The Slip-Box

Anyone coming to this website will be able to see that I love learning and studying. For me, there's something magical about discovering a whole new topic. Whole subject areas never before considered become thrust into view, usually from only a short text. Once the seed is planted, ideas sprout oh so easily.

Yet, what's the long term plan? Once you have read around one topic, the polymath will always be wanting to move onto the next one. The problem with this is that you lose sight of what you have already read. It's so hard – impossible – to keep track of everything. The best way to learn also is to make the new material link back to what you already know. The other primary goal of reading, for me at least, is writing. I want to be able to write articles, and these generally fall into two kinds. Articles are either there to summarise the work of the author, or they are original articles which use many other sources.

Do these sound like the kinds of problems you run into? Do you see other people who seem to know so much about so many topics and wish you were like them? Do you see how much other people write and wish you could be so prolific? I'll admit that I feel a pang of envy when I see how much other authors are able to pen in comparison to me. But, I won't let that become bitter – I'll do something about it.

Enter the slip-box. This is a concept I picked up from a recent read: "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sonke Ahrens. I thought the book was excellent, and I encourage you to read it for yourself. I won't, in this article, be going step by step through the history, development and theory of the slip-box idea. Instead, I will be giving practical advice on how to build your own slip-box.

What is the general format of the slip-box? It started out as a box, the inventor (Niklas Luhmann), would take notes on index cards and place them in the box. Now this might sound like regular note taking, but here comes the two genius things he did. First, he made biographical notes. He would dedicate some index cards in a separate box just to record what works he read, and a little info about them. He also then "linked" those to index cards in the main box. Every card was given a number, but these numbers wouldn't just go up sequentially. Since he placed cards behind related ones, he might have card 22, and want to place a card behind it, but card 23 already exists! No matter, it could be card 22a, or card 22/1. Some of his card numbers grew to markers like 22a/23b/43f! The point being that each card had one unique identifier, that he could reference anywhere in the slip-box system. As the number of cards, and the number of topics, grew, he would make specific cards dedicated to listing cards that are similar. I call these "hub" cards.

That was a bit of a whirlwind explanation of the basic system. If you're asking why do all this rigamarole, the answer boils down to having a database of knowledge. By thinking about old content in the slip-box as you read, means that you can form these "links". Links allow you to begin forming original ideas.

Let's take an example. You read a book and it claims that the medieval economy of England was based on wool, and it gives its supporting case. You record this in the slip-box. Then, you read another book, and it claims that the medieval economy of England was based on eels. Bingo – you can now pull up your reference and make the link. This let's you easily and quickly evaluate the material. When you come to write about it, you can weigh in. You could rule either way, do more research, or form an original theory that encompasses both. Whatever you choose to do, you have the necessary materials at hand to support your up coming work either way. That's the thing about the slip-box method, the goal is always

Generate original ideas
Write original pieces

It helps you write original pieces because most of your thinking is done already in the slip-box. Not only do you record what the books you read say, but you also you make these links, you write your own thoughts. Sometimes you just go through the slip-box to generate ideas and record them. Most of the work in writing a piece will already be done, you only need to pull the information together, and edit it into an article.

After that little background, how do we make a slip-box? I won't be making any slip-boxes on paper, computers offer a much much better system now. I suggest two pieces of software – Zotero and Zettlr. These are pretty much the best software out there for this (believe me, I looked) and they're both free. They also both support Linux, Windows and Macintosh. Zotero has some paid cloud services to share with colleagues. The software itself is free forever, only the extra cloud services are paid which you do not need.

I'll deal with Zotero first, since it is easier. Zotero is a reference tracking software. Every time you read a book or an article, you should put it into Zotero. In this way, it builds a nice list of everything you have read. You can scroll down this list and be amazed at how much you forgot you even read! This is useful when looking for new content to write. You can see all in one place what you have read, and if any of these could be collected into a reference set for an article. Zotero can also work with Zettlr, but you need to install the BetterBibTex extension to Zotero. This let's you export the references out of Zotero and into Zettlr where you can use them. Although, I don't use this particularly often since I prefer to use Zettlr links, which we can come to in just a second.

Zettlr is itself a markdown editor. However, it's so much more than that. To get started, I recommend making one folder on your PC, call it slip_box or anything meaningful. Zettlr can support having many different slip-boxes open at once. I want everything in one slip-box though. Since Zettlr reads the files and folders within this slip-box folder, you can go ahead and make as many folders as you like inside.

My typical structure is something like this. Each rough topic gets one folder. Each book that I read gets one file. As I develop original ideas, those also get a file. As a topic fills up, I make "hub" files which more or less just contain links to related files and a little bit about them. When browsing for new ideas, the hub files are indispensable. It's surprising how quickly the slip-box can fill up!

For each file that relates to one specific work, I have a particular way of doing the headers. The first line is the title. If you have never used markdown, this is a hash symbol followed by a space then the title, like this

How to Take Smart Notes

Then the line underneath will be the unique number of that file. Zettlr doesn't use the 22a/32f style numbering system like Lumann did, instead it uses a timestamp. You can press ctr-l or cmd-l to generate this unique identifier. It's possible to refer to files without this identifier – don't do it. If you ever need to rename or move the file, it can mess everything up. Always always use the unique id. Then on the third line, I place the author's name(s).

Finally, on the fourth line, I tag the piece. You can use as many tags as you like, and they work exactly like Twitter hashtags. Examples might be #economics #productivity and so on. Note that there is no space between the hash and the word here – that's the difference between titles and tags.

When writing, you can refer to other files by using double square brackets - [[]]. When you type [[ Zettlr will perform a search for files, and show a drop down menu. You can start typing to filter this menu, and pick out the one you want. Now you have a link. When you make links, you should try and ensure that you write a little about why they link together. Explain yourself a little. For a couple of reasons. First, you'll likely forget later, so it's important to have that note. Secondly, it's easy to say "this links" everywhere, but extrapolating the ideas out is what makes content.

I always keep the right panel open, usually on the related files tab. Right arrows show files that this one links to. Left arrows show files that link to this one. The little tag symbol shows files that share the same tag. You can brows though all of these easily to see what might be related.

Hub files are pretty custom. There might be lots of reasons to make one. I have a logical fallacy hub file where I link to all logical fallacies I find. I also have a "something-doer" hub file where I collect all instances of… something-doers. These are indispensable for research – when I come to write an article on logical fallacies or something-doers I'll have a long list of examples ready to go. Not only that, having them all in one place let's me spot patterns. Hub files might also be used to just collate similar works. I have an economics hub file where I more or less just list economics works that I've read, and what they're about. Hub files are good places to spawn original notes from.

Original notes are exactly what they sound like. As you read, you develop ideas, and those ideas need recoridng in their own notes. Since the references are all there, it's very easy to link to them. These original notes will be the building blocks of future articles.

When you are ready to write, remember that you already have all of your references ready to go in Zotero!

So the process looks something like this

Add reference to Zotero
Make notes on the book in Zettlr
Make links to other works in the slip-box
Compile into hub files
Compile into original notes
Spawn original notes into a rough draft of an article
Edit the article into a finished draft

The point is, each of these steps is quite easy to do. Since each step is quite easy, there's usually little resistance to doing it. Having a system that breaks down a complex and daunting task into smaller pieces is about the most useful thing you can have. It's easy to procrastinate some huge task, but ridiculous and almost impossible to procrastinate a tiny task.

I also try and maintain my slip-box. What I mean by this is I schedule time to sit down and read through it. I move things around, play with ideas, add extra links or tags. Not everything will be immediately obvious to you the first time you make a note. You might miss where something links. This maintenance process is where 90% of the thinking actually gets done. Try and make your process thinking and working with the slip-box. It shouldn't just be something you take notes in then forget about, it should be something that you keep going back to. This is also the phase where I expand on links. When making links while taking notes, it can be quite annoying to write paragraphs and paragraphs of explanatory text. When reading, I usually only make a quick line or two, but in this phase I will often expand that to a paragraph or more.

Since Zettlr works with markdown files, these can be easily managed with Git and GitHub. I commit and push my slip-box regularly. This let's you share it with others, but most importantly get all the version control benefits. You can use it on many different computers. You can commit and handle merging. Git and GitHub are the most powerful tools I use in my life so I try and leverage them as much as I can.

The slip-box will start small at first. But quickly it grows. As long as you keep cultivating it, it will become one of the most useful tools for you. I already have over 60 files, and I've only been doing this for a few weeks. Admittedly, some of them are placeholder files. A placeholder file is a file where I will make notes on a book once I've read it. I use them when an author references a book I really want to read. I place the links there already, and come back and fill in the content once I am able to read the work.

The methods described here have been indispensable for me. The rate at which I am able to learn now, and most importantly, write, is so much higher. Not only that, it gets higher all the time. The system forms this perfect feedback loop. As you read more, there are more links. This makes remembering easier and easier, and also writing easier.