80% of the value of notes is the act of writing them down by hand. (I don't have a citation for it, but I tend to believe it). That is notes are primarily a tool to help you not fall asleep, start daydreaming, or whatever distraction keeps you from listening. The fact that you cannot write everything down forces you to think about what you are hearing and find the important part to write down. Now that you have found…
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/488e/c93cf68806bd8ac63fc7d0... ... interesting research that suggests that trying to type-out a transcript with a keyboard might be more effective.
Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
61–70 of 137 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#62I write shorthand notes in a text file using a text editor saved in a folder mounted from Drive. The first line is the subject and meeting date. Sometimes the second line is names of attendees & their initials if it's not a regular thing.
Every other line is prefixed by * , X, -, or ?.
* Someone else agreed to do something
X I agreed to do something
- Thing to remember
? Question to answer
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree with the conclusion that notes are to prevent distraction. For instance, if I am driving and have a particular response or thought to an audio lecture, my interest in notation is not to maintain attention but rather an intense short lived desire to pause that attention and make a reference for future consideration. Or when reading through materials, jotting down specific insights or relevant particular passa…
> For instance, if I am driving and have a particular response or thought to an audio lecture, my interest in notation is not to maintain attention but rather an intense short lived desire to pause that attention and make a reference for future consideration. How do you do that while driving? I am looking for a solution.
I use a dedicated olympus voice recorder. I have an activity that means I have a recurring need to make voice notes on my drive back from it. The voice recorder is great because it's easy to operate by touch as opposed to a touch screen. You hear a beep when it starts so you know it's recording. Recently I have been playing with this script someone wrote to transcribe them into org mode markup files using google speech to text services.
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#64I have found the bullet journal format [1] to be super useful. I used to take sort of haphazard notes for meetings, etc, and it was just a pain to track information and tasks. Switching to a formal system was very helpful. I use it for work, though I imagine it would work for classes as well.
edit: Note that if you do searches on bullet journal, you'll see quite a lot of people using it as a system for art and scrapbooking as well. That's not necessary at all, and I just use the core logging system.
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#65I'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 not…
This is so cool!
I, too, have a repo consisting of all my notes in .md format, and I've been wondering how to make it more searchable/accessible (than having it all kept in my editor).
Publishing it might be the answer.
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#66My experience on notes:
* You have to try things and discover what is actually effective. Systems used by other people won't always work for you.
* People that look good at note-taking are often very deficient. I have worked with many people and noticed that many have elaborate note-taking systems. I often wonder why many of these people are so ineffective. If their ability to take notes had been removed from them, perhaps they'd have developed other skills/abilities which would have helped them.
* How I take notes depends on the context. I don't have a single way. Sometimes it's a list of things, but at other times I'm writing words and drawing connections between them.
* Writing notes and then rewriting them in a condensed format, perhaps with detail from later research helps me learn the material. Writing on paper and "typing them up" seems to be the best approach.
* I very rarely return to notes later. Actions should not be buried in the notes. They should go immediately from notes to email, a ticket in the bug tracker, etc.
I think you may have some other issues with discerning what is important. You need to know this before you can only note the important things. The two methods I had in the UK which were universally available (read: most minimal, but a starting point if you don't have anything else) were comparing the lectures to: the syllabus and past exam papers. As you go along, ask how the information connects with what they state they are going to teach and what they test on. This did not help with everything you could get out of the courses, but it tended to give me a start.
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#67https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes
A traditional fan favorite.
IME: note taking involves hands and a pen. Touch typing is transcription.
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#68One thing that’s missing from your question is: what’s the goal?
Is it to develop a better understanding of the subject matter? To score better on tests?
Having a clear goal can help unlock the right process. Otherwise you risk having a solution in search of a problem. It’s a meta skill that’s worth a lot.
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#69haven't seen anyone recommend this yet so I will toss in a link to PARA: https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/
You want a system simple enough to remember, as well as all these other properties (quoting Tiago here):
- universal, encompassing any conceivable kind of information from any source
- flexible, able to work with any project or activity you take on, now and in the future
- simple, not requiring any time-consuming maintenance, cataloguing, tagging, or reorganizing beyond a bare minimum
- actionable, integrating seamlessly with task management and project management methods
- cross-platform, able to be used with any application, now existing or yet to be developed
- outcome-oriented, structuring information in a way that supports the delivery of valuable work
- modular, allowing different levels of detail to be hidden or revealed, depending on the needs of the current task
- opportunistic, in the good sense, taking advantage of work already being performed, instead of requiring dedicated overhead time
So PARA breaks down to Projects — Areas — Resources — Archives:
- A Project is “a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline.” Examples include: Complete app mockup; Develop project plan; Execute business development campaign; Write blog post; Finalize product specifications; Attend conference
- An Area of responsibility is “a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time.” Examples include: Health; Finances, Professional Development; Travel; Hobbies; Friends; Apartment; Car; Productivity; Direct reports; Product Development; Writing
- A Resource is “a topic or theme of ongoing interest.” Examples include: habit formation; project management; transhumanism; coffee; music; gardening; online marketing; SEO; interior design; architecture; note-taking
- Archives include “inactive items from the other three categories.” Examples include: projects that have been completed or become inactive; areas that you are no longer committed to maintaining; resources that you are no longer interested in
Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?
#7080% of the value of notes is the act of writing them down by hand. (I don't have a citation for it, but I tend to believe it). That is notes are primarily a tool to help you not fall asleep, start daydreaming, or whatever distraction keeps you from listening. The fact that you cannot write everything down forces you to think about what you are hearing and find the important part to write down. Now that you have found…
Verbatim copying is shown to improve recall a lot too.