How to Take Smart Notes

INTRODUCTION

If there is one thing the experts agree on, then it is this: You have to externalise your ideas, you have to write. Richard Feynman stresses it as much as Benjamin Franklin. If we write, it is more likely that we understand what we read, remember what we learn and that our thoughts make sense. And if we have to write anyway, why not use our writing to build up the resources for our future publications? (Page 23)

INTRODUCTION

Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying it is the medium of all this work. And maybe that is the reason why we rarely think about this writing, the everyday writing, the note-taking and draft-making. Like breathing, it is vital to what we do, but because we do it constantly, it escapes our attention. But while even the best breathing technique would probably not make much of a difference to our writing, any improvement in the way we organise the everyday writing, how we take notes of what we encounter and what we do with them, will make all the difference for the moment we do face the blank page/screen - or rather not, as those who take smart notes wih never have the problem of a blank screen again.

INTRODUCTION

The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic.

INTRODUCTION

Universities try to turn students into planners. Sure, planning will get you through your exams if you stick to them and push through. But it will not make you an in the art of learning/writing/note-taking (there is reexpert search on that: cf. Chapter 1.3). Planners are also unlikely to continue with their studies after they finish their examinations.

They are rather glad it is over. Experts, on the other hand, would not even consider voluntarily giving up what has already proved to be rewarding and fun: learning in a way' that generates real insight, is accumulative and sparks new ideas.

INTRODUCTION

Writing these notes is also not the main work. Thinking is. Reading is. Understanding and coming up with ideas is. And this is how it is supposed to be. The notes are just the tangible outcome of it. All you have to do is to have a pen in your hand while you are doing what are doing anyway (or a keyboard under your fingers). Writing notes accompanies the main work and, done right, it helps with it.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO HAVE

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.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO HAVE

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 to make ed to use ised it is otypes, reloped es the 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 ccordthey Rusworse.

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.

WRITING IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS.

Studying does not prepare students for independent research. It is independent research. Nobody starts from scratch and everybody is already able to think for themselves.

The educational psychologist Kirsti Lonka compared the reading approach of unusually successful doctoral candidates and students with those who were much less successful. One difference stood out as critical: The ability to think beyond the given frames of a text (Lonka 2003, 155f).

Experienced academic readers usually read a text with questions in mind and try to relate it to other possible approaches, while inexperienced readers tend to adopt the question of a text and the frames of the argument and take it as a given. What good readers can do is spot the limitations of a particular approach and see what is not mentioned in the text.

11.2 Think Outside the Brain

Taking literature notes is a form of deliberate practice as it cive us feedback on our understanding or lack of it, while the effom to put into our own words the gist of something is at the same time the best approach to understanding what we read.

Taking permanent notes of our own thoughts is a form of self-testing as well: do they still make sense in writing? Are we even able to get the thought on paper? Do we have the references, facts and supporting sources at hand? And at the same time, writing it is the best way to get our thoughts in order.

Writing here, too, is not copying, but translating (from one context and from one medium into another). No written piece is ever a copy of a thought in our mind.

The brain, as Kahneman writes, is "a machine for jumping to conclusions" (Kahneman, 2013, 79). And a machine that is designed for jumping to conclusions is not the kind of machine you want to rely on when it comes to facts and rationality — at least, you would want to counterbalance it. Luhmann states as clearly as possible: it is not possible to think systematically without writing (Luhmann 1992, 53).

11.3 Learn by Not Trying

Robert and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork from the University of California suggest distinguishing between two different measurements when it comes țo memory: Storage strength and retrieval strength (Bjork 2011). They speculate that storage strength, the ability to store memories, only becomes greater over one's lifetime. We add more and more information to our long-term memory. Just by looking at the physical capacity of our brains, we can see that we could indeed probably store a lifetime and a bit of detailed experiences in it (Carey 2014, 42).

It is difficult, if not impossible, to verify this claim, but it does make sense to shift the attention from storage strength to retrieval strength.

12. Develop Ideas

Keywords should always be assigned with an eye towards the topics you are working on or interested in, never by looking at the note in isolation. This is also why this process cannot be automated or delegated to a machine or program - it requires thinking. The Zettelkasten does make suggestions based on existing keywords and scans for keywords in the text you wrote.

But it makes sense to see these suggestions more as a warning sign than an invitation to use them: these are the most obvious ideas and probably not the best ones. Good keywords are usually not already mentioned as words in the note.