A Profound Shift in Thinking
One of my favorite turns of phrase in How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens (a book you've likely run into if you've been floating around the internet looking at tutorials or forums on Obsidian) is "external scaffolding." This refers to the way in which you build or architect your Zettelkasten for storing and managing the knowledge in whatever system you choose — Obsidian, Roam, Tinderbox, or index cards.
In order to make informed choices and ask yourself useful questions while setting up your new system, one must first understand the marked distinction between what Ahrens deems top down versus bottom up thinking. What I find helpful is taking these concepts completely out of the context of data and cataloging and bringing them to life by envisioning them as social interactions.
In essence we can describe the mingling of our ideas in the same way we can the mingling of people. (Yep, I said mingling twice because it's a great word. Mingling!!) Let's start with the bottom up approach using Thanksgiving Diner as an example before we contrast it with the top down approach of a tech conference.
