How to use Medium as your ultimate zettelkasten or PKM : yes, Medium!

Zettelkasten is all over the place these days. People are writing about note taking and zettels and apps such Obsidian, Logseq, Roam, … (links deliberately not posted).

Yet, if you think from the first principles, all you need is basically a system where you will “externalise your thoughts” (as Srinivasa Rao writes), add tags, and network them, in a way that you can retrieve them when you want and where you want (just in time and just in place). Which means, in our digital age, your zettels will need to be at your fingertips (literally), at your desktop, at your mobile, wherever.

That’s all.

Which is why your atomised 'zettel' (note) must have the following structure:

• Accessible and fungible (grows)
• An identifier and a header
• Content that YOU write in your own words
• It’s got to have source, should come from somewhere (i.e., your own crazy little head == “fleeting note”, a literature you highlighted and tagged == “literature note”, a more detailed thought piece pulling together everything == “permanent note”)
• Must have a to: link, and back link
• Must have system of #tags like hashed tags to hold the networked thoughts together that you can retrieve at your fingertip whenever, whatever, wherever.
• Must be indexed to give you a smooth list of everything you want