Dear Chiara,

We don’t know each other in real life, and I have to be honest…I’ve been wanting to write you a letter ever since I read yours to Oli about how you consume podcasts and take notes. I hesitated for a bit, mostly out of self-consciousness. My writing tends to be very train-of-thought, and yours feels so considered and well-shaped.

But I think that’s exactly why I like this letter-writing practice so much. It lowers the stakes. It makes things feel less formal, more human. And how cool is it that I’m writing a letter to a stranger who inspired me through something they wrote to someone else? My brain kind of explodes thinking about these small, personal connections forming in such a vast digital ocean.

The moment I read the word Zettelkasten in your title, I was sold. I knew I would be writing you a letter. I love the word. I love the idea. I have vaults upon vaults in Obsidian, workspaces upon workspaces in Notion, and archived notes upon archived notes in Apple Notes … all evidence of my repeated attempts to build a system that works for me.

Zettelkasten, Digital Gardens, PARA — they’ve all come for me at some point. Zettelkasten and Digital Gardens, especially, really tickle something in my brain. And I love seeing screenshots of people’s setups, so thank you for including those in your letter. They actually reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Filips’ setup, which I’ve tried for myself more than once.

What I genuinely admire is your consistency. The fact that you’ve stuck with your system and actually process your notes. I suspect that’s part of why your writing feels so grounded and clear. My relationship with systems, on the other hand, is a little more… cyclical.

I fall in love with a new note-taking approach, romanticize the idea that one day all these notes will serve me, and then — after a week, maybe a month if I’m lucky — the system collapses under its own weight. I start feeling overwhelmed. I start asking myself: Why am I doing this? I’m not a writer, I’m not a researcher, what am I even collecting all this information for? And so I drop it. Until, months later, the cycle begins again.

That said…I am absolutely stealing your 2025-12-22 note:

“Every game is composed of two parts, an Outer Game and an Inner Game.”

As I’ve been thinking more and more about games on my website, this idea really resonates with me, especially in the context of video games. Without having read The Inner Game of Tennis yet, here’s how I currently understand it:

There’s the outer game — the mechanics, the systems, the rules. And then there’s the inner game — the experience, the self-belief, the emotional and psychological layer you bring with you as a player. That inner game is deeply personal, shaped by your own history, expectations, and sensitivities. It’s something Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber touch on in The Well-Read Game, and it feels like a powerful lens through which to think about play. At least, that’s how I’m currently exploring video games.

Maybe I’ll put this thought into one of my notes, in one of my vaults, during my next inevitable iteration of a note-taking system 🙂

Thank you for writing your letter to Oli and for inspiring me to write this one.

Warmly,

Joana