Would that be more in the sense that “I happen to have this page and that page and they happen to be related”? Rather than “I have this page and it relates to”?
In other words would I already predefine relations or would they only be made when I have two pages I can relate.
To stick with an earlier example. Suppose I make a project page for my hobbyroom. This is the first page of my graph that I make. So there is no relationship yet. Then later on I make a project for my livingroom. This relates to hobbyroom in the sense that they are 2 rooms in the same house. I could relate both to being part of my appartment. They would now have a path between them.
So in this question, when is this path made? Is hobbyroom at time of inception related to appartment. (The relationship with livingroom is not made deliberately) Or is this relation made in response to the creation of living room. (The relationship is made deliberately)
If the former, what relationship do we define at the moment of page creation? Those we know? But that could potentially lead to trying to model all of reality. Just one? The most significant in the context?
The latter would require deeper thought, but also relying on memory.
I suppose it makes sense that should I query all types, but I get results that are not actually types but something else that would muddy the waters.
Still I guess for me it is a big mindshift to not need to have everything very strict and “one way”
That’s gonna take some work to get around because I do feel it would be valuable in the end.
Lots of connections are (right now) deliberately broken, so it make sense lots of things just “float around”.
I have worked on removing all the triangle connections from the hobby page (blue dots).
The dark blue star is my games page with all the games connected to it.
I’m pretty happy with my progress, but I’m far from done
Anyway I ran into an interesting question. About my cats
So I have 3 pages. 1 with information related to both cats and then 1 page for each cat with their personal information. For example I want to track which cat puked when, so in the journal I would have [[Rox]] puked, probably because of reason.
In the cats page I would have the recurring tasks like food prep or clean the litterbox. And in the journal when it is about both cats, I’ll use that page reference as well. Took the [[cats]] to the vet.
Now I have a project related to my cats. Therefore I want to link this project to the [[cats]] page. While on the project page I might reference [[Rox]] and [[Sky]] individually as well.
This would create a triangle. (after all [[Rox]] is one of my cats and thus a link between his page and the [[cats]] page exists)
In such cases would it then be better to be more specific and not use the [[cats]] page? Both in the journal and the project.
Need to learn macros! This sounds really helpful. It would definitely solve this issue more thoroughly.
Edit: Got it working
We were talking earlier about octogonal connections. So I found this charming cluster in my graph:
References (aka. articles or videos)
Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method
Folgezettel is More than Mechanism
Progressive Summarization
Subjects
Logseq (this page is a bit cluttered and I need to come back to it)
Zettelkasten
PKM
Project / my own stuff
Mijn notitie systeem
To declutter, thinking on what we discussed. It seems to me that
Zettelkasten should link to PKM (it is a PKM system)
Therefore the two articles on Zettelkasten would link to Zettelkasten instead of PKM, a more specific relationship.
However this cross relationship would still exist.
In “Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method” I mention both “Folgezettel is More than Mechanism” and “Progressive Summarization” in my notes about this article.
“[[Zettelkasten]] is more work upfront than [[Progressive Summarization]]. It requires more effort and pre-planning. On the other hand it also creates more value up front.”
“There is more to it than that, see [[Folgezettel is More than Mechanism]]” (in response to the article’s explaination of Folgezettel)
I feel these are fair relationship. Would this result (the triangles) in this case be ok, or am I missing something important?
I don’t follow, I’m sorry.
These are pages with my notes about these articles.
So the main article text is not on the page except for citations I want to keep. All citations don’t contain links.
All notes I make do contain links.
The page is about a certain subject, so it is linked to said subject.
So here’s basically what happens. I have read the article “Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method” (article 1). I copied some highlights into Logseq and made some additional notes for myself. I gave the page subject:: Zettelkasten.
Later I read the article “Folgezettel is More than Mechanism” (article 2). I did the same for this article, highlights, notes and subject:: Zettelkasten.
Later I was reviewing (for one reason or another) my notes on article 1 and it made me think of what I read in article 2.
This let me to write the note on the page of article 1. “There is more to it than that, see [[Folgezettel is More than Mechanism]]” In response to the citation about the unique id used in Zettelkasten.
This leads to connections between both articles and each to subject Zettelkasten.
What in your opinion should it look like instead?
I was trying to cover multiple cases, but your description helps me focus.
Here is what leverage is about:
The load is a concept.
The beam is a connection.
The fulcrum is a note.
But these work only in a proper configuration.
To leverage a concept, should link it to another one through a note, but at the proper place. Here is the important convention (in two equivalent wordings):
When the configuration doesn’t follow the convention, the notes are leveraging nothing:
Your pages are currently named after the title of the articles.
But which is the concept of each one of them?
The topic in the title?
Too long for a concept.
The article itself?
That could have some usage, but it is obviously not the case.
Your take on the article itself?
Could also have some usage, but also not the case.
The article’s take on the topic in the title?
Basically its highlights, but they are not proper notes.
Your take on the article’s take on the topic in the title?
Those are proper notes, but by now the concept has become elusive.
An external linked subject?
Then the notes are not at the proper place.
They are instead near the place of their origin.
This is like putting them in a journal, i.e.:
near the time of their origin
in a place where their links accumulate noise
Also like connecting journals to each-other.
Should rather link to concepts.
That leads to triangles of subject, article and third nodes.
Putting them initially and temporarily there, is not a problem.
But to limit the noise, should gradually move each note to the page of its subject-concept.
Not the subject (actually object) of the article, but the subject of each note.
That way the links spread, reducing the noise.
This is where the notes can provide leverage.
When all the notes about an article get moved, it can be hidden.
Unless we model the article itself, it doesn’t belong to the graph.
Ah yes that makes sense.
Some advanced modeling though as compared to where I am currently.
I would say for me as a first step would be to seperate my notes from the article’s page.
If I need the articles text I can reference it. (Block reference, which would not show in the graph)
I think the hardest part would be to consider the “correct” concept.
I interpret this, that in the same logic a concept also does not need to be final.
What seems like an appropriate concept today may be broken up later.
This would help me avoid never starting at all.
I have noticed in the past I would like a reference to where my notes came from.
In the context of this comment of yours I feel my earlier idea of using block references (or embeds) might be an appropriate way.
It would not create links, and in that way the article is hidden. It would still be possible to go from my note to the underlining source.
I can add to the article page an exclude from graph property.
I feel that highlights belong on the article page, hidden and available at the same time. The expansion on those highlights could then live on the page of the appropriate concept.
That’s something I can definitely work with. And also that’ll take some work
(As you may have noticed, I’m just thinking out loud here to process what you’re saying)
I have been enjoying this process thoroughly. Seeing things improve, both my thoughts and understanding as well as my graph structure.
So thank you very much for taking the time to enlighten me. This has been so much more helpful than everything I’ve read as we were able to discuss some specific things.
I’d like to end this topic with a little before / after comparison.
I’m not done at all, but I’ve made some great changes and notice my ideas and mindset evolving and growing.
Right now here’s where I am. I’m working on trimming away connections and later I’ll be working more on new deliberate ones. So yes lots of unconnected pages for now.
I brought back the game cluster (at the bottom), but it is no longer connected to hobby. Opting to split it to type:: game and hobby gaming. That made sense to me keeps the graph more clear too.
There a lot of mini-graphs and floating pages. But that is a much better starting point than the tangled mess from the beginning.
(and yes I had to drag things around a lot to get it to look this nice :P)
I wanted to come back and give another update
I’ve been working on more deliberate connections and working on connecting things without them.
One thing I learned that it is best to link a page to the most specific related page as possible. As a good example, I would link near everything to “health”.
So you have this really big star with all these branches. But it is totally unhelpful.
So here’s my graph now. The red area is all connected. The white circle is my health page
I’ve been going through my references and trying to split the notes and quotes. Moving the notes to appropriate places.
I’m discovering notes with ideas about how I did things, how I might do things etc. These notes are often obsolete now due to new insights. Instead of having been useful notes, they got lost.
Doing this made me realize/solidified the above point a lot better.
I like this suggestion. However, doesn’t this nullify all the aspiring users who want to use Logseq for “Book Notes” (that is, creating a new page for a whole book, for example, a page with the name [[What Has Government Done to Our Money]] for taking notes and quotations from the famous book of [[Murray Rothbard]]) ?
Something to consider, what are you making the note for? What is its purpose?
This topic is about making use of links in Logseq, to leverage its potential for discovery.
If you don’t have proper links, you discover nothing. If your graph is a mess like mine was, you discover nothing.
For this specific piece I now do the following.
I have an article page with citations on it. This page never has any links except to its subject.
When I want to make notes on or reference a citation, I’ll go to the proper place. At first for ease of use and quickness this can be the article page. However at the end these notes go to the page of their subject.
Notes are not static, they can move. I first had some notes on Zettelkasten, but I was accumulating a lot of ideas and information on Folgezettel. So I gave that its own page and moved my notes. Linked the page to Zettelkasten as a concept that is part of Zettelkasten.
Here’s some screenshots to visually show the above.
The first quote block is a quote used in the article as the article is about another article. The second is my own, a visual indicator I used this citation as a quote someplace. This gives an easy view of what citations I actually did something with other than just record.
I’m still working on this page, so I’ve listed some tasks with references I want to further process here.
Also notice that in my note at the bottom I use a reference and not a page link for Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method. The reference goes to a specific part of that articles page. As the article is about more than Folgezettel, a page link would pollute the graph. I want to reference it, but not link it, so a block reference seemed appropriate.
Since the note is in Dutch, to clarify Introduction to the Zettelkasten method makes a point on unique ID’s and that Folgezettel is one method for this. Folgezettel is more than mechanism makes a counter point to that. And that’s what I recorded in my note.
Let’s keep this thread for leveraging and Graph view. Answers on books here.
Most people don’t find out as early as you did. They hope that the tool will somehow make sense of their notes and provide insight. But the tool merely outputs what was fed with (like recent AI technology). As outlined in the accepted answer:
Yeah. When I started watching YT content about logseq (from Ramses, and Tools on Tech mainly) the thing they hammered-home was “just write everything into journal. a structure WILL EMERGE by itself, as you keep using it.”
