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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Sönke Ahrens
fleeting notes inevitably leads to chaos. Even small amounts of unclear and unrelated notes lingering around your desk will soon induce the wish of starting from scratch.
this makes it clear the advice is to clear fleeting notes regularly (not as ADHD friendly)
Fleeting notes are there for capturing ideas quickly while you are busy doing something else. When you are in a conversation, listening to a lecture, hear something noteworthy or an idea pops into your mind while you are running errands, a quick note is the best you can do without interrupting what you are in the middle of doing.
think about why I'm writing it. am I just getting it out of my head so I can continue focusing? is it more of a task? might be fleeting. you might be able to turn them in to permanent notes depending on how complete they are.
If you already know that you will not go back to them, don’t take these kind of notes in the first place.
some things aren't even fleeting notes
before he stored them away, he would read what he noted down during the day, think about its relevance for his own lines of thought and write about it, filling his main slip-box with permanent notes. Nothing in this box would ever get thrown away.
reading is part of the (EOD?) review to move an item from the inbox to the slip box. it helps you connect ideas in your brain enough that they'll be useful later
In contrast to the fleeting notes, every permanent note for the slip-box is elaborated enough to have the potential to become part of or inspire a final written piece, but that cannot be decided on up front as their relevance depends on future thinking and developments.
this points to the purpose of the slip box. the focus is writing. the learning is part of the writing process
Project-related notes can be: • comments in the manuscript • collections of project-related literature • outlines • snippets of drafts • reminders • to-do lists • and of course the draft itself.
things that are only useful to the project. if it could be part of some writing in the future, it belongs in the slip box.
When you close the folder for your current project in the evening and nothing is left on your desk other than pen and paper, you know that you have achieved a clear separation between fleeting, permanent and project-related notes.
a good rule of thumb that is probably more metaphor for me.
physical doom piles will exist in my space. so, how do I handle metaphoric doom piles of notes?
In order to develop a good question to write about or find the best angle for an assignment, one must already have put some thought into a topic. To be able to decide on a topic, one must already have read quite a bit and certainly not just about one topic.
this seems to leave most reading except during a project to be based on your interests. interests can be intrinsic or extrinsic.
We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts.
building mastery comes through interest.
There is one reliable sign if you managed to structure your workflow according to the fact that writing is not a linear process, but a circular one: the problem of finding a topic is replaced by the problem of having too many topics to write about.
read about interesting topics so you have plenty of ideas to write about.
How can you not have trouble finding a topic if you believe you have to decide on one before you have done your research, have read and learned about something? How can you not feel threatened by an empty page if you have literally nothing at hand to fill it with?
Ingesting materials and taking notes gives a foundation to write from.
By doing the work, you can trust that interesting questions will emerge.
this works for more than just note taking
Only if the work itself becomes rewarding can the dynamic of motivation and reward become self-sustainable and propel the whole process forward
Embracing a growth mindset means to get pleasure out of changing for the better (which is mostly inwardly rewarding) instead of getting pleasure in being praised (which is outwardly rewarding).
this is a good way to be mindful of how I'm dealing with feedback
Having a growth mindset is crucial, but only one side of the equation. Having a learning system in place that enables feedback loops in a practical way is equally important. Being open for feedback doesn’t help very much if the only feedback you can get comes once every few months for work you have already finished.
getting help along the way and asking for it early can help with this
Reading with a pen in the hand, for example, forces, us to think about what we read and check upon our understanding. It is the simplest test: We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words.
notes should be written as my retelling of the information, instead of questions or other thoughts
learn.
it's okay to be bad at note taking at first. as long as we try to get better as we find what works, we are doing it correctly.
The slip-box is not a collection of notes. Working with it is less about retrieving specific notes and more about being pointed to relevant facts and generating insight by letting ideas mingle. Its usability grows with its size, not just linearly but exponentially. When we turn to the slip-box, its inner connectedness will not just provide us with isolated facts, but with lines of developed thoughts.
our ability to learn isolated facts is indeed limited and probably decreases with age. But if facts are not kept isolated nor learned in an isolated fashion, but hang together in a network of ideas, or “latticework of mental models” (Munger, 1994), it becomes easier to make sense of new information.
The brain works on connections of ideas. This is why memory trucks are about connecting things to something else. like a mind palace or mnemonic.
In short, academic writing requires the whole spectrum of attention. To master the art of writing, we need to be able to apply whatever kind of attention and focus is needed.
different types of focus are needed for different types of tasks associated with writing. trying to do multiple tasks (like proofreading while you are creating the draft, or outlining) is a form of multitasking and will hinder your writing practice.
the problem-solving behavior of eminent scientists can alternate between extraordinary levels of focus on specific concepts and playful exploration of ideas. This suggests that successful problem solving may be a function of flexible strategy application in relation to task demands.” (Vartanian 2009, 57)
problem solving is not just pure focus. it is also mind wandering and other creative forms of focus. Getting out of a block could be done with a change of focus type.
Don’t make plans. Become an expert.
read and ponder so you can synthesize ideas from multiple sources.
Experts, on the other hand, have internalised the necessary knowledge so they don’t have to actively remember rules or think consciously about their choices.
learn through experience. experience requires you keep doing the work and see what lands and what fails. you'll get an instinct over time (as long as you get some type of feedback/data)
Once we make a meaningful connection to an idea or fact, it is difficult not to remember it when we think about what it is connected with.
we extend our memory by bundling ideas together. that becomes easier when we understand the content and can link meaning to it. learn about different things so we can better bundle new ideas together.
we don’t actually have to finish tasks to convince our brains to stop thinking about them. All we have to do is to write them down in a way that convinces us that it will be taken care of.
“Our results suggest that a broad assortment of actions make use of the same resource. Acts of self-control, responsible decision making, and active choice seem to interfere with other such acts that follow soon after. The implication is that some vital resource of the self becomes depleted by such acts of volition. To be sure, we assume that this resource is commonly replenished, although the factors that might hasten or delay the replenishment remain unknown, along with the precise nature of this resource.” – Baumeister et al., 1998, 1263f
keep this in mind with ADHD. there is so much work, especially to maintain attention, that we need to replenish before we are totally drained
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. That leaves us with much more mental energy that we can direct towards more useful tasks, like trying to solve the problems in question.
find the system that works for me and minimize the times it will change. though change is likely to work for me because of the ADHD. Do it because it works, not because you're supposed to or should.
The outcome of reading with a pen in the hand is not possible to anticipate, either, and here, too, the idea is not to copy, but to have a meaningful dialogue with the texts we read.
more than putting stuff into your own words. think about the ideas you read. what questions come to mind. if you answer it later, you're doing the work. if not, you're still doing the work if it leads to searching for an answer some time in the future.
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.
however you take notes, synthesis is important to understanding. after reading a book, synthesize something. if doesn't have to be many notes but make out a practice.
Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman once said that he could only determine whether he understood something if he could give an introductory lecture on it.
a note in a book should be simple. a permanent note can go deeper
Of course, it would be helpful to involve other people at all stages of the writing process, because then we can see in their faces how well we have put something or how convincing our arguments are, but that is rather impractical.
all stages may be impractical, but finding people with valuable feedback that you trust can be added where you can. ask for help to improve.
If we don’t try to verify our understanding during our studies, we will happily enjoy the feeling of getting smarter and more knowledgeable while in reality staying as dumb as we were. This warm feeling disappears quickly when we try to explain what we read in our own words in writing.
Practice rephrasing ideas on your own words to validate understanding.
Seeing something we have seen before causes the same emotional reaction as if we had been able to retrieve the information from our memory. Rereading, therefore, makes us feel we have learned what we read: “I know that already!”
Reading alone is not enough to understand, even if we feel like we understand. The feeling is similar, if not the same, as pulling the idea from our memory. so, test that we can rephrase an idea.
“The one who does the work does the learning,” writes Doyle (2008, 63).
Learning requires practical use of the knowledge. That can be direct use of taking the knowledge and synthesizing it into something else. but, at some point the knowledge needs to be tested in action, not on a school test.
It is like fast food: It is neither nutritious nor very enjoyable, it is just convenient.
Something being like fast food, neither nutritional or very good, just being convenient, is a good test for if we are actually learning something. It is probably a good test for things in the realm of ADHD executive function challenges.
When we try to answer a question before we know how to, we will later remember the answer better, even if our attempt failed (Arnold and McDermott 2013). If we put effort into the attempt of retrieving information, we are much more likely to remember it in the long run, even if we fail to retrieve it without help in the end (Roediger and Karpicke 2006).
Trying to remember something and failing is better at creating memories than not trying at all.
Plus, exercise reduces stress, which is good, because stress floods our brains with hormones that suppress learning processes (Baram et al. 2008).
some sort of exercise can reduce stress which will reduce chemicals that hinder learning. Also, it gives the mind time to wander and move information to long term memory. Taking exercise breaks is a good idea.
Elaboration means nothing other than really thinking about the meaning of what we read, how it could inform different questions and topics and how it could be combined with other knowledge. In fact, “Writing for Learning” is the name of an “elaboration method” (Gunel, Hand, and Prain 2007).
Elaboration and synergy are the most effective methods of learning and understanding.
There is a clear division of labour between the brain and the slip-box: The slip-box takes care of details and references and is a long-term memory resource that keeps information objectively unaltered. That allows the brain to focus on the gist, the deeper understanding and the bigger picture, and frees it up to be creative. Both the brain and the slip-box can focus on what they are best at.
The permanent notes are your elaborations. The permanent notes gives you something to reference when you remember thinking about an idea in the past. The brain keeps the gist of those ideas so that you know them, if not the details.
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.
As you get better at reading and taking notes, you train your mind to ask questions of the text and see if it has the answers rather than seeing the text as already having all the answers.
Jerome Bruner, a psychologist Lonka refers to, goes a step further and says that scientific thinking is plainly impossible if we can’t manage to think beyond a given context and we only focus on the information as it is given to us (Bruner, 1973, quoted after ibid.)
Scientific thinking requires us to think beyond what we read. This is related to the distinction between research and study. When people did their own research, they probably just studied a small amount of text or other content.
This, he writes in his autobiography: “allowed me to produce over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, and if kept up through ten months, would have given as its results three novels of three volumes each in the year” (Trollope, 2008, 272).
A regular practice of writing can create a an amazing size of content over time. This says nothing of improving your writing through practice. This writing can be the permanent notes after you have read other things.
Luhmann’s slip-box contains about 90,000 notes, which sounds like an incredibly large number. But it only means that he wrote six notes a day from the day he started to work with his slip-box until he died.
It doesn't take a lot of permanent notes to build up a large base of knowledge to draw from.
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 down our own thoughts is the same practice of testing knowledge. This test is whether or not it is a full fledged thought that you have enough understanding to put together.
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.
Memories evolve in our brain to seem as if they fit the situation we are in. Moving thoughts and details outside of the brain is the best way to keep a better connection to the reality of the ideas created or learned.
“Notes on paper, or on a computer screen [...] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible”
Thinking occurs outside of the brain more than we realize. Writing is the way to make it solid (as opposed to speaking).
But the first question I asked myself when it came to writing the first permanent note for the slip-box was: What does this all mean for my own research and the questions I think about in my slip-box? This is just another way of asking: Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest?
Why are you writing the note? What about it is interesting or useful in some way?
While I am writing these notes, it becomes obvious that the answer to the question “why” has already triggered more follow-up questions, like: Isn’t this already discussed in theories of social inequality? If yes: Who discussed it? If not: Why not? And where do I turn to, to find answers to these questions? Correct: The first choice for further inquiry is the slip-box. Maybe there is already something on social inequality that helps me to answer these questions, or at least an indication of where to look.
Your notes should answer the questions you care to ask. What are you going to create with it? What questions are you going to want to answer? Over time you may have answers to new questions already.
We are very dependent on a subconscious mechanism that reliably inhibits almost every memory every moment except the very, very few that are truly helpful in a situation. Unfortunately, we cannot just consciously pluck from our memory what we need like from a folder in an archive. That would require the memory we can choose from to be already in our conscious mind, which would render the mechanism of remembering redundant. Remembering is the very mechanism to bring a memory back into our conscious mind. Therefore, Shereshevsky might not have had an ability most of us do not possess, but lacked
...more
We only need to remember the most important concepts (to us) so that we aren't overwhelmed with the weight of all knowledge.
it does make sense to shift the attention from the question of how to prevent information from getting lost or decaying over time to how to keep access to it. How “accessible it is at a given point in time” therefore depends on “how entrenched or interassociated that representation is with related representations in memory” (Bjork 2011, 2).
Making more connections between ideas is how we strengthen our brain's ability to retrieve that information.
