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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.