Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive
Luhmann wrote over 70 books and more than 400 scholarly articles using the Zettelkasten notetaking method
(Versión en español aquí)
(Deutsche Übersetzung hier)
Luhmann was extremely prolific.
During his almost 40 years of research, he published more than 70 books and over 400 scholarly articles on a wide variety of subjects, connecting sociology with such diverse topics as biology, mathematics, cybernetics, and computer science. That’s more than seven books every four years for his whole career — in addition to a boatload of articles. And those books are no hastily thrown together nonsense. They are classics that made him one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century (pdf).
His productivity is even more impressive considering how old school he was. Shortly before his death, in a radio interview with Wolfgang Hagen, he revealed that he used no computers, only pen and paper and a typewriter, which he operated using hunt and peck typing.
When asked how he published so much, Luhmann used to answer “I’m not thinking everything on my own. Much of it happens in my Zettelkasten. My productivity is largely explained by the…
