How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize
Your Note-Taking and Writing
Principle #1: Writing is not the outcome of thinking; it is the medium in which
thinking takes place
Writing doesn’t begin when we sit down to put one paragraph after another on the
screen or page. It begins much, much earlier, as we take notes on the articles or books we
read, the podcasts or audiobooks we listen to, and the interesting conversations and life
experiences we have.
These notes build up as a byproduct of the reading we’re already doing anyway.
Even if you don’t aim to develop a grand theory, you need a way to organize your thoughts
and keep track of the information you consume.
If you want to learn and remember something long-term, you have to write it down.
If you want to understand an idea, you have to translate it into your own words. If we have
to do this writing anyway, why not use it to build up resources for future publications?
Writing is not only for proclaiming fully formed opinions, but for developing
opinions worth sharing in the first place.
Writing works well in improving one’s thinking because it forces you to engage
with what you’re reading on a deeper level. Just because you read more doesn’t
automatically mean you have more or better ideas. It’s Iike learning to swim – you have to
learn by doing it, not by merely reading about it.
The challenge of writing as well as learning is therefore not so much to learn, but to
understand, as you will already have learned what you understand. When you truly
understand something, it is anchored to a latticework of related ideas and meanings, which
makes it far easier to remember.
For example, you could memorize the fact that arteries are red and veins are blue.
But it is only when you understand why – that arteries carry oxygen-rich blood from the
heart to the rest of the body, while veins carry blood low in oxygen back to the heart – that
that fact has any value. And once we make this meaningful connection between ideas, it’s
hard not to remember it.
The problem is that the meaning of something is not always obvious. It
requires elaboration – we need to copy, translate, re-write, compare, contrast, and describe
a new idea in our own terms. We have to view the idea from multiple perspectives and
answer questions such as “How does this fact fit with others I already know?” and “How
can this phenomenon be explained by that theory?” or “How does this argument compare
to that one?”
Completing these tasks is exceedingly difficult inside the confines of our heads. We
need an external medium in which to perform this elaboration, and writing is the most
effective and convenient one ever invented.
Principle #2: Do your work as if writing is the only thing that matters
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The second principle extends the previous one even further: Do you work as if
writing is the only thing that matters.
In academia and science, virtually all research is aimed at eventual publication
Ahrens notes that “there is no such thing as private knowledge in academia. An idea kept
private is as good as one you never had.”
The purpose of research is to produce public knowledge that can be scrutinized and
tested. For that to happen, it has to be written down. And once it is, what the author meant
doesn’t matter – only the actual words written on the page matter.
This principle requires us to expand our definition of “publication” beyond the usual
narrow sense. Few people will ever publish their work in an academic journal or even on a
blog. But everything that we write down and share with someone else counts: notes we
share with a friend, homework we submit to a professor, emails we write to our colleagues,
and presentations we deliver to clients all count as knowledge made public.
This might still seem like a radical principle. Should we publicize even the ideas
we’ve only just encountered, or opinions half-formed, or wild theories we can’t
substantiate? Do we really need even more people broadcasting half-baked opinions and
theories online?
But the important part is the principle: Work as if writing is the only thing that
matters. Having a clear, tangible purpose when you consume information completely
changes the way you engage with it. You’ll be more focused, more curious, more rigorous,
and more demanding. You won’t waste time writing down every detail, trying to make a
perfect record of everything that was said. Instead, you’ll try to learn the basics as
efficiently as possible so you can get to the point where open questions arise, as these are
the only questions worth writing about.
Almost every aspect of your life will change when you live as if you are working
toward publication. You’ll read differently, becoming more focused on the parts most
relevant to the argument you’re building. You’ll ask sharper questions, no longer satisfied
with vague explanations or leaps in logic. You’ll naturally seek venues to present your
work, since the feedback you receive will propel your thinking forward like nothing else.
You’ll begin to act more deliberately, thinking several steps beyond what you’re reading
to consider its implications and potential.
Deliberate practice is the best way to get better at anything, and in this case, you are
deliberately practicing the most fundamental skill of all: thinking. Even if you never
actually publish one line of writing, you will vastly improve every aspect of your thinking
when you do everything as if nothing counts except writing.
Principle #3: Nobody ever starts from scratch
One of the most damaging myths about creativity is that it starts from nothing. The
blank page, the white canvas, the empty dance floor: Our most romantic and universal
artistic motifs seem to suggest that “starting from scratch” is the essence of creativity.
This belief is reinforced by how writing is typically taught: We are told to “pick a topic”
as a necessary first step, then to conduct research, discuss and analyze it, and finally come
to a conclusion.
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But how can you decide on an interesting topic before you’ve read about it? You
have to immerse yourself in research before you even know how to formulate a good
question. And the decision to read about one subject versus another also doesn’t appear out
of thin air. It usually comes from an existing interest or understanding. The truth is every
intellectual endeavor starts with a preceding conception.
This is the tension at the heart of the creative process: You have to
research before you pick what you will write about. Ideally, you should start researching
long before, so you have weeks and months and even years of rich material to work with
as soon as you decide on a topic. This is why an external system to record your research is
so critical. It doesn’t just enhance your writing process; it makes it possible.
And all this pre-research also involves writing. We build up an ever-growing pool
of externalized thoughts as we read. When the time comes to produce, we aren’t following
a blindly invented plan plucked from our unreliable brains. We look in our notes and follow
our interests, curiosity, and intuition, which are informed by the actual work of reading,
thinking, discussing, and taking notes. We never again have to face that blank screen with
the impossible demand of “thinking of something to write about.”
No one ever really starts from scratch. Anything they come up with has to come
from prior experience, research, or other understanding. But because they haven’t acted on
this fact, they can’t track ideas back to their origins. They have neither supporting material
nor accurate sources. Since they haven’t been taking notes from the start, they either have
to start with something completely new (which is risky) or retrace their steps (which is
boring).
It’s no wonder that nearly every guide to writing begins with “brainstorming.” If
you don’t have notes, you have no other option. But this is a bit like a financial advisor
telling a 65-year-old to start saving for retirement – too little, too late.
Taking notes allows you to break free from the traditional, linear path of writing. It allows
you to systematically extract information from linear sources, mix and shake them up
together until new patterns emerge, and then turn them back into linear texts for others to
consume.
You’ll know you’ve succeeded in making this shift when the problem of not having
enough to write about is replaced by the problem of having far too much to write about.
When you finally arrive at the decision of what to write about, you’ll already have made
that decision again and again at every single step along the way.
Principle #4: Our tools and techniques are only as valuable as the workflow
Just because writing is not a linear process doesn’t mean we should go about it
haphazardly. We need a workflow – a repeatable process for collecting, organizing, and
sharing ideas.
Writing is often taught as a collection of “tips and tricks” – brainstorm ideas, make
an outline, use a three-paragraph structure, repeat the main points, use vivid examples, set
a timer. Each one in isolation might make sense, but without the holistic perspective of
how they fit together, they add more work than they save. Every additional technique
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becomes its own project without bringing the whole much further forward. Before long,
the whole mess of techniques falls apart under its own weight.
It is only when all the work becomes part of an integrated process that it becomes
more than the sum of its parts. Even the best techniques won’t make a difference if they
are used in conflicting ways. This is why the slip-box isn’t yet another technique. It is the
system in which all the techniques are linked together.
Good systems don’t add options and features; they strip away complexity and
distractions from the main work, which is thinking. An undistracted brain and a reliable
collection of notes is pretty much all we need. Everything else is just clutter.
Principle #5: Standardization enables creativity
Ahrens uses the excellent analogy of how the invention of shipping containers
revolutionized international trade to demonstrate the role of note-taking in modern writing
Container shipping is a simple idea: ship products in standardized containers instead of
loading them onto ships haphazardly as had always been done. But it took multiple failed
attempts before it was successful, because it wasn’t actually about the container, which
after all is just a box.
The potential of the shipping container was only unleashed when every other part of
the shipping supply chain was changed to accommodate it. From manufacturing to
packaging to final delivery, the design of ships, cranes, trucks, and harbors all had to align
around moving containers as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once they did,
international shipping exploded, setting the stage for Asia to become an economic power
among many other historic changes.
Many people still take notes, if at all, in an ad-hoc, random way. If they see a nice
sentence, they underline it. If they want to make a comment, they write it in the margins.
If they have a good idea, they write it in whichever notebook is close at hand. And if an
article seems important enough, they might make the effort to save an excerpt. This leaves
them with many different kinds of notes in many different places and formats. This means
when it comes time to write, they first have to undertake a massive project to collect and
organize all these scattered notes.
Notes are like shipping containers for ideas. Instead of inventing a new way to take
notes for every source you read, use a completely standardized and predictable format
every time. It doesn’t matter what the notes contain, which topic they relate to, or what
medium they arrived through – you treat each and every note exactly the same way.
It is this standardization of notes that enables a critical mass to build up in one place.
Without a standard format, the larger the collection grows, the more time and energy have
to be spent navigating the ever-growing inconsistencies between them. A common format
removes unnecessary complexity and takes the second-guessing out of the process. Like
LEGOs, standardized notes can easily be shuffled around and assembled into endless
configurations without losing sight of what they contain.
The same principle applies to the steps of processing our notes. Consider that no
single step in the process of turning raw ideas into finished pieces of writing is particularly
difficult. It isn’t very hard to write down notes in the first place. Nor is turning a group of
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notes into an outline very demanding. It also isn’t much of a challenge to turn a working
outline full of relevant arguments into a rough draft. And polishing a well-conceived rough
draft into a final draft is trivial.
So if each individual step is so easy, why do we find the overall experience of
writing so grueling? Because we try to do all the steps at once. Each of the activities that
make up “writing” – reading, reflecting, having ideas, making connections, distinguishing
terms, finding the right words, structuring, organizing, editing, correcting, and rewriting –
require a very different kind of attention.
Proofreading requires very focused, detail-oriented attention, while choosing which
words to put down in the first place might require a more open, free-floating attention.
When looking for interesting connections between notes, we often need to be in a playful,
curious state of mind, whereas when putting them in logical order, our state of mind
probably needs to be more serious and precise.
The slip-box is the host of the process outlined above. It provides a place where
distinct batches of work can be created, worked on, and saved permanently until the next
time we are ready to deploy that particular kind of attention. It deliberately puts distance
between ourselves and what we’ve written, which is essential for evaluating it objectively.
It is far easier to switch between the role of creator and critic when there is a clear
separation between them, and you don’t have to do both at the same time.
By standardizing and streamlining both the format of our notes and the steps by which we
process them, the real work can come to the forefront: thinking, reflecting, writing,
discussing, testing, and sharing. This is the work that adds value, and now we have the time
to do it more effectively.
Principle #6: Our work only gets better when exposed to high-quality feedback
A workflow is similar to a chemical reaction: It can feed on itself, becoming a
virtuous cycle where the positive experience of understanding a text motivates us to take
on the next task, which helps us get better at what we’re doing, which in return makes it
more likely for us to enjoy our work, and so on.
Nothing motivates us more than becoming better at what we do. And we can only
become better when we intentionally expose our work to high-quality feedback.
There are many forms of feedback, both internal and external – from peers, from teachers,
from social media, and from rereading our own writing. But notes are the only kind of
feedback that is available anytime you need it. It is the only way to deliberately practice
your thinking and communication skills multiple times per day.
It is easy to think we understand a concept until we try to put it in our own words.
Each time we try, we practice the core skill of insight: distinguishing the bits that truly
matter from those that don’t. The better we become at it, the more efficient and enjoyable
our reading becomes.
Feedback also helps us adjust our expectations and predictions about how much we
can get done in an hour or a day. Instead of sitting down to the amorphous task of “writing,”
we dedicate each working session to concrete tasks that can be finished in a reasonable
timeframe: Write three notes, review two paragraphs, check five sources for an essay, etc.
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At the end of the day, we know exactly how much we accomplished (or didn’t accomplish)
and can adjust our future expectations accordingly.
Principle #7: Work on multiple, simultaneous projects
It is only when you have multiple, simultaneous projects and interests that the full potential
of an external thinking system is realized.
Think of the last time you read a book. Perhaps you read it for a certain purpose –
to gain some familiarity with a topic you’re interested in or find insights for a project you’re
working on. What are the chances that the book contains only the precise insights you were
looking for, and no others? Extremely low it would seem. We encounter a constant stream
of new ideas, but only a tiny fraction of them will be useful and relevant to us at any given
moment.
Since the only way to find out which insights a book contains is to read it, you might
as well read and take notes productively. Spending a little extra time to record the best
ideas you encounter – whether or not you know how they will ultimately be used – vastly
increases the chances that you will “stumble upon” them in the future.
The ability to increase the chances of such future accidental encounters is a powerful one,
because the best ideas are usually ones we haven’t anticipated. The most interesting topics
are the ones we didn’t plan on learning about. But we can anticipate that fact and set our
future selves up for a high probability of productive “accidents.”
Principle #8: Organize your notes by context, not by topic
Now that you’ve been collecting notes on your reading, how should you organize
them?
The classic mistake is to organize them into ever more specific topics and subtopics.
This makes it look less complex, but quickly becomes overwhelming. The more notes pile
up, the smaller and narrower the subtopics become, limiting your ability to see meaningful
connections between them. With this approach, the greater one’s collection of notes, the
less accessible and useful they become.
Instead of organizing by topic and subtopic, it is much more effective to organize
by context. Specifically, the context in which it will be used. The primary question when
deciding where to put something becomes “In which context will I want to stumble upon
this again?”
In other words, instead of filing things away according to where they came from,
you file them according to where they’re going. This is the essential difference between
organizing like a librarian and organizing like a writer.
A librarian asks “Where should I store this note?” Their goal is to maintain a
taxonomy of knowledge that is accessible to everyone, which means they have to use only
the most obvious categories. They might file notes on a psychology paper under
“misjudgments,” “experimental psychology,” or “experiments.”
That works fine for a library, but not for a writer. No pile of notes filed uniformly
under “psychology” will be easy to turn into a paper. There is no variation or disagreement
from which an interesting argument could arise.
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A writer asks “In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note?” They
will file it under a paper they are writing, a conference they are speaking at, or an ongoing
collaboration with a colleague. These are concrete, near-term deliverables and not abstract
categories.
Organizing by context does take a little bit of thought. The answer isn’t always
immediately obvious. A book about personal finance might interest me for completely
different reasons if I am a politician working on a campaign speech, a financial advisor
trying to help a client, or an economist developing monetary policy. If I encounter a novel
engineering method, it may be useful for completely different reasons depending on
whether I am working on an engineering textbook, a skyscraper, or a rocket booster.
Writers don’t think about a single, “correct” location for a piece of information.
They deal in “scraps” which can often be repurposed and reused elsewhere. The discarded
byproducts from one piece of writing may become the essential pillars of the next one. The
slip-box is a thinking tool, not an encyclopedia, so completeness is not important. The only
gaps we do need to be concerned about are the gaps in the final manuscript we are working
toward.
By saving all the byproducts of our writing, we collect all the future material we
might need in one place. This approach sets up your future self with everything they need
to work as decisively and efficiently as possible. They won’t need to trawl through folder
after folder looking for all the sources they need. You’ll already have done that work for
them.
Principle #9: Always follow the most interesting path
Ahrens notes that in most cases, students fail not because of a lack of ability, but
because they lose a personal connection to what they are learning:
“When even highly intelligent students fail in their studies, it’s most often because they
cease to see the meaning in what they were supposed to learn (cf. Balduf 2009), are unable
to make a connection to their personal goals (Glynn et al. 2009) or lack the ability to control
their own studies autonomously and on their own terms (Reeve and Jan 2006; Reeve
2009).”
This is why we must spend as much time as possible working on things we find
interesting. It is not an indulgence. It is an essential part of making our work sustainable
and thus successful.
This advice runs counter to the typical approach to planning we are taught. We are
told to “make a plan” upfront and in detail. Success is then measured by how closely we
stick to this plan. Our changing interests and motivations are to be ignored or suppressed
if they interfere with the plan.
The history of science is full of stories of accidental discoveries. Ahrens gives the
example of the team that discovered the structure of DNA. It started with a grant, but not a
grant to study DNA. They were awarded funds to find a treatment for cancer. As they
worked, the team followed their intuition and interest, developing the actual research
program along the way (Rheinberger 1997). If they had stuck religiously to their original
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plan, they probably wouldn’t have discovered a cure for cancer and certainly wouldn’t have
discovered the structure of DNA.
Plans are meant to help us feel in control. But it is much more important to
actually be in control, which means being able to steer our work towards what we consider
interesting and relevant. According to a 2006 study by psychology professor Arlen Moller,
“When people experienced a sense of autonomy with regard to the choice [of what to work
on], their energy for subsequent tasks was not diminished” (Moller 2006, 1034). In other
words, when we have a choice about what to work on and when, it doesn’t take as much
willpower to do it.
Our sense of motivation depends on making consistent forward progress. But in
creative work, questions change and new directions emerge. That is the nature of insight.
So we don’t want to work according to a rigid workflow that is threatened by the
unexpected. We need to be able to make small, constant adjustments to keep our interest,
motivation, and work aligned.
By breaking down the work of writing into discrete steps, getting quick feedback on
each one, and always following the path that promises the most insight, unexpected insights
can become the driving force of our work.
Luhmann never forced himself to do anything and only did what came easily to him:
“When I am stuck for one moment, I leave it and do something else.” As in martial arts, if
you encounter resistance or an opposing force, you should not push against it but instead
redirect it towards another productive goal.
Principle #10: Save contradictory ideas
Working with a slip-box naturally leads us to save ideas that are contradictory or
paradoxical.
It’s much easier to develop an argument from a lively discussion of pros and cons
rather than a litany of one-sided arguments and perfectly fitting quotes.
Our only criterion for what to save is whether it connects to existing ideas and adds
to the discussion. When we focus on open connections, disconfirming or contradictory data
suddenly becomes very valuable. It often raises new questions and opens new paths of
inquiry. The experience of having one piece of data completely change your perspective
can be exhilarating.
The real enemy of independent thinking is not any external authority, but our own
inertia. We need to find ways to counteract confirmation bias – our tendency to take into
account only information that confirms what we already believe. We need to regularly
confront our errors, mistakes, and misunderstandings.
By taking notes on a wide variety of sources and in objective formats that exist
outside our heads, we practice the skill of seeing what is really there and describing it
plainfully and factually. By saving ideas that aren’t compatible with each other and don’t
necessarily support what we already think, we train ourselves to develop subtle theories
over time instead of immediately jumping to conclusions.
By playing with a concept, stretching and reconceiving and remixing it, we become
less attached to how it was originally presented. We can extract certain aspects or details
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for our own uses. With so many ideas at our disposal, we are no longer threatened by the
possibility that a new idea will undermine existing ones.
Don’t just feel smarter. Become smarter.
Working with a slip-box can be disheartening, because you are constantly faced
with the gaps in your understanding. But at the same time, it increases the chances that you
will actually move the work forward.
Our choice then is whether we want to feel smarter or become smarter.
Students in most educational institutions are not encouraged to independently build
a network of connections between different kinds of information. They aren’t taught how
to organize the very best and most relevant knowledge they encounter in a long-term way
across many topics. Most tragically of all, they aren’t taught to follow their interests and
take the most promising path in their research.
Ultimately, learning should not be about hoarding stockpiles of knowledge like gold
coins. It is about becoming a different kind of person with a different way of thinking. The
beauty of this approach is that we co-evolve with our slip-boxes: We build the same
connections in our heads as we deliberately develop them in our slip-box. Writing then is
best seen not only as a tool for thinking but as a tool for personal growth.
Reference: https://fortelabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/
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