Discovery // Flow Discovery

Zettelkasten Learning Journey – 6 Weeks of Experience & Insights

Felix Harling — Mon, 26 May 2025 06:31:47 +0000

What happens when you don’t just read about the Zettelkasten method, but actually try it out – week after week, together with others?
In this article, I share my experiences from six weeks of learning: what works, what doesn’t, what routines I’ve developed and what I’m still working on.

The Learning Journey

At the kick-off of the DATEV Learning Circle Experience on March 27, it was not yet clear whether there would be a learning journey on the slip box (aka “Zettelkasten”) method. I was the only one who was interested in the guide.

I was curious about the method because I wanted to improve my note-taking. The aim of the slip box method is to “collect thoughts and ideas in a central place and link them together – in order to gain new insights, deepen knowledge and write better texts” (source: lernOS Zettelkasten guide).

As a plan B, I had considered learning in tandem with an AI, but then – a serendipity moment – I was joined by curious people: Brigitte, Francesco and Ina. Our learning journey started on April 8.

Zettelkasten: The Learning Guide

For the learning journey we use the lernOS Zettelkasten guide (in German). Many thanks to Andreas Trebing, Maris Krobath and all other contributors for sharing and publishing.

The lernOS Platform

lernOS is an open source platform for individual and collaborative learning. It offers methods for learning modern ways of working and knowledge management. I have been a member of the lernOS community since 2020.

Once a year, the community meets at the lernOS Convention (loscon). Have you already registered for this year’s loscon with the theme “Mind The Knowledge Gap”?

My Learning Goal

For this learning journey, I have decided to develop a routine to make my notes and thoughts more usable with the slip box method. I am using Obsidian as a tool. From July onwards, I want to write my blog posts based on this new routine. I share my learning progress week by week on Mastodon.
This blog post is part of it – we are now in week 6, exactly in the midpoint of our learning journey.

The Learning Circle

We have been meeting at the same time every week since April 8. We have agreed that it is fine if only two of us attend a meeting. We document the content of our meetings on a Notion board that Francesco has created.

As has always been the case with lernOS learning circles, it is an enriching experience to learn with three structured and committed people from very different organizations.

Zettelkasten: First Insights

My train journey from Karlsruhe via Lyon and Barcelona to Valencia and back gave me time to explore further sources on the card box method in addition to the guide. I found it particularly helpful:

the video The fun and efficient note-taking system I use in my PhD
the audio book How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

I haven’t really gotten used to Notion – it’s a proprietary tool from a US company. It’s important to me to be able to save my personal notes locally and to be able to use them in Markdown format in other programs. That’s why I chose Obsidian.

What I Have Realized

A few points have become clear to me since week 0:

The point is not to collect quotes or summaries, but to develop and record your own thoughts.
Permanent notes don’t need keywords, but connections to other notes. It is also important to think about what I want to use the note for.
Working with the slip box once a week is not enough. It is best to write new permanent notes (almost) every day.
One possible measure of progress: the number of permanent notes per day. Luhmann wrote an average of six of them – that would be over 2,000 per year. I start with five to ten per week.
In summary: I’ve realized that I’ve wasted a huge amount of potential over the years with my fleeting notes in various places. I want to change that now.

My First Slip Box aka Zettelkasten

I have set up my new slip box in Obsidian. I had previously used the tool more for fleeting notes – now I use it in a more targeted and structured way.

My first version consists of the following areas:

Metadata: List of hashtags as an anchor for what I want to use the notes for (e.g. #insights, #peerlearning)
Bibliography: one note per source (books, podcasts, videos, etc.)
People: one note per person that provides food for thought
Permanent Notes: one permanent note per personal thought. These notes are the core of my note box.

My Zettelkasten Workflow

I created the workflow inspired by the audiobook by Sönke Ahrens:

Weekly: add hashtags, list of sources and people
Ad hoc: Collect fleeting notes, create literature notes
Several times a week: Create, link and assign permanent notes
Ad hoc: reflect on notes, record open questions
Ad hoc: writing ideas emerge from the existing notes

I have tested the process with different source formats – it works surprisingly well.

And: it’s fun to record new thoughts, connect them and notice how the network grows.

Zettelkasten: Next Steps

First of all, I’m looking forward to the second half of the learning journey with Ina, Brigitte and Francesco.

The lernOS Convention will take place on July 1 and 2, 2025. I’m planning a 5-minute inspiration talk there – based entirely on my new slip box.

In addition, I would like to offer a “Zettelkasten Starter” session with Andreas Trebing. Andreas brings years of experience, I bring the beginner’s perspective. Together we will cover the entire learning curve.

My Question To You

What experiences have you had with the Zettelkasten method – or what has stopped you from getting started so far?

My Newsletter: The Dancing Rainbow

I will send bi-monthly insights, reflections and invitations to special events around coaching, peer learning and community building.

It is time to live and learn in all its colors.

A little secret is waiting for you… if you take the first two steps, of course. Please sign up and confirm your registration – and get a first taste of what’s to come.

Let’s stay connected!

The post Zettelkasten Learning Journey – 6 Weeks of Experience & Insights first appeared on Flow Discovery.

Experiences from Tempelhof: A learning journey towards community

Felix Harling — Mon, 19 May 2025 13:28:02 +0000

Why we traveled to Tempelhof

As a Moral Ambition learning circle, we ask ourselves: Where are solutions to the most pressing problems already being worked on today? It was already clear during the first session of our learning journey that we would meet in Tempelhof, because our learning circle member Stefanie – one of the long-time residents of this community – had sparked our curiosity. Tempelhof: a place where community life, sustainable practices and social change are lived side by side.

And so we Learning Circle members arrived on a sunny May Sunday, eager to see what awaited us: Lars and Willi from the Stuttgart area, Christian from the Bamberg area and Silke and I from the Heidelberg area.

Tempelhof: A place with impact

A huge thank you goes to Stefanie, who organized the day for us and gave us unique insights into the community. For example, an exchange with founding member Wolfgang Sechser, who explained the mix of luck and shared vision that led to the project in “Swabian Siberia”. 2009-11 was a time of upheaval – banking crisis, Fukushima, change of government in Baden-Württemberg. It all started with a simple Google search: “buy village”. And the first hit was Tempelhof.

The first forty residents have now grown to over 150 who share common values (Vision & Werte – in German). The community is based on a legal structure with a foundation, cooperative and association (Struktur & Selbst-Organisation – in German) and a strong self-organization with decision-making structures, forums for cultivating social interaction and defined processes and procedures. “Everyday life as an exercise”, as Wolfgang beautifully put it.

The community has an impact on its surroundings: 350 people have settled in the region because they work in Tempelhof, take their children to school or feel connected. Over 10,000 overnight stays in the seminar and guest house show the openness and reach of this place.

What touched me in Tempelhof

A place to just be
The space in the apartments is limited to 20 m² per adult. The space outside the living areas is huge. The community therefore offers plenty of space for shared activities and simply being. The “village square” acts as a haven of peace, and the “village house” offers meals for all residents every day.

A place of relationships
The community has specifically created spaces for exchange and decision-making that allow relationships to grow on different levels and also resolve conflicts: Relationships with oneself, relationships with each other in manifold forms and relationships between organizations. Ultimately, the relationship between people and nature is also a central building block of the community – with a focus on organic farming.

A place of creation
The community was founded and shaped by entrepreneurs. Transforming an abandoned estate with a history as an educational institution and home for the disabled into a multi-generational eco-social project that is self-sustaining in 15 years – that is pure creative energy.

A place of learning
The community is not only a place to live, but also a place of education and offers scope for experimentation – such as the seminars on offer, the Earth Ship settlement (in German) or the Flow Valley educational campus (in German) for young future designers. Yes, the community as a whole is a laboratory for the future.

Impressions Tempelhof Community

What I took from the circle

Part of our agenda in Tempelhof was also the fifth session of our learning journey with the pertinent title “Unfold and use your network”. Each of us made a request to the others, which was intended to tap into the network of the other participants. In this way, we fed each other with ideas and contacts.

I took the following request with me: The help I would like to ask the group for is to connect me with people who are implementing effective measures to combat loneliness – be it psychologists, techies or marketing professionals or projects & organizations.

Previously, we had also decided as a learning circle to meet monthly after week 8 – the official end of the learning journey. While we were already strongly connected virtually before the meeting in Tempelhof, this bond and the desire to support each other has been strengthened by the hours spent together in the community – the true “Tempelhof momentum”.

The next session 6 is “Take time for self-reflection” – an invitation to a retreat with myself based on the ideas, thoughts and contacts I have gathered on the learning journey so far.

And Christian has also shared a personal experience report from Tempelhof on his LinkedIn profile: highly recommended (in German)!

And you? Invitation to reflect

If you have read this far, I invite you to end your reading with a short self-reflection:

How would you like to live – if your values would be visible?
Which community has inspired you recently?

You are welcome to share your thoughts with me or publish them as a comment.

My Newsletter: The Dancing Rainbow

I will send bi-monthly insights, reflections and invitations to special events around coaching, peer learning and community building.

It is time to live and learn in all its colors.

A little secret is waiting for you… if you take the first two steps, of course. Please sign up and confirm your registration – and get a first taste of what’s to come.

Let’s stay connected!

The post Experiences from Tempelhof: A learning journey towards community first appeared on Flow Discovery.

Together against loneliness: is this my new mission?

Felix Harling — Tue, 13 May 2025 09:11:17 +0000

Loneliness affects us all – directly or indirectly. What is often dismissed as an individual destiny turns out, on closer inspection, to be a global challenge with serious consequences for our health, our society and our well-being.

In this article, you will find out why loneliness is one of the most underestimated problems of our time and what approaches there are to counter loneliness.

Moral Ambition: Choosing Problems That Matter

Moral Ambition is about working on a problem that is serious, underestimated and can be solved. The learning circle guide offers a series of global problems that have these characteristics.

An important question is: Do I have the talent and passion to make a meaningful contribution to solving this problem?

From Ikigai To My Mission: "CoCoCo"

In our last learning circle meeting, we discussed our ikigai – the intersection between our own strengths, passion, social needs and opportunities for rewards. Silke added that “ reward” doesn’t just have to be monetary, but can also come from inspiration and appreciation.

For me, this gave rise to my mission: “Creating places of connection and togetherness.” Terms such as co-mmunity, co-creation, co-aching and co-housing characterize this image – summarized in my wake-up call: CoCoCo.

But where is my impact the greatest? Perhaps precisely where community is lacking: in feeling lonely.

What Is Loneliness?

Loneliness occurs when desired social contacts deviate from actual social contacts. It is not simply being alone, but a painful lack of connection.

Loneliness: A Neglected Global Problem

Initial research – see sources at the end of the article – showed me that loneliness is a serious global issue. The WHO is working to put it on the agenda as a priority. According to a report by the U.S. Surgeon General Advisory, more people worldwide suffer from chronic loneliness than from diabetes.

For a long time, loneliness was considered an individual destiny or a taboo subject. However, it affects people of all ages and is increasingly being recognized as a structural problem. The UK established the world’s first Ministry for Loneliness in 2018, while Germany followed suit in 2022 with the Loneliness Competence Network and a national strategy.

Loneliness As a Serious Health Problem

One in four adults experience unwanted social isolation. According to the PM Report, loneliness has a serious impact on health and life expectancy – comparable to the consumption of 15 cigarettes a day (WHO).

Professor Anton Bucher explains that loneliness causes stress, reduces sleep quality and hinders healthy lifestyles. Interestingly, it is not older people who are particularly affected, but teenagers and young adults.

Solutions to Combat Loneliness

Interestingly, “lonely” in German originally meant “to be united”. It has only been associated with social deprivation since the 18th century. In his book “Loneliness – Pain and Blessing”, Anton Bucher describes that there is no single strategy for reducing loneliness (Bucher, page 96).

He distinguishes between the following types of intervention:

Social inclusion: Building friendships, shared leisure activities
Improving social skills: Training in social behavior
Shifting mindsets: e.g. challenging beliefs like “nobody likes me” through mindfulness, meditation, learning journeys
Therapeutic approaches: Important as loneliness is 50% genetically linked and associated with personal characteristics
Technology-based interventions: Use of robots or AI

Insight

My initial research confirms this: Loneliness is serious, underestimated and solvable. All three criteria of Moral Ambition are fulfilled.

And of course – as Bucher also explains – there is also the blessing side of being alone, as I experienced during my workation in Valencia.

That is why I would like to continue this journey. In German, there are just three letters between loneliness (“Einsamkeit”) and togetherness (“Gemeinsamkeit”): GEM.

I want to embark on a journey and look for people who have already found “GEMs” in order to turn loneliness into togetherness again.

Who should I talk to next?

Feel free to share your ideas in the comments.

Sources

Bucher, Anton A. (2024): Einsamkeit – Qual und Segen. Psychologie eines Gegenwarts-Phänomens. Springer.

Kompetenznetz Einsamkeit (2025): Website https://kompetenznetz-einsamkeit.de/, last accessed on April 27, 2025.

PM Report (2024): WHO: Einsamkeit als globale Priorität.
https://pm-report.de/gesundheitswesen/2024/who-einsamkeit-als-globale-prioritaet.html, last accessed on April 27, 2025.

U.S. Surgeon General Advisory (2023): Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf, last accessed on April 27, 2025.

WHO (2023): Commission on Social Connection, https://www.who.int/groups/commission-on-social-connection, last accessed on April 27, 2025.

My Newsletter: The Dancing Rainbow

I will send bi-monthly insights, reflections and invitations to special events around coaching, peer learning and community building.

It is time to live and learn in all its colors.

A little secret is waiting for you… if you take the first two steps, of course. Please sign up and confirm your registration – and get a first taste of what’s to come.

Let’s stay connected!

The post Together against loneliness: is this my new mission? first appeared on Flow Discovery.