How to Take Smart Notes

Summary

• Chapter 2
  • Author describes the Steps to take notes.
• Chapter 3
  • There is a short List of tools to take notes.
• Chapter 6
  • 3 types of notes help to avoid mess.
• Chapter 7
  • Nobody starts from scratch tells about the approach to take notes first.
• Chapter 8
  • Long term motivation is required to improve.
• Chapter 9
  • Don't divide attention.
  • Multitasking is bad.
  • Being an expert is better than planning.
  • 7 plus-minus 2 law.
  • Remembering is harder than understanding.
  • Decision making takes resource, limiting the amount of decisions helps.
• Chapter 10
  • Understanding is required for good notes.
  • We need to Deal with confirmation bias when writing notes.
  • It's important to Spot patterns and find important points.
  • Rereading and rewriting are dangerous.
  • To a certain point learning is understanding.
  • The more efforts we put into retrieving the information the better it works.
• Chapter 11
  • Thinking beyond the context makes the difference.
  • Splitting work to smaller pieces helps finishing work faster.
  • Thinking is only possible on paper.
  • Learning is about building bridges and not about remembering facts.
  • External memory gives us right to forget information.
  • Chapter finishes with the guidance on How to add information to the slip-box.
• Chapter 12
  • Building network helps finding important topics, so we should support the connections.
  • The faster we can reach a specific note from index the better.
  • Archivist vs writer approach to keyword names.
  • Lauhmann uses 4 Types of cross-references (only 2 are important in digital approach).
  • One of the most important approaches is Discovery of structural patterns.
  • Adding existing ideas and resolving conflicts seem to be an important part of note taking.
  • Facing opposite ideas helps improving our thinking.
  • Context is important to understand notes.
  • The best ideas are not glimpse, they are results of long thinking.
  • The first step in solving the problems is Abstractions help in problem solving.
  • The second step is Creativity helps applying same ideas in different contexts.
  • When taking notes, reading it's important to Make sure you see what you think you see.
  • There is an approach to problem solving which is to Redefine the problem to apply the existing solutions.
  • Another approach is Taking simple ideas seriously.
  • Strict structure helps to improve creativity.
• Chapter 13
  • Questions written during the note taking are perfect basement for our feature articles.
  • Being flexible in changing the direction helps not to lose motivation.
  • One important point in writing text is Maintain the text structure.
  • The second point is to Work on different projects in the same time.
  • Splitting tasks to smaller ones boosts productivity.