# How to Take Smart Notes Author: [[Sönke Ahrens]] ## Summary The book is about creating a note taking process for tracking information and thoughts in a systematic way and allowing you to combine these notes to create new insights through thought and writing. We have a limited short-term memory and our brain gets distracted by lingering thoughts/problems it wants to 'solve'. The graph based note-taking system created by Luhmann is like external scaffolding for learning analysing, and writing research. We need to start by building a habit of having pen&paper at hand and taking notes while thinking and reading. You also have to take notes on literature references. These start out as quick notes (maybe in a journal) but are then expanded into permanent paragraph-sized notes, connected to other related notes through links. We learn through building a deeper understanding so it's important to elaborate the important ideas, theories and models. Learning, as well as creativity, comes through building connections to our own memories and knowledge, abstracting and drawing comparisons. The content and connections change over time as your own interests and thinking changes. Topics and Ideas are developed by looking at connections and clusters of notes. Begin a writing project by bringing together notes on a topic or idea. Group and order them, look for holes or redundancies. Write 'glue' material between the content of notes to create a rough draft. The next step requires a different mindset. While proofreading and editing you need to be more detail oriented and analytical. Once you have a number of notes, writing is easy and each step is a simple task. The best way to build up notes is by following your interests in reading and thinking and always having a pen & paper at hand. ## Review The ideas in the book will help me in developing a better note-taking system, by helping me remember the important ideas from books and to build out my own ideas over time. The temporary note-taking journal is something that I immediately adopted while reading this. I jot stuff down as I read. Going through the journal later also helps me remember and rethink the key ideas while rephrasing and elaborating. I am less interested in the particular method of linking notes based on topics or threads. Something like Roam or Obsidian with two-way links to a variety of topics works better for me. I am also not adopting the bite-size notes with only the key ideas. I can see how this could be useful and I might reconsider that in the future. The ideas in the book are useful for anyone who has to do a lot of reading and potentially writing. The process laid out for writing by putting notes together, connecting them, editing etc was interesting and I will adopt this as well. ## Background Creating good research does not start with a blank page as most believe or are taught to believe in University. This belief causes the struggle with writing. Another problem is that creating insight cannot be rigidly structured. The process is fluid and open ended. To write well and about interesting topics requires previous insight, and is more about what you have written before you begin the writing process. The sociologist Luhmann solved this problem through his slip box solution. Before he became a sociologist his hobby was reading about a broad range of topics. He often took random notes scattered about and realised that the notes weren't helping him. He created a system of writing individual notes about stuff he had read, and individual thoughts/ideas that he had on separate pieces of paper. This notes were also linked to other relevant notes. To become a sociologist he used consulted this box of cards to write two theses in a year to become a professor. At the end of his career he was one of the most productive scholars, having written 30 odd books, each packed with ideas. This was all thanks to his note-taking system. ## Researching and Writing Process 1. We should always have a pen and paper in hand when learning, reading or thinking. Make temporary quick and dirty notes on original thoughts or literature references. 2. Make notes permanent by taking the temporary (inbox) notes, rephrasing them, elaborating on them, and referencing them. Put them in a permanent location. 3. Link your notes to other notes that are thematically or topically related. 4. Browse through your notes and develop ideas from the bottom up. Look for chains of notes and ideas. 5. Collect relevant notes and references on a topic and put them together. Order them, look for missing pieces of information, holes in the arguments or redundancies. 6. Write a rough draft by creating a coherent argument from the writing in your notes. 7. After clearing your mind, begin the editing and proofreading stage. Repeat the last couple of steps until you have finished the process. ## Misc. Notes - By rewriting ideas for your own words and connecting them to your own existing knowledge and thoughts, you are ensuring true understanding. - This makes learning more rewarding and propels you to learn more. - Multi-tasking is the switching of attention, instead of focusing on one task. - There are different kinds of attention: The defocused, exploratory child-like mind, and the hyperfocused detail oriented mind. These different kinds of attention are needed for different kinds of tasks such as idea generation and word choice (play), or proofreading and analytical editing. - There is significant value in intuition, which is simply the internalised decision making system from historical experience. We build intuition through repeated practice and feedback. - we learn things better if we can connect them to pre-existing ideas. - Our brain wants to work on lingering thoughts. That can either be a distraction, or a benefit. - We can only focus on one thing at a time, we can only have so much in our mind at a time, and we have limited willpower. - A note taking system and tailored work environment can reduce the strain on will power. - Read for understanding, in particular for the context you are thinking in and your mental models. - Notes can be more or less extensive depending on your individual context, but should result in permanent understanding and be comprehensible to you in the future. - Trying to understand the truth from the ground up allows us to be more open-minded to contradictory information. - We need to spot the patterns of thought and theories rather than learning individual pieces of supporting evidence. - The more you do this the better you become at seeing the structure and patterns. - Create a system that embeds these habits. - True learning comes from deep understanding, elaborating and forming connections. - Creativity is related to the ability to abstract, comparing, understanding differences and similarities, and drawing connections. - A note taking system such as the 'slip-box' allows you to draw these connections over time as you learn and think. ## Related - [[Logical Thinking]] - [[The Logical Thinking Process]] - [[Framework for analysis and decision-making]]