41–50 of 67 posts
GTD turned me on to notecards. I can't imagine going back. No matter how you want to organize the important stuff, the ephemeral nature of 3x5 notecards helps me get more ideas out of my head than ever before. "Your brain is for having ideas, not remembering them."
What do you do with the note cards? I love note cards, but now I just have stacks of them filling boxes.
I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important in…
It seems like most things taught as note-taking methods are actually study methods. Obviously, the hope is to combine the two and automatically create a study tool, but I think that's usually a mistake. In practice, the combination seems both difficult and ineffective. Most lectures are not perfectly clear and sequential - they have mistakes, backtracking, and questions. And much lecture content is not linear, especi…
My system is constantly evolving as I discover what works for me and not, but it's in a pretty good place right now. Information gets processed in several distinct stages. I start with giving the learning material my undivided attention, whether it's a book, lecture, video, or museum. Shortly afterwards, I record my thoughts and observations in a journal as unstructured prose. This is usually about 2/3 recording things that were presented and 1/3 random connections that came to mind. The important thing is only to record what I actually understand -- if there was a lot of stuff that went over my head, it's a sign that I need to revisit the source material later after I have a better grasp of the fundamentals.
During a weekly review session, I read through all of the journal entries and index them by subject in a physical card file. Each card is headed with the subject, obviously, and the card body has a reference to the journal entry, the source material, and a 1-2 sentences summary about how the journal entry relates to the subject.
At the same time, I also make flash cards to add to my Leitner box (which serves the same purpose as Anki). My goal with these isn't to remember everything, but to keep enough of the subject fresh in my mind that I'll be able to think of the correct subject headings when I want to look information up in the future.
I use physical cards for these because I feel like they're a better serendipity engine than anything electronic I've tried. Whenever you're interacting with the system, you'll end up glancing at a bunch of arbitrary cards unrelated to your current task, and occasionally that'll be the trigger you need for a new idea.
One form of notes that I want to add to this is the long-term reminder. The idea comes from Chris Hadfield¹ and presumably others in the astronaut corps: once you've done the work figuring out how to reduce theory to practice, make a task-focused reference for it that gets filed away if you ever need to do that task again. The goal here is to directly record conclusions: if you are annotating a diagram of a machine, for example, indicator lights should be labelled with the corrective action to take in addition to the parameters that cause them to illuminate.
¹ Masterclass.com; Lesson #17
GTD turned me on to notecards. I can't imagine going back. No matter how you want to organize the important stuff, the ephemeral nature of 3x5 notecards helps me get more ideas out of my head than ever before. "Your brain is for having ideas, not remembering them."
What do you do with the note cards? I love note cards, but now I just have stacks of them filling boxes.
The act of filing new notes will force you to at least glance at your old ones, which can generate serendipitous mental connections. You'll also see when you have multiple cards covering the same topic, which helps to link disparate facts about the same thing together in your head.
I question the value of taking notes at all. Of course different people learn in different ways, and I'm sure some students can benefit from taking notes. But for me the process of note taking is too distracting. Better to just focus on the lecturer and really listen . Then maybe write a few short notes afterwards for points not adequately covered in the assigned text.
Writing by hand is slow for me, though, so I found myself paying attention more to the note-taking than the lecture.
Taking notes via laptop was a game changer for me. I could take voluminous notes and keep up with the lecturer. It was wonderful! Not all upside, of course, as laptops come with their own problems, the biggest probably being ease of distraction, but I think it was a net benefit for me.
I question the value of taking notes at all. Of course different people learn in different ways, and I'm sure some students can benefit from taking notes. But for me the process of note taking is too distracting. Better to just focus on the lecturer and really listen . Then maybe write a few short notes afterwards for points not adequately covered in the assigned text.
I question the value of taking notes at all. Of course different people learn in different ways, and I'm sure some students can benefit from taking notes. But for me the process of note taking is too distracting. Better to just focus on the lecturer and really listen . Then maybe write a few short notes afterwards for points not adequately covered in the assigned text.
I think it's really useless to take notes on what is already written in 1000 other places with much more legibility and coherency. Sometimes I see people with tomes of notes that is basically a duplicate of the textbook, and I can't help wondering that this is just a holdover from the days before the printing press.
'15 here I remember having these notes ingrained into my brain in middle school; at Ithaca, I didn't know a single person who actively used Cornell notes for note taking. That said, actively engaging and re-engaging with content will help you build better internal bodies of knowledge on the subject, so you'll retain the content long after prelims and finals.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you do with the note cards? I love note cards, but now I just have stacks of them filling boxes.
I have the same question.
Put them in an inbox immediately after writing on the notecard.
At a predetermined time, manage the inbox.
Some of my notecards get stored into folders created for current projects. These folders can be digitized at a later date for archiving and searching. Though, most notecards don't make it that far.
Some notecards represent tasks. Those get recycled as soon as they are completed.
Many notecards head straight to the recycling bin. You'd be surprised how often something seems like a good idea before you write it down.
Most of my process follows the "Getting Things Done"(GTD) framework by David Allen. I highly recommend it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you do with the note cards? I love note cards, but now I just have stacks of them filling boxes.
Write the topic of the note on the index line, and store them sorted. If a card connects multiple topics, pick one and make cross-reference cards that point to the topic with the actual note. The act of filing new notes will force you to at least glance at your old ones, which can generate serendipitous mental connections. You'll also see when you have multiple cards covering the same topic, which helps to link dispa…
Something I try to do is keep my physical notecard files small. Besides the inbox file, urgent and important notecards are the only ones I keep in a physical file.
It's surprising how fast you can go through a thousand notecards. So effective filing is a must. And for me, that means maintaining digital archives. Something that, on its own, is a whole topic for discussion. Once again, I recommend GTD by David Allen if you'd like to dive deeper and avoid reinventing the wheel.
I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important in…
I personally don't like the flow of Cornell's style, so I didn't use it as a student, but SRS software (Anki is still my preferred) didn't replace me needing to take notes and review those after class.
If anything, I would expect your Cornell notes to be a good basis for how you create some of your cards.