My Adler Antinet

An Analog Zettelkasten System for Studying the Great Books

My “Great Books of the Western World” - the 2nd complete set I’ve owned.

In my last post, I gave a few suggestions on how to read classical works analytically, meaning, “the best and most complete reading that is possible” given unrestricted time for this challenging but rewarding activity.¹ Today, I’d like to tell you about an ingenious method of taking and filing notes that I’ve adopted (and adapted) to make my studying exponentially more purposeful and effective. Furthermore, this system is helping me to finally realize the goal I set for myself about 15 years ago to tackle “The Great Books of the Western World”, the 54-volume set comprising the “great conversation of great ideas,” introduced by philosopher Mortimer Adler and University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins in the 1950’s .²

Before I reveal this powerful method, I think a few words are in order about my personal reading goals. (I’d ask you to reflect on yours, too.) In my last Online Great Books (OGB) seminar, we were discussing “ends” as they relate to various pursuits. One of the participants posed this question to our group: “Why did you join this forum? What is your purpose (i.e. end) for reading the Great Books?” Only a few people replied, but I’d wager that most of us joined the OGB community for the same reason: because we want to read old books and we figure we’ll be more successful (and derive more enjoyment) by reading with a community that holds us accountable.

But this only delays answering the real question, of course: What is our primary goal for reading the Great Books in the first place?

On the one hand, I can easily rattle off a few answers, all of them true for me to a degree: Because my college education was subpar. Because I want to develop my intellect more. Because I’ll sound cool quoting Plato at cocktail parties. On the other hand, none of these reasons is sufficient or compelling enough to sustain the “Deep Work” this lifelong project requires. So to really answer this question, I have to drill through the multiple layers of motivations (some better, some worse) that have propped up my reading habits over the years, in order to reveal my core purpose. I conclude that my real reason—i.e. my chief aim—in reading and studying these books is because I believe they contain what poet Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said” about the most important ideas that shape our lives.

“What does it mean to be human and live a good life?” This seems to me to be one of the most consequential questions that we can ask ourselves. At the end of my days, I don’t care so much that my life reads like an accomplished resume or thrilling novel, as that its overall shape—its gestalt—is good and pleasing, with an internal unity that harmonizes all the parts with beauty and meaning. To my way of thinking, there are few better ways to achieve this than by holding my gaze on the highest ideas and virtues, with the intention of conforming my life to the fruits of this contemplation.

How, then, does a note-taking system become my answer for achieving so lofty a goal?

Introducing the Zettelkasten Method

It started with a Slack discussion on note-taking in my OGB community last spring. Someone posted the video above about the Zettelkasten method of taking notes pioneered by the 20th century German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. This idea was new to me but as I researched it further, I discovered that Luhmann’s Zettelkasten system has spawned an almost cult-like following of enthusiastic note-takers for a decade or more. I won’t take up any space here to describe it, other than to say that its adherents claim that it is a complete Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system; a way to capture, store, and create an organic network of your ideas. (An excellent resource for learning more about this system is the Zettelkasten.de website.)

As I began researching this method, I learned right away that there are two main camps in the Zettelkasten universe, differentiated by their technical approach—i.e. analog or digital. The analog approach is modeled after Luhmann’s original method of writing notes on slips of paper (or note cards) and filing them in boxes (zettelkasten means “slip box” in German). Notes are organized and connected by a unique numeric-alpha numbering system, which can be branched indefinitely as new cards are added. This method is effective but labor-intensive, as you can imagine. The other, presumably more common approach nowadays is to take advantage of the many elegant and feature-rich software applications (like Obsidian or Roam) that do the work of storing and connecting your notes for you.

I initially went the digital route, jumping all in on the Obsidian bandwagon. I was beguiled by the prospect of taking all my scattered thoughts and notes and forming an ever-expanding network of insight, my “second brain” as everyone called it. So I dutifully began recording all my ideas with Obsidian’s simple Markdown editor, learning to distinguish and file notes by type: fleeting, literature, atomic, permanent, etc. I spent hours reading blogs and watching videos about atomicity, hubs, MOCs, workflows, and a score of other concepts and tips that promised to help me create the greatest PKM ever. I did this for about 2 months solid, until I finally had enough notes to visualize my “spider-web” graph of knowledge that Obsidian is famous for.

Behold the graph!

My Obsidian graph. Seriously, what am I supposed to do with this?

Well, well, what have we got here? It looked like a burst of fireworks on the 4th of July. I zoomed in. I zoomed out. I clicked on this and that note, dragging them around the screen to watch the nodes shift and morph into new shapes. I changed views and filtered by tags. I tried to trace a string of connected thoughts, hoping to pull out a single brilliant idea from the web of chaos. Alas, it was like trying to untangle a strand of Christmas lights hastily pulled from a box of decorations! After exploring and manipulating my Obsidian vault from every conceivable vantage point, I sadly concluded that my digital experiment had failed—as an intellectual partner or note-taking method to focus my thinking. I went back to the drawing board.

At this point, I know there are some die-hard Zettelkasters out there who love their digital note-taking app and wouldn’t trade it for their grandmother’s life. I’m happy that it works for you. My point isn’t to set up one system against another, but to stress the importance of finding the method that best conduces to making one a better reader. Obsidian certainly sets a standard as a great writing editor and storage system, but it did not suit me well as a Personal Knowledge Management tool.

Enter Scott Scheper and the Antinet

Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far to find a Zettelkasten system better suited to my reading goals. Another OGB member suggested trying Scott Scheper’s analog method, dubbed the “Antinet”. The video above gives a brief introduction to Scheper’s method, which he promises will help you create “genius-level work” in your chosen domain. I think it is important to stress the productive capacity of his method, because in the end, it’s not about just “taking notes” but of doing something with them. What do you want to do? Write a book? Create an online course? Master a subject area? The Antinet can be an effective tool for any creative endeavor, largely because its organic, tree-like structure encourages exploration and facilitates intellectual discovery.

The structure of the [analog] Zettelkasten is critical because it makes possible the emergence of a second mind [not a second brain]. It’s not about storing information and creating bubbles that link concepts together; instead, it’s about exploration, as one knowledge scientist put it. It’s about exploration from one card to the next, and jumping to cards linked to remote branches. The tree structure of the Zettelkasten enables meaningful exploration.³

It also enables memory, which is important for my previously stated reading goals. I desire not only to read a particular set of books, I want my mind and heart to be shaped by all that is worthy in them. This means sharpening my memory and recall, which is precisely what happens when I write out (not type) my notes by hand and as I repeatedly handle them when searching for a particular card or a suitable place to file a new card. Is it slow? Yes. Does it take time to write out all my notes by hand? Yes. Is it beginning to deliver on all my reading goals and intentions? Definitely!

In my next post, I will show you exactly how I’ve started using Scheper’s method to read and process books analytically, combining his Antinet note-taking method with Mortimer Adler’s analytical reading guide from How to Read a Book. The one innovation I’ll proudly claim is adding Adler’s 2-volume Syntopicon to the process, helping me make some of those surprising knowledge connections of life-shaping ideas syntopically, which is to say in comparative dialogue with other books in the western canon.

Until then, happy reading!

1. Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. Touchstone Edition. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2014, 19.

2. “Great Books of the Western World”. Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World, accessed August 16, 2022.

3. Scheper, Scott. “Introducing the Antinet Zettelkasten.” Web log. Zettelkasten (blog), March 25, 2022. https://zettelkasten.de/posts/introduction-antinet-zettelkasten/.