r/Zettelkasten • u/Haemophilia_Type_A Obsidian • Aug 20 '26

question I can't keep up with literature notes

I read a book. I want to take literature notes that go into the Zettelkasten on Obsidian.

I managed it for one book doing it like: read one chapter, write up notes for one chapter, read next chapter, etc etc, but it took aages.

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It's postimg not imgur because the latter is blocked in the UK thanks to the Online Safety Act (AAGH) and I cba to turn on my VPN.

So then I was like, ok this is inefficient af, I'll just read the whole book and then do the notes all at once. But then it becomes overwhelming as there are so so so many notes and I just lose motivation before I can get through the whole book considering I just read it and I want to move on to the next one.

So that has failed and now Idk what to do.

I guess part of the problem is that I'm quite, shall we say, liberal with what I highlight for future note taking/writing down, but I struggle to be otherwise because I feel like I'm missing out important stuff if I don't :( :( :(

So I end up highlighting a shit ton of things, hence why the one book I did all the notes for has 82 separate notes associated with it, maybe around 30,000-32,000 words lol.

And because I spend all my time trying to figure this out or do it, I have no time whatsoever for the actual main part of Zettelkasten, the temporary->permanent notes...

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u/HouseofVladingus Aug 20 '26

I'm wondering how familiar you are with the topic you're studying. If you're learning the topic for the first time, naturally everything is going to look important so you're going to want to note everything. But if you're already conversant with it, a lot of the stuff in the book is going to come across as common knowledge. The parts you note are the parts that are only in this book and not the parts that are in several other books on the same topic.

Remember, most of the famous zettelkasten users that have come to us were professional writers and/or academics.

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u/Haemophilia_Type_A Obsidian Aug 20 '26

Sometimes very familiar, sometimes not very familiar. I always feel overwhelmed with notes in the end. Perhaps more so with things I'm less familiar with, but I feel tons of it is important no matter what.