How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

by Sönke Ahrens

good, productive writing is based on good note-taking.

Having a meaningful and well-defined task beats willpower every time.

Not having willpower, but not having to use willpower indicates that you set yourself up for success.

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).

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. This is not only demotivating, but also unsuitable for an open-ended process like research, thinking or studying in general, where we have to adjust our next steps with every new insight, understanding or achievement

Having read more does not automatically mean having more ideas. Especially in the beginning, it means having fewer ideas to work with, because you know that others have already thought of most of them.

This is why high achievers who have had a taste of the vast amount of knowledge out there are likely to suffer from what psychologists call imposter syndrome, the feeling that you are not really up to the job,

writing is not only for proclaiming opinions, but the main tool to achieve insight worth sharing.

secret to a successful organization lies in the holistic perspective.

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

Sure, you need to be smart to be successful in academia and writing, but if you don’t have an external system to think in and organise your thoughts, ideas and collected facts, or have no idea how to embed it in your overarching daily routines, the disadvantage is so enormous that it just can’t be compensated by a high IQ.

We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains.

If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words.

“Notes on paper, or on a computer screen [...] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible,”

If there is one thing the experts agree on, then it is this: You have to externalise your ideas, you have to write.

As the only way to find out if something is worth reading is by reading it (even just bits of it), it makes sense to use the time spent in the best possible way.

accidental encounters make up the majority of what we learn.

Focus on the essentials and don’t complicate things unnecessarily.

By writing, students demonstrate what they have learned and show their ability to think critically and develop ideas.

Studying does not prepare students for independent research. It is independent research.

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.

An idea kept private is as good as one ...

The moment the author can be removed from the scene, the written piece is a public claim on truth.

It will change the way you read as well: You will become more focused on the most relevant aspects, knowing that you cannot write down everything.

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

In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to. In the beginning, the perception was very much shaped by what worked before, and only the most immediate effects were visible. The ship owners looked at the bags and crates of goods and wondered why they should pack them a second time into another box. They were glad when they unloaded their goods at the harbour and they were eager to move on. They wondered why they should go container-hunting instead. They looked at the ships they had and wondered how to fit containers into them.

Caution

Fleeting notes are only useful if you review them within a day or so and turn them into proper notes you can use later.

Permanent notes, on the other hand, are written in a way that can still be understood even when you have forgotten the context they are taken from.

archive – the bin for the indecisive).

Every intellectual endeavour starts from an already existing preconception, which then can be transformed during further inquires and can serve as a starting point for following endeavours.

We will not be guided by a blindly made-up plan picked from our unreliable brains, but by our interest, curiosity and intuition, which is formed and informed by the actual work of reading, thinking, discussing, writing and developing ideas

If you haven’t written along the way, the brain is indeed the only place to turn to. On its own, it is not such a great choice: it is neither objective nor reliable