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

by Sönke Ahrens

most organisational decisions can be made up front, once and for all, by deciding on one system.

By always using the same notebook for making quick notes, always extracting the main ideas from a text in the same way and always turning them into the same kind of permanent notes, which are always dealt with in the same manner, the number of decisions during a work session can be greatly reduced.

Being able to finish a task in a timely manner and to pick up the work exactly where we left it has another enjoyable advantage that helps to restore our attention: We can have breaks without fear of losing the thread. Breaks are much more than just opportunities to recover. They are crucial for learning. They allow the brain to process information, move it into long-term memory and prepare it for new information (Doyle and Zakrajsek 2013, 69).

have a walk (Ratey, 2008) or even a nap22 supports learning and thinking.23 10 Read for Understanding “I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand, and enter in a little book short hints of what you find that is curious, or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such particulars in your memory.” – Benjamin Franklin 1840, 250

10.1 Read With a Pen in Hand

To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft; to get a good draft written, you only have to turn a seri...

And as a series of notes is just the rearrangement of notes you already have in your slip-box, all you really have to do is ha...

understand what you read and translate it into the different context ...

transform the findings and thoughts of others into something that...

The series of notes in the slip-box develops into arguments, which are shaped by the theories, ideas and ment...

the theories, ideas and mental models in your head are also shaped by...

The slip-box is an idea generator that develops in lockstep with your own intellectual development. Together, you can turn previously separated or even isolated facts into a critical mass of interconnected ideas.

The step from the slip-box to the final text is pretty straightforward. The content is already meaningful, thought through and in many parts already put into well-connected sequences. The notes only need to be put into a linear order.

Therefore, the outcome is never a copy of previous work, but always comes with surprises. There will always be something you couldn’t have anticipated.

reading with a pen in the hand is not possible to anticipate,

to have a meaningful dialogue with the texts we read.

Translating means to give the truest possible account of the original work using different words – it does not mean the freedom to make something fit.

the mere copying of quotes almost always changes their meaning by stripping them of context, even though the words aren’t changed.

literature notes will be stored within the reference system together with the bibliographic details, separate from the slip-box, but still close to the context of the original text, they are already written with an eye towards the lines of thoughts within the slip-

Luhmann describes this step as follows: “I always have a slip of paper at hand, on which I note down the ideas of certain pages. On the back, I write down the bibliographic details. After finishing the book, I go through my notes and think how these notes might be relevant for already written notes in the slip-box. It means that I always read with an eye towards possible connections in the slip-box.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 150)

How extensive the literature notes should be really depends on the text and what we need it for. It also depends on our ability to be concise, the complexity of th...

Luhmann, certainly being on the outer spectrum of expertise, contented himself with pretty short notes and was still able to turn them into valuable slip-box notes without distorting the meaning of the original texts.

Whenever we explore a new, unfamiliar subject, our notes will tend to be more extensive, but we shouldn’t get nervous about it, as this is the deliberate practice of understanding we cannot skip.

slowly work our way through a difficult text and sometimes it is enough to reduce a whole book to a single sentence.

these notes provide the best possible support for the next step, the writing of t...

And what is most helpful is to reflect on the frame, theoretical background, methodological approach or perspective of the text we read. That often means to reflect as much...

Without a clear purpose for the notes, taking them will feel more like a chore than an important step within a bigger project.

But with the slip-box, everything is about building up a critical mass of useful notes, which gives us a clear idea of how to read and how to take literature notes.

While the purpose of taking literature notes is as clear as the procedure, you are free to use whatever technique helps the most with understanding what you are reading and getting to useful notes – even if you use ten different colours for underlining and a SQ8R reading technique. But all of this would be just an extra step before you do the only step that really counts, which is to take the permanent note that will add value to the slip-

You need to take some form of literature note that captures your understanding of the text, so you have something in front of your eyes w...

Literature notes are short and meant to help with writi...

You can type a literature note directly into Zotero, where it will be stored with the bibliographic details. You might want to write them by hand, though. Different independent studies indicate that writing by hand facilitates understanding. In a small but fascinating study, two psychologists tried to find out if it made a difference if students in a lecture took notes by hand or by typing them into their laptops (Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014). They were not able to find any difference in terms of the number of facts the students were able to remember.

Because students can’t write fast enough to keep up with everything that is said in a lecture, they are forced to focus on the gist of what is being said, not the details. But to be able to note down the gist of a lecture, you have to understand it in the first place.

If you decide to write your notes by hand, just keep them in one place and sort them alphabetically in the usual way: “SurnameYear.” Then you can easily match them with the bibliographic details in your reference system. But whether you write them by hand or not, keep in mind that it is all about the essence, the understanding and preparation for the next step — the transferring of ideas into the context of your own lines of thoughts in the slip-box.

While selectivity is the key to smart note-taking, it is equally important to be selective in a smart way. Unfortunately, our brains are not very smart in selecting information by default.

The very moment we decide on a hypothesis, our brains automatically go into search mode, scanning our surroundings for supporting data,

Confirmation bias is a subtle but major force. As the psychologist Raymond Nickerson puts it: “If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration” (Nickerson 1998, 175).

Even the best scientists and thinkers are not free from it. What sets them apart is the mere fact that they are aware of the problem and do something about it.

He forced himself to write down (and therefore elaborate on) the arguments that were the mos...

“I had [...] during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections we...

This is a good (primarily mental) technique to deal with confirmation bias. But we are looking for ways to implement insight into our psycholo...