Zettelkasten Online

When building a Zettelkasten you are not just building a digital filing cabinet, you are building a “second mind”. For this to work, your ideas need a solid organisational framework so they can grow organically and not become a tangled, disconnected swamp.

But a thinking machine should bend to your mind, not the other way around. Here’s how the Mind Dump Zettelkasten provides total flexibility while tapping into the time-tested foundation of the Academic Disciplines to supercharge your knowledge base.

Your Mind Your Rules Flexibility is Power

In fact, Niklas Luhmann himself never used a single rigid domain structure. His first Zettelkasten was completely open-ended with 108 top-level categories, and his second was focused around 11 top-level categories specifically for his thirty-year sociological research project.

Mind Dump has a very flexible architecture and includes templates for different disciplines to match the way you think and what you are studying. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If you want a different worldview, you can easily apply/build templates on entirely different classification systems like: The Dewey Decimal System (which has 10 top-level classes such as Philosophy & Psychology, Religion, and Technology). John Locke's Structure (split into Physica for medical/scientific subjects and Ethica for moral/political topics) Models of Aristotle or Francis Bacon, or even completely custom, ad-hoc structures made for a specific creative project.

The only rules Mind Dump system enforces during setup are: A Bibliography session is always created automatically with your selected template. This means that no matter what custom domain structure you decide to use, your external references and raw reading notes are always handled correctly and are kept separate from your active, thinking and developing space.

The 5 Academic Domains: The Core Framework

Mind Dump can be customised to any structure, but the default framework that we use for our examples is based on the Academic Disciplines (sometimes referred to as the Scheperian Tree Classification System). An academic discipline is the main branch of knowledge about the world.

We use these 5 Domains as they cover the entire spectrum of human interest, but more importantly, they force you to file your notes by their intellectual consequence (the argument) not just their context or noun. This is the secret to escaping the Encyclopedic Trap of connecting notes together because they have the same literal subject, turning your system into a static Wikipedia page instead of an idea generator.

Here is a breakdown of the 5 core Domains used in Mind Dump, and the “Executive Tie-Breakers” used to keep your ideas perfectly disciplined:

1. Domain 1: Humanitarian The Humanities are the study of human experience, culture, and meaning. What goes here: Performing Arts, Visual Arts, History, Languages & Literature, Law, Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology only The Tie-Breaker (Ethics versus Science): If you write a note on a new scientific discovery, but you are interested in the moral “ought,” the philosophical consequences, or the ethical framework of that discovery, it always belongs in the Humanities.

2. Domain 2: Social Science If Humanities study the meaning of human life, Social Sciences study the mechanics of human society and behaviour. What belongs here: Only for Anthropology, Archaeology, Business, Economics, Futurology, Geography, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. Leadership or Psychology? The Decider If your note is about the cognitive psychology of habit formation or mental models, even if it uses a corporate leadership setting as the framing device, it belongs in Social Science.

3. Natural Sciences Domain 3 Natural Science is the study of the physical universe and the rules that govern the natural world. What goes here: Physical Science, Space Sciences (Astronomy), Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science and Biology only. The Tie-Breaker (Mind vs. Brain): If your note is about the physical, biological, or chemical workings of the brain (neuroscience) themselves and not in relation to behaviour or emotions, it is Natural Science.

4. Domain 4. Formal Science The Formal Sciences are systems of abstract, logical and rule-based processes for handling information. What goes here: Computer Science, Logic, and Mathematics only. The Tie-Breaker (Language versus Syntax): If your note is about the precise rules of syntax, logic, or computational linguistics (rather than human expression or literature), then it is a note for Formal Science.

5. Domain 5: Applied Science Applied Science takes the theories and discoveries from the other domains and applies them to practical, real world use. What goes here: Agriculture, Architecture and Design, Education, Engineering and Technology, Medicine & Health, Journalism, Military Science, Public Administration, Transportation only. The Tiebreaker (Theory vs. Practice): If your note is about actionable corporate strategy and operational execution (not abstract economic theory) or software implementation and user experience (not pure theoretical computer algorithms), it always goes in Applied Science.

The Magic Vine that Crosses the Chasm

Mind Dump uses these 5 Domains to make you structure your thoughts around their academic arguments. For example, the chemistry of a car tyre is Natural Science (Domain 3) while the engineering of its tread pattern is Applied Science (Domain 5).

To bring these ideas together that are separated, you simply use Remotelinks (what we call “Magic Vines”). Your macro-domains are kept perfectly disciplined, but your mind is free to swing across the forest to discover unexpected, cross-disciplinary breakthroughs! You can keep your macro-domains perfectly disciplined by adding a link that connects a thought in Natural Science directly to a thought in Applied Science.