Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

A great book on this topic, especially if you're still in university is "How to be a straight A student" by Cal Newport (https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Straight-Student-Unconvent...)

Ignore the title for now and read through it, I believe there are excellent tips in note taking and how to process the notes to really excel in your studies.

If you're already working you have to adapt that system into something that works for you best, some use a bullet journal or audio notes and process them differently.

One really interesting approach (that I wasn't able to implement yet in full form) is to take creative notes (called sketchnotes). This works well if you're a visual person.

A great book on this would be The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde.

I can really recommend "How to Take Smart Notes" [1] by Sönke Ahrens. It's made a real difference for me. Ignore the self help-sounding title and give it a chance.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34507927

Are you perhaps a visual thinker, that you don't have a systematic way of writing might imply that you are. If so try visual note taking https://www.verbaltovisual.com/an-introduction-to-visual-not...

the important thing is to develop your note taking to match how you think. If you are organized the smart notes method is pretty good.

When I was in university, my girlfriend at the time taught me about good note-taking.

- Use paper. I could annotate printed PPT slides with the whitespace on 4 per page, but sometimes would overflow onto the (blank) reverse side. Computers have too many distracting notifications.

- Write down questions with a big (?) and ask them at an appropriate time. Professors care much more about that than you think, in Western education systems (don't get me started about my ill-fated Ph.D. attempt in Korea).

- Use coloured pens. If you think this looks too feminine or gay, get over yourself. It's SO much easier to quickly speed-read and study once you're doing this. I would use red for formulae, green/pink for definitions, black for examples, pencil for diagrams, blue for everything else.

Example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/49613268401/in/d...

I'd say it's nice to have a system in place with good tools. i.e. I can open any note page in my wiki in < 1 second.

Which results in me having a wiki of over 750 files now with over 18,000 lines in it. All parsed fully for instant access too and public.

https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/SUMM...

It does feel nice knowing there are resources for any topic I care to learn about with personal bookmarks and notes on any topic.

My note taking system: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/other/wiki-workflow

You may want to mix different note formats as needed. For example, you can use Google keep for simple notes and Evernote for notes that need to be organized. It is also a good idea to use a tree-based note-taking tool to organize your refined knowledge. This is because the structure of knowledge follows the structure of the tree. I use this(Actually, I made it): https://learnobit.com

This is a hard one to answer, and what works for someone might not for another.

The most useful advice for me has been to find a method, and stick with it. This is most important for organisation.

I prefer handwritten notes, and I only take notes on things I don't understand. I'm not writing a textbook - I don't need my notes to be a complete reference manual on the subject. Moreover, notest that explain how you went from 'eh?' to 'oh, yeah...' are so much more useful, and if you already understand something you don't have that moment to talk about. It's also a waste of time.

I use hardback notebooks. If I'm studying 3 things simultaneously, I have 3 notebooks running. When I finish one subject, I start the next a few pages later. I write the subjects on the spine (normally need a sticky label). The growth of my 'notebook library' has been quite satisfying!

My method of note-taking has varied a bit, I generally use the so-called 'Feynman technique'. I write the subject, leave a few blank lines, then go through the steps needed to understand the subject. I then write the 'summary' that I now understand in the blank space.

I might write a few exercises underneath, or reference a textbook, or something. Basically anything that will help me when I inevitably forget.

Often my notes are rewritten - my lecture notes are borderline unintelligable. After a while (at university) I gave up taking comprehensive notes, preferring to remain active in the class and then deliberately rewrite my notes using other sources later. This fuelled a powerful cycle - my other sources put me about half a lecture ahead, which helped me stay engaged in the lectures themselves, so I got more out of the lectures, and needed less study after. Lectures are like Shakespeare - knowing the plot enhances the experience.

Just handwriting by itself will force you to rephrase the topic at hand because you will be to slow to write everything down verbatim. This will improve your memory and understanding of the matter at hand.

Andrew Ng touched on this topic in his recent interview on the Articifial Intelligence Podcast https://lexfridman.com/andrew-ng/ (starting at around 53:00)

I think the magic to good note taking is to develop a discipline to write and having a system that supports organized note taking. I have found small little things can derail building a good discipline. For example, for years, I had been using vimwiki for my note taking, which is overall excellent, if you love vim, however is not readily available when you are away from your computer. For me this led to two sets of notes - one in vimwiki and another in Apple Notes app. As a result, I found myself disorganized and confused at times.

More recently I decided to drop vimwiki alltogether, a hard decision given that vim is my natural habitat for writing. I instead decided to fully adopt Apple Notes app as my only note taking app. I am finding that I am pretty happy with it. It provides a decent structure to organize notes and it's available on all devices that I care about.

I also found that having a "Scratchpad" note, eases my cognitive load, when I want to quickly brainstorm something, without having to worry about which folder/category/project the note should land in.

I like to do hand writing and drawing doodles for everything I want out of my head for the moment. I use small notepads for this purpose, so that the space is limited to store just the information that is important. If I work on a different topic or fraction of a larger one, I start a new page. The doodles help me to visualize a topic or a structured problem.

Later on I write down everything in Emvi [1] and add more detail, so that I know what I was thinking. The articles can be linked to each other to build deeper knowledge from small fractions of information ("structured by content"). I wrote about this concept on our blog [2]. We also have a few students that use this system in Emvi with great success.

I hopes this helps you to take better notes. Just try a few different methods until you find one that suits you.

[1] https://emvi.com/

[2] https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-t...

This is one of the best article about this topic [1]. Here is the best advice I took seriously:

"Organize your notes by context, not by topic"

[1] https://fortelabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/

If you want to take great notes, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that you don't need to worry about doing it right, your aptitude and personal preference will come without any conscious thought. The bad news is that there's no shortcut except for practice, practice, practice.

Having said that, here are some of the specifics that work for me.

- This notebook: Cambridge Jotter A5 Card Cover Wirebound Notebook Ruled 200 Page. A5 means it's easy to carry everywhere. Wirebound means the pages don't flap back on their own and only one sheet needs be open at a time. 200 page is a good balance between how long each notebook lasts.

- Put a DD/MM/YYYY and a title at the top of each page, don't be too fanatical, but contextualising the notes is essential, and it helps search. Abbreviated titles and dates are fine for when the notes of single events stretch over multiple pages.

- Always write notes at everything that could be a meeting or a talk.

Everything else came with experience and I can't really put it into words, though I've always appreciated when I've taken notes under the assumption that my future self will remember nothing of the event, it's been an accurate assumption more times than I care to mention.

Don't worry about chronological order being an imperfect method of organising data, it's a strong practical heuristic.

I think you ought to consider whether you should take notes at all. Notetaking is great for remembering actions that you have comitted to doing, or if you need to spread information to people who didn't participate in a meeting. Managers need to do a lot of notetaking.

However, taking notes seriously hinder your ability to engage with the material and build true understanding as you are listening, which would have helped you remember the material right away. If you are in school or are an individual contributor in a company I think you ought to stop taking notes all together.

If you need notes for future practice I would advice you to write them after the meeting/lecture. Actively recalling things from memory is the best form practice.

I would highly recommend that you check out "The Cornell Note Taking System":

http://lsc.cornell.edu/study-skills/cornell-note-taking-syst...

A surprisingly powerful technique is to formulate questions that can be answered by what you want to learn. By forcing yourself to recall, you strengthen your memory.

Here's a (former?) medical student explaining the Active Recall in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDbxPVn02VU

80% of the value of notes is the act of writing them down by hand. (I don't have a citation for it, but I tend to believe it). That is notes are primarily a tool to help you not fall asleep, start daydreaming, or whatever distraction keeps you from listening.

The fact that you cannot write everything down forces you to think about what you are hearing and find the important part to write down. Now that you have found the important part the writing helps you remember it.

When you are done with the above throw your notes in the recycling... Note that the above system works for me because I can't read my own writing anyway. (Probably a case of dysgraphia but I've never been formally diagnosed)

I was one of top math students in primary school. In secondary school I barely kept up with writing down stuff from blackboard, even less so at university. I just got by.

Now I learn at home using textbooks, solving exercises, programming and using online materials. I'm much happier now because I can spend as much time as I want until I feel I understand it.

My answer: don't take much notes. Write down only the main topics and unusual conclusions. There's not enough time at classroom so I need to learn at home anyway. If I were to go to university again, I would write down only a rough roadmap. Keep the best textbooks, exercise books and learning materials. They are like systematic notes, but better. For math it's good to have a topic covered by more than 1 textbook, because rarely an author has the same thinking pattern as you and it helps to have an alternate point of view.

After many years of experience and optimization I am most convinced of the outliner concept, and eventually I have even written my own tool for it (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/CrossLine/). A good outliner allows you to structure the text while you type without taking your hands off the keyboard. Compared to a linear text entry, e.g. with a text file, you can put the information directly into a context which makes it much easier to interpret it later. When I was in the management of several large defence projects, this concept helped me to always keep an overview and manage all relevant information in one place. Over time, I was able to record meetings with thirty to fifty people in real time and then distribute the minutes immediately afterwards.

I have been following a hybrid quadrant method for my meeting notes recently and have really enjoyed the process. The quadrant method has gained some popularity as the method that Bill Gates used to use for his meetings. Your paper is split into four areas, notes, questions, to-dos, assignments. This visual categorization has allowed me to cut down on time looking for information from a meeting and has streamlined my thought process. In addition to this quadrant, I have a topic of the meeting, talking points if it is a meeting I am running and then a next steps section that acts as a one line summary of the topic for the next meeting if it is a recurring one

For me it comes down to writing down a quick impression of what it is I'm learning. For this I use Notepad++. Then I go back the same day and rewrite my notes while the topic is fresh in mind. The rewritten notes go into Zim Wiki for long term storage. This method has worked well for me for several years now.

The tools don't matter though, but the method does. Modify it as needed to suit your own style and needs :)

No system for you just an anecdote for what it's worth. I've never been a note taker and typically taking notes distracts me from extracting the essence of the conversation. In my professional life, I will write down any action items that are assigned to me but will typically instantly go do them and thus rarely have to reference them.

In an academic setting where you're being tested on both the book and what was said in class that may have been "extratextual", the don't-take-notes-so-i-can-listen didn't work as well because I couldn't remember every nuance that could've been tested. In this setting, I found what worked for me was to write down literally everything the professor said in shorthand but comprehensible sentences. This helped my recall immensely and then my studying involved reading the notes i had written (takes about 15-30 minutes total) and seeing if they answered the review questions at the end of chapters.

This worked for most classes except for Discrete Structures and Automata which was such a novel and abstract concept for me at the time that I had to intently listen and scramble to draw the automata and write notes about my thought processes and "aha!" moments that happened on the fly. This is usually great for me still today when I want to remember the revelations that occur in my head as I'm pondering a concept or solution in real-time with a meeting.

Embrace the chaos of the blank text file. It's the most beautiful empty slate you could ask for, because you can so easily capture your ideas with a few keystrokes.

Don't overcomplicate it. The most important thing is the speed at which you can get your idea down in time, because ideas are often easier to grasp quickly than slowly, they kind of fade away exponentially with time, especially the more you try to articulate it.

Use the hierarchical system

I. Roman literals for big topics

  1. Arabic for lesser subjects

    A. For extra clarification 
    
      - for notes

You can expand it further, but these are usually enough. Got this one in university back when nobody had a computer with them. It really helps structure the material and get back to it later. Seems a bit too intuitive now with all the auto-formatting but still really helpful.

A lot of comments are focusing on note taking processes, but I would step back and ask this:

how will you know if your note taking strategy is working?

One thing that has helped me is keeping a high-level study journal. In essence, I have a small calendar that I draw in a notebook each month. Every morning, I write down ~3 key things I did / studied the previous day. Then, I reflect back on the past couple weeks.

If you're in school, you don't want to wait until a final test to realize you've got a lot to study. And in class, you're not in a good position to think about the notes you'd want a week from now. By journaling and reflecting, you can explore note-taking from a review oriented mindset, "what kind of notes do I wish I had taken yesterday / last week?"