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Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

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Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#121

Post by romes »

After reading most replies and checking out links I have now way more insight on this.

Thank you all.

I agree with everyone who said that a good system is just the act of writing down by hand, and how it helps you comprehend, verbalize, and interiorize. I have done this up until now, and it works for me, and as most said I also never had to/could re-read these kind of notes.

That being said, I want to mention My objective - something I left out of the original question, and as @gdubs reminded me, is quite important.

Although taking the kind of notes i mentioned above worked, this semester I want to attempt writing notes that if shared could theoretically help colleagues of mine out. I want to develop a note taking system that I could maintain for a semester, very honestly, because I want to experiment a radically different approach from what I've been doing until now, mostly for the sake of experimentation.

What most resonated with me from what I read, what I've concluded meanwhile, and i'm going to attempt the next months is - Reviewing my notes everyday, and possibly writing a "conclusion/summary" - Using pen and paper during classes, and transcribing to the computer after college - Create my own system - (I really enjoyed reading about Niklas Luhmann's System) - Sticking to this system for some time

And then i'll probably publish the workflow I ended up developing, along with the ideas i currently have on this turned into an actual project.

Thanks again. ~romes

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#122

Post by K0SM0S »

stronglikedan wrote: post #52
bluGill wrote: 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…

I agree, but not just because of distractions. I have a hard time retaining what I've read for whatever reason, and always have. However, if I take notes while I'm reading, I tend to remember almost everything. So not only did I take notes in class to stave off distractions, but I also take notes on everything I read. When I'm done writing them, I can throw them away, because they're pretty much committed to memory a…

Anecdotal maybe but so common at the same time (we have stats on schools and universities, massive and now old data, and it's pretty clear writing notes helps). I think both the Bayesian and the frequentist agree, here.

And this is possibly a fantastic insight into how brain-memory actually works.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#123

Post by ol0gos »

eandre wrote: 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

This book is worth its weight in gold for people on the note-taking journey.

The quality of content is high and the content per page is absurd--it makes you wonder it is because of the author or because of the note-taking system he uses...

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#124

Post by westurner »

glun wrote: post #113
westurner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2009, psychologist Jackie Andrade asked 40 people to monitor a 2-½ minute dull and rambling voice mail message. Half of the group doodled while they did this (they shaded in a shape), and the other half did not. They were not aware that their memories would be tested after the call. Surprisingly, when both groups were asked to recall details from the call, those that doodled were better at paying attention to th…

> dull and rambling voice mail message This is in no way a realistic study. A dull and rambling voice speaking about some random thing not related to you or your work will make people disengage. Doodling presumably keeps people from totally spacing out.

Many lectures and meetings may be experienced as similarly dross and irrelevant and a waste of time (though you can't expect people to just read the necessary information ahead of time, as flipped classrooms expect of committed learners).

What would be a better experimental design for measuring effect on memory retention of passively-absorbed lectures?

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#125

Post by textread »

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.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#126

Post by twknotes »

romes wrote: post #121

After reading most replies and checking out links I have now way more insight on this. Thank you all. I agree with everyone who said that a good system is just the act of writing down by hand, and how it helps you comprehend, verbalize, and interiorize. I have done this up until now, and it works for me, and as most said I also never had to/could re-read these kind of notes. That being said, I want to mention My obje…

When taking notes in class, nothing beats pen & paper. That being said, digitalizing your notes forces you to think hard about which ones are really worth the effort. And the work will pay off in the long run. Since you have mentioned Niklas Luhmann's System , you may want to take a look at: https://twinkle.app/intro.html

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#127

Post by emmanueloga_ »

SunghoYahng wrote: post #7

You may want to mix different note formats as needed. For example, you can use Google keep for simple notes and Evernote for notes that need to be organized. It is also a good idea to use a tree-based note-taking tool to organize your refined knowledge. This is because the structure of knowledge follows the structure of the tree. I use this(Actually, I made it): https://learnobit.com

First time stumbling upon learnobit. Congrats for building something cool looking :-)

"like Anki & WorkFlowy in one"

Great idea. The thing that drove me away from WorkFlowy though is the lack of constraints. I think it provides too much freedom, I want something that forces me to provide a certain structure to the material.

I can tell you put a lot of care to lovingly craft the UI, looks pretty nice! But for a product that provides structured note taking, the data model and serialization format should be equally important. I'd like to be able to export my content, query it in interesting ways (ex: datalog!), maybe use the content to build an app, print slides, put a book together, tweet snippets, or build a different UI altogether around my notes, etc, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#128

Post by Eugeleo »

ska wrote: 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?

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#129

Post by Eugeleo »

textread wrote: post #125

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.

Not the OP, but still would be interested in the examples and the Notability templates. However, I couldn't find your mail on you profile. Did I somehow miss it?

Re: Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

#130

Post by exikyut »

archarios wrote: post #85
exikyut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bizarre suggestion for a device that's kinda hard to find nowadays but which I've heard is awesome: the AlphaSmart Dana. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart

There is a modern version: https://getfreewrite.com/ . It's way too expensive though.

Yeow, US$550-700, that is incredibly expensive. Thanks for the TIL though
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