How to Take Smart Notes Quotes

“you constantly need to add energy to keep the process going. In”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes

“elaborating on the differences and similarities of notes instead of sorting them by topic not only facilitates learning, but facilitates the ability to categorise and create sensible classifications!”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Learned right, which means understanding, which means connecting in a meaningful way to previous knowledge, information almost cannot be forgotten anymore and will be reliably retrieved if triggered by the right cues. Moreover, this new learned knowledge can provide more possible connections for new information. If you focus your time and energy on understanding, you cannot help but learn.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“The results of several recent studies support the hypothesis that retention is facilitated by acquisition conditions that prompt people to elaborate information in a way that increases the distinctiveness of their memory representations.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Writing for Learning” is the name of an “elaboration method”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“the best-researched and most successful learning method is elaboration.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Instead of reviewing a text, you could just as well play a round of ping-pong. In fact, chances are it would help you more because exercise helps to transfer information into long-term memory (cf. Ratey 2008). Plus, exercise reduces stress, which is good, because stress floods our brains with hormones that suppress learning processes”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Manipulations such as variation, spacing, introducing contextual interference, and using tests, rather than presentations, as learning events, all share the property that they appear during the learning process to impede learning, but they then often enhance learning as measured by post-training tests of retention and transfer. Conversely, manipulations such as keeping conditions constant and predictable and massing trials on a given task often appear to enhance the rate of learning during instruction or training, but then typically fail to support long-term retention and transfer”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“The most important advantage of writing is that it helps us to confront ourselves when we do not understand something as well as we would like to believe.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“With practice comes the ability to find the right words to express something in the best possible way, which means in a simple, but not simplified way. Not only will the readers of your text appreciate your ability to explain something clearly, those you talk to will benefit from this ability as well, as it is not limited to writing. It spills over into speaking and thinking. It is proven that readers regard an author and an audience a speaker as more intelligent the more clear and to the point their expressions are”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“The ability to spot patterns, to question the frames used and detect the distinctions made by others, is the precondition to thinking critically and looking behind the assertions of a text or a talk. Being able to re-frame questions, assertions and information is even more important than having an extensive knowledge, because without this ability, we wouldn’t be able to put our knowledge to use. The good news is that these skills can be learned. But it requires deliberate practice”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“It makes sense to always ask the question: What is not meant, what is excluded if a certain claim is made? If someone speaks of ‘human rights:’ What distinction is made? A distinction towards ‘non-human rights?’ ‘Human duties?’ Is it a cultural comparison or one with some historic people who didn’t have the concept of human rights, but lived okay together anyway? Often, the text does not give an answer or a clear answer to this question. But then one has to resort to one’s own imagination.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“The slip-box is pretty agnostic about the content it is fed. It just prefers relevant notes. It is after reading and collecting relevant data, connecting thoughts and discussing how they fit together”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead of top-down is the first and most important step to opening ourselves up for insight. We should be able to focus on the most insightful ideas we encounter and welcome the most surprising turns of events without jeopardizing our progress or, even better, because it brings our project forward.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“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”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“successful problem solving may be a function of flexible strategy application in relation to task demands.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“A lack of structure makes it much more challenging to stay focused for extended periods of time.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“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. That makes it easier not only to learn and remember, but also to retrieve the information later in the moment and context it is needed.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“The ability to express understanding in one’s own words is a fundamental competency for everyone who writes – and only by doing it with the chance of realizing our lack of understanding can we become better at it. But the better we become, the easier and quicker we can make notes, which again increases the number of learning experiences. The same applies to the crucial ability to distinguish the important bits of a text from the less important ones: the better we become at it, the more effective our reading will become, the more we can read, the more we will learn. We will enter a beautiful, virtuous circle of competency. You cannot help but feel motivated by it.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Reading with a pen in the hand, for example, forces, us to think about what we read and check upon our understanding.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“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). The orientation towards the latter makes one stick to safe, proven areas. The orientation towards the first draws the attention to the areas most in need of improvement.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“the most reliable predictor for long-term success is having a “growth mindset.” To actively seek and welcome feedback, be it positive or negative, is one of the most important factors for success (and happiness) in the long run.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“The best way to maintain the feeling of being in control is to stay in control.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what we are doing”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

“In fact, poor students often feel more successful (until they are tested), because they don’t experience much self-doubt. In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger and Dunning, 1999)”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes

“Doing the work required and doing it in a smart way leads, somehow unsurprisingly, to success.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes

“What can we do differently in the weeks, months or even years before we face the blank page that will get us into the best possible position to write a great paper easily?”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes

“The ability to express understanding in one’s own words is a fundamental competency for everyone who writes – and only by doing it with the chance of realizing our lack of understanding can we become better at it.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking