probably negatively impacted his book sales. I’ve lived through I cannot count how many debates about how journalists should use (or not use) social media, but the fact is, if you’re trying to get and keep gainful employment as a journalist, it’s pretty much required that you have a following somewhere. The tech workers I work with speak often about how there’s pressure to be speaking, or blogging, or podcasting, or posting on the platform of the day, or starting a newsletter, or etc.—because that kind of visibility is directly connected to their ability to find their next job, or to survive the next layoff. Hell, these days having a following could be the difference between getting help when you fall through the gaps in the healthcare system, or being left to die. We are all, to borrow from Byung-Chul Han, entrepreneurs of ourselves—whether willingly or reluctantly, optimistically or despairingly or, more often than not, all of the above.

It’s entirely fair to refuse this pressure, to decline to play this particular game. I suppose one way to look at the POSSE model is as a kind of cheat, a way to play by the rules in letter if not in spirit. I yearn for readers both because I need people to receive the gift and because I know my own well-being is entangled up with theirs, because there are few ways to safely walk away from the field. Capitalism is not, as Le Guin reminds us, inescapable, but at the moment the escape hatches are very well hidden.

In The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Tsing writes:

In the United States, scholars are asked to become entrepreneurs, producing themselves as brands and seeking stardom from the very first days of our studies, when we know nothing….By privatizing what is necessarily collaborative work, these projects aim to strangle the life out of scholarship.

Anyone who cares about ideas is forced, then, to create scenes that exceed or escape “professionalization,” that is, the surveillance techniques of privatization. This means designing research that requires playgroups and collaborative clusters; not congeries of individuals calculating costs and benefits, but rather scholarship that emerges through its collaborations. Thinking through mushrooms, once again, can help.

What if we imagined intellectual life as a peasant woodland, a source of many useful products emerging in unintentional design?

Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, page 285

It is something like that peasant woodland that I’m after here: not an abandoned forest, not a re-wilding, but a kind of cultivation. A peasant woodland is one in which human participation and activity help the woods become more productive for humans and wildlife both—not through anything shaped like a plan but rather through a kind of call and response, an improvisation in which all the critters and creatures of the forest are players among us. Underneath this is the assertion that people have a role to play in the woods, that a forest is neither inhospitable nor unwelcoming, not a place to exploit nor a place to retreat from, but a place that is life-giving, in a multiplicity of ways. If what we have here is a ruined landscape, perhaps our time and thoughtful attention can help something new sprout out of the damage. Maybe syndication, as I am currently practicing it, is a kind of step along the way, a clearing out of the underbrush, a small, prescribed burn. The kind that inspires a cluster of patient pine cones to pop their seeds and get to work tucking their roots into the land. I don’t know, but it seems worth a try. I don’t expect this to be the end of a process of restoring (or re-storying) our ways of reaching each other; rather, I see it as one experimental step, after which there will be another. And another. And another, yet.

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The best part of the book is his descriptions of Freud fainting because Jung didn't believe sex was the cause of everything.

In the past article Mindscapes: Thinking Environments in Your Way of Living we looked at thinking environments in your life in general. One of these thinking environments is the Zettelkasten.

Cal Newport sees the Zettelkasten Method as one of the many ways of managing knowledge.¹ In doing so, he overlooks a very special characteristic of the Zettelkasten: the Zettelkasten is a very special thinking environment: it is integrated.

What does the Zettelkasten integrate?

1. Thinking tools. These can be templates, prompts, creative techniques and the like. In my opinion, some of these thinking tools belong to the basics of developing a thought. Although I have declared them to be a highly recommended part of the Zettelkasten Method, they are actually an essential part of a thinker’s toolbox. This includes dealing with arguments or models. For an overview of these knowledge building blocks, read “Reading for the Zettelkasten Is Searching”. They are also just a link or a search away in my toolbox. I have also prepared toolboxes in my Zettelkasten. For example, if I get stuck with a thinking task, I can search a toolbox for a suitable solution.
2. The entirety of personal thinking. Even complex considerations are just a few clicks and keystrokes away. I can easily make connections between raising children and training dogs. For example, I’m currently writing a very complex book on habits, which integrates scientific work with practical application and existential analysis. Everything can be connected to everything in the Zettelkasten. It allows me to control a high level of complexity. I can concentrate on the individual thought as well as take a step back and look at the bigger picture. I also have my thinking from 15 years ago at my fingertips. This means that I have the full power of all of my former selves at my disposal. I can achieve much greater things with this team than alone.
3. Thinking surfaces. Each note also serves as a thinking surface. For example, if I want to categorize a thought about habit, I go to my most important structure notes for habit. These then give me access to the areas of my Zettelkasten that deal with habit work. For categorization, I immediately have thinking surfaces, mostly structure notes.

The Zettelkasten Method is neither a note-taking method nor a knowledge management method. Rather, it uses note-taking methods (for example, value-added knowledge work) and knowledge management methods (for example, object keywords or atomic notes) to allow the Zettelkasten user to create a customized integrated thinking environment. Another name for the Zettelkasten could be Thinking Abacus.

The Zettelkasten enables an immense expansion of the ability to think

It allows you to work on a single thing for as long as you like. For example, in 2015 I set up a basic structure for habit work in my Zettelkasten. When I decided to write a book on habit work in 2023, I was able to continue working seamlessly even after 8 years.

It automatically scales the focus. For example, I could copy the entire Wikipedia into my Zettelkasten, and it wouldn’t change how I work with my Zettelkasten at all. This scaling is especially useful for complex thinking and writing projects.

It neatly separates the thinking work from the writing work. When we write an article, for example, we do this in several phases: We read and take notes, then we write, and finally we revise. Different things are mixed up in the process. When revising, for example, we do a lot of thinking. While writing, we surprise ourselves with new ideas and ideas (uninhibited writing invites divergent thinking). As a result, we have to restructure the text when editing, taking our new understanding into account (editing is an act of convergent thinking). The consequence, for example, is that revision affects not only the form of presentation, but also the inner logic of the content. These are two different ways of thinking that lead to difficulties during revision. These difficulties are often seen as positive because, after all, you are wrestling with the text and that is the act of understanding itself. Therefore, it is suggested that writing (as well as teaching) is an excellent way to expand one’s expertise. However, some of the difficulties stem not from the need for comprehension, but from mixing two activities. The realization that writing improves when text production is separated from revision is not new. The difficulties and effort involved in not separating these two activities have been recognized as dead weight and discarded: First you write, then you revise.

It is precisely this realization that leads to the conclusion that one should separate the work of thinking from the work of presenting one’s thinking. But you can’t draw this conclusion if you don’t have an appropriate thinking environment such as a Zettelkasten. You have no choice but to mix the two. Only an integrated thinking environment allows this separation.

This is precisely what Newport cannot yet see, because he confuses the Zettelkasten with a system for taking notes, whereas in reality the Zettelkasten uses notes to create an integrated thinking environment.

But if one has to write anyway, it is expedient to utilize this activity immediately in order to create a competent communication partner in the system of notes.² (English Translation)

Even Luhmann recognized this distinction. He calls the Zettelkasten a communication partner (makes sense against the background of his sociological work). I call it an integrated thinking environment.

Important: Working with the Zettelkasten does not require any additional time. You just shift some of the intensive thinking work from other thinking environments to the Zettelkasten.

Final Words

The Zettelkasten Method delivers what Memex promised.

My guess is that the early developers of hypertext technologies focused too much on the technical realization. Incidentally, this is also a problem today. Nowadays, the focus is on overly complex software. The misconception is that the power of software is an important component for the integrated thinking environment. But Luhmann’s Zettelkasten alone should have shown that even pen and paper are sufficient.

The problematic side effect is that tinkering with the software starts out as important personalization, then grows into a time-consuming hobby and later into a dangerous distraction and dependency (which in turn is served and monetized by influencers and content creators).

I myself do not place myself in the tradition of Bush or Nelson, but in the tradition of Luhmann. This is important to me because I do not believe that the development of technology is the best next step. Our own software is to be understood as a Distraction Free Editor for precisely this reason: Whereas in the domain of writing software, people first took a circuitous route through the complex interface of programs like Microsoft Word before arriving at programs like iA Writer, we took a shortcut. This decision is informed by practice. The Archive is by users for users.

Cal Newport has so far shown a rational conservative skepticism that any successful person should exhibit when confronted with a new system or method. In any domain, most trends go as fast as they come.

But my prediction is that if you don’t have a Zettelkasten or an integrated thinking environment in 10 years’ time, you will be just as disadvantaged as someone who doesn’t use a system for task management or a calendar today. You can work somehow without one. But you will see those who know how to use such a tool pass you by.

Why? The demands on the quality of thinking are increasing. You still only need to follow Cal Newport’s tips and focus on building skills and implementing deep work strategies in order to set yourself apart from the market. You can still score points on YouTube with attention-grabbing strategies such as clever thumbnails and lurid titles. You can still hold your own with the usual lack of system and methodology in science.

But what if it’s not just individuals like Luhmann who use an integrated thinking environment? What if an integrated thinking environment is part of the standard repertoire of the knowledge worker? In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before the new thinking technologies become the norm.

For this reason, I have decided on a habit book as my next writing project. It is indeed part of my core work on the good life. But I want to use it to demonstrate the potential of the Zettelkasten method. I wonder what scientific progress would be like if our scientists could pursue a single thought for decades, pause for years, and seamlessly pick up where they left off, or utilize a thinking environment that allows them to work regardless of the size and complexity of their interest.

Practical implication

• Treat your Zettelkasten as a thinking environment The Zettelkasten should not mean extra work for you. Rather, you should shift some of your thinking time to the Zettelkasten.
• Start your Zettelkasten now!

I recently saw a rant about this in which one of the examples was that BSD still uses ifconfig, and I get it. With the bloat of glibc, I have occasionally wondered how much of a desktop machine one could build with Busybox (session clean-up bugs in wget notwithstanding).

And, of course, as I use the Mac as my daily driver, holy shit I want something that just works well and continues to do so.

Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

Stability? Predictability? Reliability? Where's the fun in that?