Categories create the illusion of organisation. Ideas stored by subject are easy to retrieve, but retrieval isn’t the hard part. [[Normal note-taking fails to connect ideas]] is what happens when the system is optimised for storage rather than thinking: a note about process design and a note about human psychology might be deeply related, but they’ll never meet inside different folders. The hard part is making connections between things that don’t obviously belong together, and a system organised by relationship rather than category creates the conditions for that.
[[Zettelkasten as a modular architecture]] describes the structure that makes this possible at scale: each note linked by genuine relationship rather than administrative category. [[Writing the way you think]] is the practice that feeds it, and [[Better thinking over better note-taking]] is only real when the system supports connection rather than just collection.