How to Take Smart Notes

by Sönke Ahrens

A good structure is something you can trust. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas. By breaking down the amorphous task of “writing a paper” into small and clearly separated tasks, you can focus on one thing at a time, complete each in one go and move on to the next one (Chapter 3.1). A good structure enables flow, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as the work becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Something like that does not happen by chance.

I need more clarity in my writing. I enjoy reading and organizing ideas. I love the GTD approach to work. I aspire to systematize areas of my life like this.

Having a clear structure to work in is completely different from making plans about something. If you make a plan, you impose a structure on yourself; it makes you inflexible. To keep going according to plan, you have to push yourself and employ willpower.

Frameworks for how to work can be freeing and helpful. With no next actions, I easily forget ideas. With a workflow to read, process, process, write, I don’t need to store my next actions in my head or left to highlights.

In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). Poor students lack insight into their own limitations – as they would have to know about the vast amount of knowledge out there to be able to see how little they know in comparison. That means that those who are not very good at something tend to be overly confident, while those who have made an effort tend to underestimate their abilities.

Even if you don’t aim to develop a grand theory and just want to keep track of what you read, organise your notes and develop your thoughts, you will have to deal with an increasingly complex body of content, especially because it is not just about collecting thoughts, but about making connections and sparking new ideas.

It feels much like building our own mini-internet of connected notes and ideas.

The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible and to follow a few basic principles.

Only if nothing else is lingering in our working memory and taking up valuable mental resources can we experience what Allen calls a “mind like water” - the state where we can focus on the work right in front of us without getting distracted by competing thoughts.

Everything needs to be taken care of, otherwise the neglected bits will nag us until the unimportant tasks become urgent.

Studies on highly successful people have proven again and again that success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place

Intuitively, most people do not expect much from simple ideas. They rather assume that impressive results must have equally impressively complicated means.

I am still amazed at how often the idea of learning how others have achieved results and learning from their experience evades folks. As an educator, it is ingrained to always think from the learner’s perspective and to learn from others.

Whenever he read something, he would write the bibliographic information on one side of a card and make brief notes about the content on the other side (Schmidt 2013, 170). These notes would end up in the bibliographic slip-box.

He did not just copy ideas or quotes from the texts he read, but made a transition from one context to another.

The trick is that he did not organise his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers.

Searching through a file system with strings of discussions, plenty of material and ideas is, believe it or not, fun. It does not require the kind of focused attention you would need to formulate a sentence or to understand a difficult text. Your attention is rather at ease and it even helps to have a playful mindset.

Can research be playful? I do love this idea.

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.

Synthesizing information with unique perspectives is the main work of research, and it can be fun.

Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have.

I believe publishing on my blog or other professional outlets to be one of the main destinations for my research.

Thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas is the main work of everyone who studies, does research or writes.

Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write with to capture every idea that pops into your mind.

This is a takeaway for me: always be taking notes.

Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing.

I struggle in this step in particular. I highlight key texts, but turning these into my own ideas or words is a challenge. I think here is where I go back to “How to Read a Book” to consider if I agree or disagree with the author’s premise. My brain craves a framework for what to write in literature notes.

Make permanent notes. Now turn to your slip-box. Go through the notes you made in step one or two (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how they relate to what is relevant for your own research, thinking or interests.

The idea is not to collect, but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions. Does the new information contradict, correct, support or add to what you already have (in the slip-box or on your mind)? Can you combine ideas to generate something new? What questions are triggered by them?

Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible. Throw away the fleeting notes from step one and put the literature notes from step two into your reference system. You can forget about them now. All that matters is going into the slip-box.

After random ideas and well-crafted responses, permanent notes feel like the rough draft of a book report.

Filing each one behind one or more related notes

Adding links to related notes.

Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to the index.

Develop your topics, questions and research projects bottom up from within the system.

you will have developed ideas far enough to decide on a topic to write about. Your topic is now based on what you have, not based on an unfounded idea about what the literature you are about to read might provide.

Turn your notes into a rough draft.

Edit and proofread your manuscript.

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.

Keeping things simple yet standardizing how we process information is vital when we need to locate information again later.

reduce distractions from the main work, which here is thinking.

Giving ourselves time to think and a way to process information for future retrieval is vital to our retention of information and preparation for future needs.

· 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)

You need something to capture ideas whenever and wherever they pop into your head.

The reference system has two purposes: To collect the references (duh) and the notes you take during your reading.

The slip-box. Some prefer the old-fashioned pen and paper version in a wooden box.

Finally, the editor:

Soon, you will be able to access the whole digitalised slip-box online. Add to this understanding recent psychological insights about learning, creativity and thinking, and we also get a pretty good picture why it works.

Students should not only learn to write papers, but also learn facts, be able to discuss their ideas in seminars and listen carefully to lectures.

Can I recall important lessons from books I’ve previously read? How are they shaping my life now?

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. Studying, done properly, is research, because it is about gaining insight that cannot be anticipated and will be shared within the scientific community under public scrutiny. There is no such thing as private knowledge in academia.

Attending lectures is also one of the best ways to get an idea about the current state of research, not to mention the ability to ask and discuss questions.

Focusing on writing also doesn’t mean to stop giving presentations or finding other ways of making your thoughts public.

Where else could you get feedback fo...

I want to view the notes I take from books as ideas to be presented in significant talks. Synthesizing ideas from many sources into a solid idea or topic of a presentation.

You will become more focused on the most relevant aspects, knowing that you cannot write down everything. You will read in a more engaged way, because you cannot rephrase anything in your own words if you don’t understand what it is about. By doing this, you will elaborate on the meaning, which will make it much more likely that you will remember it.

Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what we are doing

In the old system, the question is: Under which topic do I store this note? In the new system, the question is: In which context will I want to stumble upon it again?

The slip-box is designed to present you with ideas you have already forgotten, allowing your brain to focus on thinking instead of remembering.

I want to let go of remembering, rereading, and holding it all in my brain. I cannot contain the significant facts in my brain while also being pulled into the worries of the day.

Fleeting notes, which are only reminders of information, can be written in any kind of way and will end up in the trash within a day or two.

Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way.

Project notes, which are only relevant to one particular project. They are kept within a project-specific folder and can be discarded or archived after the project is finished.

A typical mistake is made by many diligent students who are adhering to the advice to keep a scientific journal.

The second typical mistake is to collect notes only related to specific projects. On first sight, it makes much more sense.