EmacsConf had their 2025 online conference in early December 2025, and I am listening to conference presentations from their YouTube playlist. I thought that the presentation “Zettelkasten for regular Emacs hackers” was a good one. The presenter, Christian Tietze, one of the people behind zettelkasten.de, talked about some zettelkasten principles, and used the Denote package in Emacs for creating new “notes” in Emacs. In addition to the 25 minute talk, he did a Q&A session for almost an hour and a half, which was very illuminating about his zettelkasten process/skills. I have embedded the videos for the talk and the Q&A session in this post – enjoy!
Tools for Thought
There are 10 posts filed in Tools for Thought (this is page 1 of 1).
Blake Burge has a Twitter thread on “the 5-step system I use to automate my brain and never forget anything” using Google Tasks, Zapier, and Notion – I am going to give this a try!
Some thoughts on “Why write?”
Ken Smith wrote a stream-of-consciousness post on why writers write, or why people should write. I have collected a few resources, and wanted to share them today.
From the first two episodes of my podcast Thinking About Tools For Thought, I discussed writing as a primary tool for thought.
Anna Havron at Analog Office recently wrote about how pen and paper (simple tools) can be used to create complex things (all artifacts of writing)
Sascha at Zettlekasten.de had an excellent breakdown of how value is added to a zettlekasten system (writing/knowledge system)
Swyx proposes a “three strikes rule” for blogging (three stumbles across something means you have to write it down/share)
Josh Bernoff shares his top three reasons why writers should blog (practice, testing ideas, building an audience)
So – there you go – get started! I’m going to try to keep up this writing streak…
After a somewhat long hiatus, the Thinking About Tools for Thought podcast is back. In episode 10, I interview Phil Nunnally on how he uses his many tools for thought, and how he switches back and forth between them.
Episode 009 of the Thinking About Tools For Thought podcast is out – describing my first steps in using Logseq – check it out!
Episode 008 of the Thinking About Tools For Thought podcast is out – an interview with Ton Zijlstra, talking about his use of Obsidian for personal knowledge management, note taking, and more – check it out!
Episode 007 of the Thinking About Tools For Thought podcast is out – an interview with Jack Baty, talking about tools like TiddlyWiki, Org-Roam, and more – check it out!
Episode 005 of the Thinking About Tools For Thought podcast is out – an interview with Chris Aldrich, talking about his use of Obsidian, memory tools, and more – check it out!
Episode 3 of the Thinking About Tools For Thought podcast is now out – interview with Ken Smith, talking about Drummer software and other tools – check it out!
Thinking about Tools for Thought – Episode 001
I am starting a new podcast series titled “Thinking about Tools for Thought”, which will talk about tools and methods for helping people think. The following are links to different tools/resources mentioned in the podcast. I may move this to another domain, but getting started here.
Tools:
Weblogs/posts
- Dave Winer/Scripting News
- Ken Smith Drummer blog
- Andy Sylvester Drummer blog
- Organizing information for use
- Ken’s earlier post on this
- Mike Caufield’s post referenced in Ken’s post on “Organizing information for use”
- Ken on Twitter
- Chris Aldrich on tools (not mentioned on the podcast, but a good overview)
The podcast (link to file):