2.0 KiB
Title: Lila
Author: Robert Pirsig
Started Reading: 'unknown'
Finished Reading: 'unknown'
Highlights
Pirsig's Zettelkasten - here's where he describes his paper-tray, slips-of-paper method of note-taking. I've read that Pirsig did not consider this a Zettelkasten, but the similarities are striking. Zettelkasten or not, these categories have inspired my notes as well.
"The first was UNASSIMILATED. This contained new ideas that interrupted what he was doing. They came in on the spur of the moment while he was organizing the other slips or sailing or working on the boat or doing something else that didn't want to be disturbed."
"PROGRAM slips were instructions for what to do with the rest of the slips. They kept track of the forest while he was busy thinking about individual trees."
"The next slips were the CRIT slips. These were for days when he woke up in a foul mood and could find nothing but fault everywhere. He knew from experience that if he threw stuff away on these days he would regret it later, so instead he satisfied his anger by just describing all the stuff he wanted to destroy and the reasons for destroying it."
"The next to the last group was the TOUGH category. This contained slips that seemed to say something of importance but didn't fit into any topic he could think of."
"The final category was JUNK. These were slips that seemed of high value when he wrote them down but which now seemed awful."
"There's an old analogy to a cup of tea. If you want to drink new tea you have to get rid of the old tea that's in your cup, otherwise your cup just overflows and you get a wet mess. Your head is like that cup. It has a limited capacity and if you want to learn something about the world you should keep your head empty in order to learn it."
Links
Tags: booknotes