Reviews and Comments

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in developing or improving their note taking. It delves deep into how and when does Luhmann's Zettelkasten work, what are its core principles and backs up these claims with science. For the impatient: it's not about technique, but more about hardest part of research and writing: thinking, understanding, and writing in your own words. But Ahrens also provides numerous insights about our work, creativity and productivity (for example why is multitasking a bad idea).

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in developing or improving their note taking. It delves deep into how and when does Luhmann's Zettelkasten work, what are its core principles and backs up these claims with science. For the impatient: it's not about technique, but more about hardest part of research and writing: thinking, understanding, and writing in your own words. But Ahrens also provides numerous insights about our work, creativity and productivity (for example why is multitasking a bad idea).

Kleon claims he hates self promotion. And indeed this is a book about how to - as an artist, creator - create meaningful connections, find (not necessarily build) audience without using the "promotion" and "marketing" strategies. Most of the time. It's a good book with good advice.

There was a bit too much of subjectivity projected as objective in this book for my taste. It's lovely and well written book, but somehow often a bit superficial. I am eager to know more about octopus intelligence, but there was a lot of anectodal evidence and subsequent speculation here and too little hard-core science. I possibly had bigger expectations.

The livebomb part (essay and annotations) and particularly the last one where there's an intertwining of futurist quotes, history of a particular lynching of three black men and Terre's commentary was powerfully heartbreaking.