## 3 Everything You Need to Have There is this story where NASA tried to figure out how to make a ballpoint pen that works in space. If you have ever tried to use a ballpoint pen over your head, you have probably realised it is gravity that keeps the ink flowing. After a series of prototypes, several test runs and tons of money invested, NASA developed a fully functional gravity-independent pen, which pushes the ink onto the paper by means of compressed nitrogen. According to this story, the Russians faced the same problem. So they used pencils (De Bono, 1998, 141). The slip-box follows the Russian model: Focus on the essentials, don’t complicate things unnecessarily. Academic writing in itself is not a complicated process that requires a variety of complicated tools, but is in constant danger of being clogged with unnecessary distractions. Unfortunately, most students collect and embrace over time a variety of learning and note-taking techniques, each promising to make something easier, but combined have the opposite effect. The whole workflow becomes complicated: There is the technique of underlining important sentences (sometimes in different colours or shapes), commenting in the margins of a text, writing excerpts, employing reading methods with acronyms like SQ3R[\[8\]](part0000_split_023.html#_ftn8) or SQ4R,[\[9\]](part0000_split_023.html#_ftn9)writing a journal, brainstorming a topic or following multi-step question sheets – and then there are, of course, the one thousand and twelve apps and programs that are supposed to help with learning and writing. Few of these techniques are particularly complicated in themselves, but they are usually used without any regard to the actual workflow, which then quickly becomes a mess. As nothing really fits together, working *within* this arrangement becomes extremely complicated indeed and difficult to get anything done. And if you stumble upon one idea and think that it might connect to another idea, what do you do when you employ all these different techniques? Go through all your books to find the right underlined sentence? Reread all your journals and excerpts? And what do you do then? Write an excerpt about it? Where do you save it and how does this help to make new connections? Every little step suddenly turns into its own project without bringing the whole much further forward. Adding another promising technique to it, then, would make things only worse. That is why the slip-box is not introduced as another technique, but as a crucial element in an overarching workflow that is stripped of everything that could distract from what is important. Good tools do not add features and more options to what we already have, but help to reduce distractions from the main work, which here is *thinking*. The slip-box provides an external scaffold to think in and helps with those tasks our brains are not very good at, most of all objective storage of information. That is pretty much it. To have an undistracted brain to think with and a reliable collection of notes to think in is pretty much all we need. Everything else is just clutter. ### <a class="pcalibre pcalibre1" id="_Toc475013796"> 3.1 </a> The Tool Box We need four tools: · Something to write with and something to write on (pen and paper will do) · A reference management system (the best programs are free) · The slip-box (the best program is free) · An editor (whatever works best for you: very good ones are free) More is unnecessary, less is impossible. 1\. You need something to capture ideas whenever and wherever they pop into your head. Whatever you use, it should not require any thoughts, attention or multiple steps to write it down. It can be a notebook, a napkin, an app on your phone or iPad. These notes are not meant to be stored permanently. They will be deleted or chucked soon anyway. They only function as a reminder of a thought and are not meant to capture the thought itself, which requires time to phrase proper sentences and check facts. I recommend having pen and paper with you at all times. It is really hard to beat a notebook in its simplicity. If you use other tools, make sure everything ends up in one place, a central inbox or something like that, where you can process it soon, ideally within a day. 2\. The reference system has two purposes: To collect the references (duh) and the notes you take during your reading. I strongly recommend using a free program like Zotero, which allows you to make new entries via browser plugins or just by entering the ISBN or digital object identifier (DOI) number. Zotero also can be integrated into Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and NeoOffice, which allows you to insert quotations without actually typing in the reference. That not only makes things easier, you also mitigate the risk of messing things up when you add, edit or delete additional references. You can also easily change the format according to the standards required by your professors or the journal you write for. You can add notes to each entry – but it would also be fine to write your notes by hand and link them to the reference if you prefer to write by hand at this stage. In that case, just give the notes a standardised title like “AuthorYear” and keep them in alphabetical order in one place. You can download Zotero for free at zotero.org (Windows, Mac and Linux). You will find the links to all recommended programs on takesmartnotes.com.[\[10\]](part0000_split_023.html#_ftn10) If you prefer or already work with another, equally simple program, there is no reason not to use that. 3\. The slip-box. Some prefer the old-fashioned pen and paper version in a wooden box. That's fine – computers can only speed up a relatively minor part of the work anyway, like adding links and formatting references. They can’t speed up the main part of the work, which is thinking, reading and understanding. All you would need are sheets of paper about the size of a postcard (Luhmann used the DIN A6 size, 148 x 105 mm or 5.83 x 4.13 inches) and a box to keep them in. And even though there are clear benefits of handwriting (cf. below chapter 3.2.1), I recommend using the digital version, if only for mobility. Even though you could basically emulate the slip-box with any program that allows setting links and tagging (like Evernote or a Wiki), I strongly recommend using Daniel Lüdecke’s Zettelkasten. It is the only program I know that really implements the principles behind Luhmann’s system and is at the same time simple and easy to use. It is free and available for different operating systems. You can download it from zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de (please consider sending a donation to the developer if you like it). 4\. Finally, the editor: If you use Zotero, I recommend using one of the editors it is compatible with (Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice or NeoOffice), because it makes life a lot easier if you don’t have to type in every reference manually. Except for that, everything works fine – no editor can improve an argument. If you have pen and paper, an editor, your slip-box and reference system at hand, you are ready to go.