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Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

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Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#41

Post by tim58 »

komali2 wrote: post #31
a-saleh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/488e/c93cf68806bd8ac63fc7d0... ... interesting research that suggests that trying to type-out a transcript with a keyboard might be more effective.

The disadvantage here being notification pop-ups and email being a tab away. Also whenever someone's on a laptop on a meeting I just assume they're not listening and looking at their emails, doesn't matter what they say before or during. Happens too often. Double if it's a googler lol.

It's 100% possible to take notes during a meeting without opening up another program.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#42

Post by yotosser45 »

komali2 wrote: post #35
glun wrote: post #17

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 he…

I completely disagree. If I think of something I want to add during someone else's time to speak, I have about ten seconds before that point or question will totally evaporate. Having pen and paper let me actually ask questions and contribute during a meeting.

You didn't actually disagreed:

>Notetaking is great for remembering actions that you have comitted to doing

I would say that you use case fits there

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#43

Post by zebrafish »

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.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#44

Post by robohoe »

tim58 wrote: post #41
komali2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disadvantage here being notification pop-ups and email being a tab away. Also whenever someone's on a laptop on a meeting I just assume they're not listening and looking at their emails, doesn't matter what they say before or during. Happens too often. Double if it's a googler lol.

It's 100% possible to take notes during a meeting without opening up another program.

Takes a whole lot of discipline. Definitely much easier if you care about the subject being discussed.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#45

Post by aldoushuxley001 »

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.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#46

Post by questionfor »

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.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#47

Post by closed »

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?"

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#48

Post by tvanantwerp »

Lots of good note-taking recommendations here. I'll add on that for the next step--memorization--spaced repetition systems like Anki are very useful. Go back through your notes, create flashcards, and then review daily whichever ones your SRS system tells you its time to review. I've found it immensely useful for committing things to memory. Saves both time and cognitive overhead when you don't have to stop work to look things up nearly as much.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#49

Post by ravenstine »

My technique is to write down anything I think is important in an unstructured way. Trying to structure notes during a lecture just leads to me not engaging with the subject, and I don't believe I learn as much. Afterwords, I take the unstructured notes and refactor them into something that makes more sense and has a structure. This helps me learn and make new connections between pieces of information.
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