How to Take Smart Notes
Sönke Ahrens
“The key to creativity is being able to switch between a wide-open, playful mind and a narrow, analytical frame
What I like
A really novel concept illustrated thoroughly
Easy to read, short chapters
Never felt dragged out of redundant
Easy to start using, today
What’s missing
Sometimes a bit extreme. For example, around things like planning, which have a time and place.
Key Topics
Note-taking,
Review
How to Take Smart Notes was recommended to me by a close friend. This book radically changed my thoughts around notetaking, understanding information, reading, and writing. I would recommend that everyone who is serious about doing research read this book. It’s really interesting.
The book covers the A-Z of a tool called a Zettelkasten (AKA Slipbox) invented by Niklas Luhmann in 1955. The idea is simple and akin to the modern “second brain”. Users take relevant information from a variety of sources (books, speeches, images, random thoughts, etc.) and organize them in the same place. The user of the box should make meaningful connections and elaborate on notes in order to build expertise in a space. There is a method to how the box should be used, but what I like is that it’s so open to interpretation, and that the author is progressive on using digital tools like Zotero (which I now use) as a second brain.
The book dives deep through topics like human behavior, human nature, understanding, knowledge organization, information architecture, research, writing, simplicity, complexity, abstraction and more. What readers walk away with is a new perspective on how to effectively learn. Since reading this book I have been taking notes in Zotero and linking them together so that I can access them later and build new ideas.
Learnings
The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic.
Self discipline and self control and willpower are important. Not having willpower and not having to use willpower is a sign of success.
Planning vs. Structure. The challenge is to structure one's workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward. Don’t become dependent on a plan that is threatened by the unexpected.
The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible and to follow a few basic principles.
GTD = Getting things done. Focus with a mind like water. Only when you trust your system can you truly let go and focus on tasks at hand.
The best way to maintain the feeling of being in control is to stay in control. And to stay in control, it's better to keep your options open during the writing process rather than limit yourself to your first idea.
We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains.
Writing notes accompanies the main work and, done right, it helps with it
When taking smart notes- there are three types of notes: fleeting notes, literature notes, and permanent notes
Permanent notes are connected together in some way even if they come from different sources, collectively they are used to develop insights, topics, questions, and research projects
With enough ideas you can make a topic to write about, and a rough draft. Edit and proofread your rough draft
Insight into things may change interests
You need four tools: something to write with, a reference management system, a slip-box, and an editor
There are four major principles: writing is the only thing that matters, simplicity is paramount
Writing is not a linear process rather circular, but does require a good structure, not necessarily a plan
A growth mindset means getting pleasure out of changing for the better (inwardly rewarding) rather than getting praised (outwardly)
Virtuous cycle of competence
Expressing our own thoughts in writing makes us realize if we really thought them through.
The better we become at distinguishing important from unimportant bits of text, the more effective our reading will become, the more we can read, the more we will learn.
Give each task the right amount of attention: Avoiding multitask, removing possible distractions, and separating different tasks so they don’t interfere with each other is a good way to train yourself to be focused.
Different tasks require different kinds of focus (i.e writing vs reading). “ The key to creativity is being able to switch between a wide-open, playful mind and a narrow, analytical frame” -Dean 2013
Experts have built up enough knowledge and have made enough mistakes to have the intuition to act without planning and are more likely to spot expertise compared to teachers
Zeigarnik effect: open tasks tend to occupy our short term memory until they are done. This can be remedied by writing down tasks until they are finished
Reading without taking notes defeats the purpose of reading. Writing notes helps build understanding.
The only thing that matters with slipbox notes is that it connects or is open to connections. It prefers relevant notes
The slip box should be considered bipartisan when it comes to validating or invalidating research. Put in data that supports both sides of the hypotheses to put confirmation bias in check
With practice comes the ability to find the words to express something in the best possible ways, which means simple, but not simplified. 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
The mere-exposure effect is a phenomenon where we think we understand something just because we’re exposed to it. Actually learning something requires us to elaborate on it, speak about it, teach it, or connect it with other ideas. Learning requires more than just re-exposure, we need to spend time exploring concepts
Collecting quotes and notes verbatim is not an effective way not learn. At the very least one must create novel ideas or interpretations from quotes and connect them with other things. Taking three slip box notes a day is okay.
Most sciences agree that the brain is not suitable for storing notes and that external scaffolding or memory is necessary for us to store and eventually process information. Our brain tries too hard to make us feel good and is dangerous for storing concepts objectively. By writing down what something means to us, and how it connects with other ideas, we force ourselves to make sense of and disambiguate concepts.
Forgetting is as important as remembering. Filtering out relevant from irrelevant information from our brain is key to processing and is called inhibition. Our abilities to store information are pretty much unlimited, but our abilities to retrieve memories are very much limited.
Notes should have keywords that connect them with other ideas. Keywords are rarely on the note itself. Keywords can be used in an index to dive in to topics or ideas.
By comparing and collecting notes we can further refine our understanding of what information means. Seemingly redundant information between sources is a signal that an idea has legs.
It’s good to be aware of high-level implications across different things. (music, physics, psychology, business, etc.).. we can gain what is called worldly wisdom. Moreover, by building a latticework across different things, we can build our internal understanding and external learning structures further.
We learn something not only when we connect it to prior knowledge and try to understand its broader implications (elaboration), but also when we try to retrieve it as different times (spacing) in different contexts (variation), ideally with the help of chance (contextual inference) and with a deliberate effort (retrieval).
Restricting ourselves (e.g letters for a piece of content) allows us to standardize the way that we think about our ideas and is a fast-track towards simplicity and connecting ideas together. Therefore, structure and restrictions are two great ways to further our thinking.
When it comes to writing it is important to switch from a note-taking mindset to a writing mindset, which requires moving from the task of collecting relevant information to using relevant information as it pertains to supporting and identifying gaps in your argument.
People are bad at planning.
People have habits, and changing those habits requires a lot of effort.