zettelkasten

Prompts

Last updated: 1/9/2025

These notes contain my best prompts:

Teacher

Your instruction is to act as a teacher and help me study for my [______] . You will use your understanding of the topic as well as your ability to craft master questions that go over the material and check my understanding of the material. Include hypothetical questions if necessary. The notes are deliminated in triple backticks. Your will format the questions in the following format:

# X. TOPIC
- XY. QUESTION
- XY. QUESTION

Where X is the topic number, and Y is a letter that starts at a goes until z for every question you ask.

If I respond with "IK" to a question it means I am confident on it and do not need help. If I respond with "IDK" to a question it means I do not know about it. If I answer the question but do not provide all of the information that is on my notes OR if I miss out important details that I should know, correct me and ask me the question again. Also, be sure to fact check everything in my notes in case I made a mistake while copying notes. If you are not sure if I am correct or not then let me know.

Note Generator

Your task is to help me create comprehensive Zettelkasten notes in Obsidian.md format. These notes should be adaptable for any topic - from technical concepts to abstract ideas, theories, and personal development.

YAML Front Matter:

date: <CURRENT_DATE> time: <CURRENT_TIME_24H> type: [concept/theory/quote/technique/mental-model/etc] field: [primary field, e.g., psychology/technology/philosophy] creator: [original author/inventor if applicable] stage: [seed/sapling/evergreen] tags: [comma-separated tags, hierarchical from broad to specific] aliases: [alternative names, translations, related terms]

Key Statement

  • For concepts: Clear, concise definition
  • For theories: Main hypothesis or claim
  • For quotes: The quote and its author
  • For techniques: Brief overview of the method
  • Include original language/terms if from non-English source

Context

  • Historical background
  • Cultural or domain context
  • Who developed it and why
  • Current relevance
  • Schools of thought or competing perspectives

Core Understanding

Fundamental Principles

  • Key components or ideas
  • Underlying assumptions
  • If applicable: formal notation, models, or frameworks

Practical Example

  • Real-world demonstration
  • Case study or specific instance
  • Personal experience if relevant

Mental Models

  • Analogies to familiar concepts
  • Visual representations
  • Metaphors that aid understanding

Application

Personal Application

  • How to apply this in daily life
  • Personal development implications
  • Behavioral changes or habits to form

Professional Application

  • Work-related implementations
  • Industry or field-specific uses

Cross-domain Applications

  • How this applies to other fields
  • Creative applications in unexpected areas
  • Potential future applications

Evidence and Support

Supporting Evidence

  • Research findings
  • Empirical data
  • Historical examples
  • Expert opinions

Counter-arguments

  • Opposing viewpoints
  • Limitations
  • Criticisms and debates

Quality of Evidence

  • Strength of available research
  • Gaps in current understanding
  • Potential biases

Personal Insights

Reflections

  • Personal thoughts and interpretations
  • How this changes previous understanding
  • Questions raised

Action Items

  • Specific steps to implement
  • Habits to develop
  • Areas for further exploration

Synthesis

Patterns and Connections

  • Links to other concepts
  • Integration with existing knowledge
  • Emerging patterns or themes

Variations

  • Different interpretations
  • Cultural variations
  • Modern adaptations

Related Concepts

Format: [[Concept]]: Nature of relationship and key connection

  • Core prerequisites
  • Natural extensions
  • Complementary ideas
  • Contrasting concepts
  • Cross-disciplinary connections (Aim for 8-15 relevant connections)

Rules:

  1. Use ## for main headers and #### for subheaders
  2. Use **** for key terms and important phrases
  3. Mark uncertainty with ⍰ and speculation with 💭
  4. Use 🔗 for external references
  5. Mark personal insights with 💡
  6. Use tables for comparing multiple viewpoints
  7. No blank lines between bullet points
  8. Include confidence levels for claims:
    • [C5] Highly confident, extensive evidence
    • [C4] Confident, good evidence
    • [C3] Moderately confident
    • [C2] Low confidence, limited evidence
    • [C1] Speculative
  9. Tag types of evidence:
    • [RE] Research Evidence
    • [AE] Anecdotal Evidence
    • [PE] Personal Experience
    • [EO] Expert Opinion
  10. Use progressive summarization:
  • ==Highlight== key points
  • Bold crucial insights
  • Italic for emphasis

Special Sections Based on Type:

  • For Quotes:

    Source Context

    Original Interpretation

    Modern Relevance

  • For Techniques:

    Step-by-step Guide

    Common Pitfalls

    Success Metrics

  • For Mental Models:

    When to Use

    When Not to Use

    Decision Framework

  • For Theories:

    Underlying Assumptions

    Predictive Power

    Evolution of Theory

Paper Note Taker

Your instruction is to help me write zettelkasten notes on papers I am reading. These are Obsidian.md notes, with the following headers:

Before any of the headers you must preface the node with the file properties written in YAML format. You should use the following format and insert the current date and time (in 24hour clock). Replace $TAGS$ with any tags the zettelkasten note should have, and $ALIASES$ with any aliases the topic has (any popular acronyms or other names for the same time):
---
date:

time:

tags: $TAGS$
aliases: $ALIASES$
---

Description: Detailed overview of the paper, include information from the abstract. The goal of this header is I should be able to get the gist of the paper.
Takeaways: Talk about the major takeaways I should get from the paper. Talk about all of the major new ideas presented in the paper.
Applications: Write about all of the creative ways you can apply ideas from the paper to other domains. The goal of these notes is to improve my creativity so include possible applications to very different domains.
Other: Include other headings that you think are important for this note. Be liberal with this.
Related: This is where you should include other topics or ideas related to the topic for me to explore. If possible, also write about other papers this paper is related to. Add as many as necessary and make them broadly related. A good number to go for would be around 10 but that is not a hard limit. Write the topics in a bulleted list where the topic name is surrounded by brackets. Do not include a well-known acronym for the topic. Simply write out the full topic name. Example: [[TOPIC_NAME]]: SMALL DESCRIPTION.

Rules to follow:

  • Make the general headers be prefaced with ##, the sub-headers with ####, and elements in bold with ****.
  • Only respond with the note that you took so I can copy and paste it easily.
  • If it is an algorithm or technique write a procedure of how the logic works in pseudocode.
  • You will export the note deliminated by three new lines (\n).
  • When writing bulleted lists do not add an additional new-line in between the bulleted lists.
  • If you are unable to complete the task or do not know how to do a specific header then say "I DO NOT KNOW". It is better to not know then to give me false information.
  • You will be writing about the paper:

See Also