5 plugins turn Joplin into a powerful and customizable Zettelkasten

In 1992, Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist who published over 50 books and over 400 academic articles, published Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen about his use of the Zettelkasten method — explaining how it made him so productive.

The Zettelkasten method is a knowledge and idea organizing system that goes far beyond progressive summarizing and layering I discussed yesterday. Instead, this system focuses on atomic ideas and creating connections between ideas.

Joplin has the capability to be your Zettelkasten#

In Joplin we can quickly create and manage notes (to represent atomic ideas). We can link notes (to create the connections). This creates a surfable hypertext of our ideas.

5 plugins put boosters on your Zettelkasten in Joplin#

• Quick Links — Create links to other notes by typing @@ and selecting which note to link to from a popup window. This dramatically speeds up connecting ideas.
• Inline Tags — Create tags by typing # and selecting a tag from the popup window. All tags create surfable collections of notes — another way of connecting ideas.
• Automatic Backlinks to note — No interaction needed for this. Simply add it and see a list of backlinks to notes that reference a given note. This increases the connectivity of ideas
• Link Graph UI — A visual, surfable graph of the connections between notes. I find this can help me see patterns in the connection of ideas.
• Note Tabs — Adds tabs to the Joplin UI so specific notes can be kept open for direct access. This helps me with focus: I leave certain index notes and notes I am actively working on open.

All Joplin plugins are available via the plugin repository.