In this guide, we will take you through the process of creating a Zettelkasten in Tana.
A Zettelkasten system typically contains notes of two distinct types: Literature notes and Permanent notes. Our guide to Zettelkasten explains more about the Zettelkasten framework.
Creating a Literature Note in Tana
As Tana doesn’t allow you to split your notes with folders, we need to differentiate our literature and permanent notes in another way. For me, the alternative is to use tags, which Tana supports.
For this section of the guide, I will create a literature note from an actual note in my Obsidian vault, which is waiting to be processed. The source material for the motes made in this guide can be found here.
In Tana, create a new note for the literary note and give it a relevant title, such as the content creator and the title of the content to which the Literary note refers.
At the top of the literature note, I put Note Type and then a LiteratureNote tag. I then added sections for more information about the literature, such as what type of media the source patrol is, the date it was published or last updated, and the URL for the content, if relevant.
I look through my original notes and try to condense them further to the key points of the article as I see them at that time.
Creating a permanent note in Tana
Now that I have written my literature note. I can start creating permanent notes from the literature notes I have just completed. Before I begin, I want to remind you that each permanent note is atomic and covers one fact, idea, entity, or thought.
I created a link to the new permanent note by starting to type in the title I had decided to give the note. This allows me to see if I have already created a permanent note on that entity. It could also highlight similar notes that I might want to link to. If no link is found, go ahead and create a new page.
The first permanent note I created was for the Chinese government, as I wanted to emphasise that they are collecting as much data as possible.
I then read through the rest of the literature notes but couldn’t find anything worthy of having their own notes.
Conclusion
You now know the basics and can start building your Personal Knowledge Management system in Tana based on the Zettelkasten method.
You can discover more Tana content in our Tana section.