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Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

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131–137 of 137 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#131

For me it's a two-step process to write the actual notes. The first step happens in class, copying down what I think I need to understand the concept being taught. Take cues from the teacher, if they write something on the board or it appears in their slides it's probably worth noting. The second step is much more important. As soon as possible after class, hopefully armed with a better understanding of all the mater…

This sounds like the Cornell note taking method

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#132
post #111

For what it's worth, when I was an undergrad the best improvement I saw as to take (almost) no notes in class. Instead I would: 1 Pre-read the material and perhaps attempt a few problems (if relevant) to see that I understood them. Make preliminary notes and call out places I didn't understand. 2 Prepare a list of questions I had, areas I didn't fully understand - take this to class 3 In class, mostly listen. Annotat…

Re your first and fifth points, how do the preliminary and final notes look like? Do you aim for 100% information coverage (or 95%), or do you only write down your aha! moments and have the textbook as the primary source of information?

Good question. I think this varies a bit depending on how well organized you find the text(s) and how closely the course follows them. Definitely aha moments , but my final notes have a TOC also and are often easier to find things in, so fairly complete.

I guess I would say not complete enough for someone else new to learn from, but enough that having done the course you rarely need to go back to the text during it .

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#133

Buy an iPad Pro with the Apple pencil. Digitizing your handwriting is game changing. Email me if you want me to send you my Notability and Goodnotes template with some examples from the last 4 years of note taking.

I bought a Surface Pro 3 when it came out in 2014 (subsequently upgraded to newer versions several times), and I can honestly say that there is no other piece of technology I've ever encountered (including smartphones) that has more positively affected my work. OneNote with the pen is life-changing. I will never go back to an old caveman laptop - pen & touch are required now.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#134
post #22

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…

Unfortunately it's not entirely true, in the sense that i managed to write notes and re read them and i couldn't even remember writing them... I guess it's a skill gained in high school

The other point is that if notes are valuable for future reference, i end up missing stuff during a discussion. Which is a problem

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#135
post #3

I can really recommend "How to Take Smart Notes" [1] by Sönke Ahrens. It's made a real difference for me. Ignore the self help-sounding title and give it a chance. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34507927

I second that recommendation. It's a good book, and very, very useful. ---- I'm just starting to consolidate my notes, plans, and other documentation into an Emacs org-roam instance. I've got the workflow pretty well defined, now I'm just adding more and more "knowledge" to the instance. Org-roam is a recent Emacs-based implementation of https://roamresearch.com/ where you link notes to other notes, and the system au…

I am thinking of starting a groupchat/forum for users of org-roam. Since Emacs consumers are also contributors very often, it would be a good to exchange ideas on how to make this awesome tool even better. Emacs and the org-mode ecosystem offers some already existing great features (e.g. avy-jump, magit, org-capture, org-agenda etc. ) that can make this tool far better than RoamResearch.

Please let me know below if anyone is interested in it.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second that recommendation. It's a good book, and very, very useful. ---- I'm just starting to consolidate my notes, plans, and other documentation into an Emacs org-roam instance. I've got the workflow pretty well defined, now I'm just adding more and more "knowledge" to the instance. Org-roam is a recent Emacs-based implementation of https://roamresearch.com/ where you link notes to other notes, and the system au…

I am thinking of starting a groupchat/forum for users of org-roam. Since Emacs consumers are also contributors very often, it would be a good to exchange ideas on how to make this awesome tool even better. Emacs and the org-mode ecosystem offers some already existing great features (e.g. avy-jump, magit, org-capture, org-agenda etc. ) that can make this tool far better than RoamResearch. Please let me know below if a…

Hi, author of org-roam here. Maybe I'll set up a Gitter for Org-roam. Org-roam is a reflection of my current workflow, but I'd also like feedback on what to work on next and what people like to see. Maybe creating a GitHub issue is too much of a barrier to entry.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#137
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat! interesting to see your context management system. Thanks for sharing your notes. I like to sketch ideas, so use pencil so that I can erase and refine. Curious, how do you manage information from digital content, e.g., notes from reading technical/research articles or blog posts?

> how do you manage information from digital content, e.g., notes from reading technical/research articles or blog posts? If I could always remember the right keywords to search for the articles I had in mind, I'd just do that. For online content, most of the time I'll wait for a later 'cache miss' before any bookmarks/notes. (I'd either come across content when procrastinating on HN/etc., or from looking for it whil…

Thanks for sharing! I was also curious if you apply your paper-pen markup style to digital content. Btw, is there a way to send private/direct messages here on HN? thanks.
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