Introduction to Thinker

Thinker is for everyone who wants to supercharge learning.

I'm delighted you show interest in Thinker! Thinker is a web app allowing you to take connected notes. It is a modern interpretation of Luhmann's Zettelkasten. Many of Thinker's core principles are inspired and derived from what Ahrens Sönke articulated in How to Take Smart Notes. It has been developed to help you build your personal knowledge graph. While note-taking is definitely not a new invention, taking connected notes is certainly not a widely used approach. Let's elaborate on why connecting notes is so beneficial.

True understanding is about connecting information.

Disclosure: The creator of Thinker is not affiliated with any referenced products.

Why would you want to take connected notes?

Experts disagree on many things, which is also true for scientists' ideas of how humans learn. But if there is one thing they agree on, then it is that you have to externalize your ideas. And one way of externalizing your ideas is to write. And writing is best facilitated by taking smart notes. And one part of taking smart notes is to connect them. Paraphrasing a prominent neuroscientist: Our brain is to a large extent reliant upon external scaffolding [Levy 2011, 270].

And it is exactly that what Thinker provides - a scaffold to think.