Zim wiki Alt-D. Otherwise pen and paper.
Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#12Very roughly Cornell Notes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes
I have an "actions" column on mine.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#13I like using Emacs to create org mode files. I used o use One Note from Microsoft. But I had a huge problem and stopped using it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#14My experience is that a lot of the value in taking notes is NOT referring back to them later. Just the act of writing them down somehow forces me to remember more of what was covered. And, for reasons I don't understand, this works much better if I'm writing with pen and paper. Typing them doesn't have the same effect. Somewhat unfortunate, because writing them by hand makes them much less useful when I do need to re…
I have similar experience.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#15Couple of core rules for me:
- If the instructor takes the time to repeat something, write it down.
- If the instructor takes the time to write something on the board, write it down.
- If the instructor takes the time to point out something on a slide in a presentation, write it down.
- Later that evening, rewrite the notes in a more organized fashion.
A lot of note-taking is figuring out what's important and what's not important. Once you can make some educated guesses as to what's important, you can filter out the rest and keep your notes clean and organized.
Honestly, when I follow the above rules, I rarely need to refer back to the notes again. But if I had a big test or something, the solidly organized, high-value notes made it a breeze to study.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#16I experimented for a while until I found my favorite solution, which I'm really quite thrilled about.
I treat my notes as if they were a software project, which is to say, a collection of text files organized according to domain-specific methods. I use a code editor to write and edit notes (Textmate in my case) -- this has the bonus of not just using my familiarity with my code editor, but it actually adds to the value of improving my skills with the code editor, since that makes me better at notes and at code.
I keep two projects -- "life" notes and "work" notes. They are stored in Dropbox (and are additionally put in version control, although I commit changes rarely). Storing them in dropbox makes them all accessible on my mobile phone, which is nice.
In the root directory of my "life" notes, I have:
a few scratchpad_{identifier}.txt files (alpha, beta, etc.) -- so I always have an easy file to jump to to take notes on anything. I then synthesize these notes into a more useful location.
todo.txt -- a todo list schedule.txt -- notes on my schedule (typically to aid planning things a few weeks ahead, not a replacement for a calendar app) goals.txt -- keep my life goals front and center
and then directories, which included .txt files related to their title, or further subdirectories:
career culture (notes on articles) finances identification (keep track of useful info like VIN #) journal knowledge (non-career related learning) lifestyle (hobby-related notes, fun ideas) media_lists (books to read, books read, movies (watched/to watch), podcasts, etc.) projects (personal software project notes, ideas, before they deserve their own repo) travel self_improvement writing
Like a software project, I sometimes "refactor" the notes; the goal being to improve the ease of storing and the value of retrieval of the notes -- as a bonus, going through the notes refreshes valuable information for me.
My work notes are organized in a similar manner, but related to work things.
It's an awesome workflow -- almost everything I write starts in a scratchpad, and either gets migrated and synthesized elsewhere, or (like code) deleted if not worth maintaining.
After a lot of exploring solutions, returning to the core concept of files in folders and a text editor has been a perfect fit for me -- I never used to be big on notes, now I relish it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#17Others have mentioned many ways to write useful notes.
My recommendation is that you rewrite your notes to retain what you learned.
I like to think of the rewrite as refactoring my notes on a particular subject. I like to treat my collection of notes as a concise book/article on a topic, this means I should be able to read through them and have everything I need. Ideally this means key points are quoted with references to other notes such as lecture slides or books and page numbers.
The other recommendation I have is that the time between your first write and your rewrite depends on how good your memory is. I prefer to do it between 3 to 7 days after the first write. This means that anything that didn't fully stick gets somewhat forgotten, but once I re-read lecture slides or parts of a book, I pick it up again, and am able to put in a more thorough, yet concise, summary.
As you rewrite you should also focus on whether your organisation of the topic fits this new set of notes. The high level table of contents becomes your your view on the ontology of the subject matter. Think of it as a mind-map that you can refer back to and expand on as your knowledge about the domain grows.
BTW, I used to use Evernote with their linking feature for this. I now maintain a folder of Markdown files that link to each other. Maintaining your own personal Wiki may also achieve the same goal.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#18Bullet journal looks interesting...
It's a system on how to write down notes/tasks/events in a notebook. It let's you refer back to your notes easily.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#19Note taking and retention are different topics.
Retention, assuming you understand the material, is best achieved by quizzing yourself and answering in your own words without looking at hints. Ideally, you should be able to explain the topic as if you were teaching it to someone else.
Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes (useful note-taking strategies)?
#20For project at work I use one Excel. One Excel for each different project. One single file makes later on very easy to search for key words or filter on columns. While I reuse part of the template for new projects the set of columns is usually new in each project but at least I always have columns for: follow up; who/with who to follow up, creation date, event (meeting, call, etc) deadline -only if hard deadline. It grows about 100 lines a week.
In addition I have a long check list (another Excel) with all the things I need to do. Short sentences for each task. File is always open in my laptop and anything comes to my mind goes there and give me the required headspace. Usually I start my day having a quick look and selecting a few things to do in the day.
So two Excels for each project. Yes, there is a bit of duplication between them but it is ok.