This is admittedly only an issue if one decided to fully stick to the framework as outlined in the tutorial, but I am curious as to why the decision was made to explicitly pare down the variety of PKM/Zettelkasten approaches to this particular subset? Obviously, Remnote is fully capable of bottom-up digital gardening via references (although no aliases and wonky portals hinder it somewhat), and just as obviously what is a concept and what is a descriptor blurs immensely when not copying a textbook (or indeed, within some humanities textbooks). In my estimation, putting it front and centre like it is now gives an impression that RemNote is just an outliner app with spaced repetition and some links when it could be taking on Roam. Heck, even going by the faces of the company, Connor is a bit of a live one, extremely defensive in the face of any feedback and Martin is basically a nice boy who is willing to adapt (going by his 15 min call offers and interviews anyway). So why not present concept-descriptor as an option rather than “the way”?
Even though I’m not a student, I appreciate the concept-descriptor framework. I find that using the framework—along with such affordances as templates with slots, the Automatically Add power-up, and custom CSS—makes my notes easier to write and to read in much the same way that the hierarchy of the outline does.
Rather than downplay the concept-descriptor framework, I’d encourage Martin to emphasize its ease of use and broaden the marketing of its application to other use cases. Look at the lengths that Roam users go to so that they can make use of metadata via attributes: text expansion utilities, copying-and-pasting templates, etc. In RemNote, by contrast, you create a Rem with the slots that you want, tag that Rem with Automatically Add, and then just use that Rem as a tag.
At no point did I say that it is bad, should be removed, or anything of the sort. Just that it is a small part of a much larger whole. Templates are buried under experimental features, while the concept-descriptor is in the spotlight. So why not provide a few use cases, some involving it and some not? Maybe even subdivide them like notion does for templates, with concept-descriptor being under student.
Seems a shame to give people a tool fully capable of backlinking anything together and immediately encourage breaking things down not only by indenting (which is a pretty simple parent-child relationship) but by somehow separating concepts from descriptors (which not even every zettelkasten uses, though Luhmann did, IIRC).
I did not say that you said the concept-descriptor framework is bad or should be removed. I was just explaining my appreciation for the framework and some ideas for marketing that framework. I took your post as arguing that the concept-descriptor framework should not be front and center in RemNote’s tutorial.
Thing is, notion has tons of frameworks (templates) and is marketed as such, RemNote and Roam have backlinking (which notion added but it’s not its main thing). Attempting to compete with hundreds of templates by pushing one seems counterproductive to me. Pushing absolute freedom to structure as you wish, on the other hand…
I agree with you that RN could be promoting itself much more broadly (and leaving things more open like you suggest).
But it seems that for some reason they want to focus on learning/memorization, spaced-repetition, and that specific concept/descriptor structure.
I assume they have a reason (it might be part of their business plan?).
For now, I’m glad it’s possible to use RN without ever thinking about those things…
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. While we do emphasize the “concept-descriptor” framework, this is by no means “the way” haha. It’s a single approach to help us learn information deeply. As you mentioned, RemNote is very versatile and has many features. Just the nature of RemNote being an outliner app puts us in contention with the likes or Roam and Obsidian.
To me, our introduction of the concept-descriptor framework is merely a suggestion for using one of our core features, the spaced repetition. I encourage people to start off with this framework because it’s easy to understand. And once linking features become more familiar, experiment with digital gardening etc.
I’d be interested to see what kinds of use cases you’ve found with the tool as well!
I think I may have a solution that will satisfy both objectives of focusing on students and learning as well as introducing the zettel side of things: make a video summarising a book into a web of zettels.
Here’s a skeleton of a video script, bearing in mind I’ve never made one myself:
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Start off by stating the obvious: it’s pointless to memorise something you don’t understand, and it’s always nice to have multiple pathways to and from the same idea, so placing every rem in a proper (and connected) context is paramount.
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Show the text, introduce two broad ways of distilling it: highlighting and incremental reading (here’s a nice vid showing the concept, although without the spaced repetition part of it) and/or margin notes (vid).
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Here’s the time consuming part: actually do it. Distill and reference it, use portals to bring stuff from one chapter to the next, possibly use the flashcard features if you find a nice turn of phrase you’d like to see again or definition you know you need to remember.
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Here’s the more time consuming part: show a glimpse of some zettles/evergreen notes and put some of your newly distilled stuff into your personal (mock) ecosystem. Here’s a juicy one to help with the mockup (or even inspire your own, who knows).
You’ll note I referred to a “text” because I’m not too sure what that text should be. Is it too obvious to use “How To Take Smart Notes” by Sonke Ahrens? Might the userbase benefit from “A Mind For Numbers” by Barbara Oakley? Or something from the vid makers’ reading list that will have a similar meta appeal?
This is more of a comment than a reply but I feel like the entire marketing of RemNote is based on studying and memorisation, I mean it‘s in their name. Full bias but as a student I love that RemNote is so focused around studying, it‘s why I even started using the program. As I understand it, creating Zettelkasten is about turning media that you consume into resources for texts, that you want to publish in the future and less about remembering. I see how Zettelkasten users are being ignored a little in the tutorial. So yeah, maybe add a Zettelkasten section into the tutorial but keep the concept descriptor framework, I find it absolutely genius for studying
My take on this:
The C/D-Framework is great for structured knowledge which will later empower make tables, specialized graph view etc. This is definitely great feature. (Maybe it can be specialized even more by typing relations like HyperNote does.)
Here is what I don’t like:
I would love it not be enforced by formatting, but an optional choice, e.g. by using a shortcut like Ctrl+Alt+C for Concepts.
I often have just an unstructured trigger -> association pair as a flash card. Since it is not a proper question either it gets just assigned Concept or descriptor randomly based on the first letter. (Still open if I could have formulated the knowledge better, but I think it is not always practical.) Even worse: The descriptor makes its parent a concept (without a back). So some of my Daily Documents are concepts now…
So here is what I would change:
- Assign rem type not by formatting, but by choice (with an opt-in for formatting if this fits your workflow.)
- Make an additional basic rem type flashcard (just front and back, no conceptual typing).
Don‘t like that shortcut idea, would prefer if there‘s a toggle that turns the auto formatting on or off because I want to keep it the way it is as a student