Example of smart notes how to#

Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Capture it in your notebook as a quick 'fleeting note' that you can expand on later. It could be your own interpretation of a passage, or it could be some other seemingly random idea that the book sparked. ()Īs you're reading, write down anything that comes to mind from the book and where you found it.

Verbatim notes can be taken with almost no thinking, as if the words are taking a short cut from the ear to the hand, bypassing the brain. The students who typed into their laptops were much quicker, which enabled them to copy the lecture more closely but circumvented actual understanding. Handwriting makes pure copying impossible, but instead facilitates the translation of what is said (or written) into one's own words. Ahrens tells a good story about a study done on University students, which found that students who took lecture notes by hand remembered them much better than students who took notes on their laptops: You also remember things better when you write them out by hand.

With typing, it's easier to just re-type what you're reading (or worse, copy & paste), and not capture the whole context of the idea. I'm currently using two notebooks for this: a large Moleskine I carry with my laptop to use 90% of the time, and a small Field Notes notebook I keep in my pocket for notes on the go.īut why physical notes? When you have to write your notes by hand, you'll be a bit more thoughtful with them and be forced to put things in your own words. You can do this for articles, too, but I'm going to focus on books. When you're reading a book, have something you can physically take notes on with you at all times. It is not a perfect application: I've adjusted a few things based on what makes sense to me, so I'd encourage you to read the book as well.Īlso, this method works best in my new favorite tool Roam, so if you haven't started using it I'd encourage reading my article on Roam or checking out my course on it.Īlright, let's start taking Smart Notes. Here I'll share how I'm applying the Smart Notes system in my own work, through my interpretation and adaptation of the method Ahrens lays out in the book. By adding my own contextual notes to my highlights, and taking time after finishing a book to process and better organize those notes, I'm able to generate more ideas as I read and put those ideas to better use.

Example of smart notes how to#

Since reading How to Take Smart Notes I've been adopting the Zettlekasten method in my own reading, and I can see how it's improving on an already strong note-taking process. You want to create notes that are relevant to contexts important to you, not just related to the book you read.

This is a common beginner mistake, which can only lead to a patchwork of ideas, but never a coherent thought. the mere copying of quotes almost always changes their meaning by stripping them out of context, even though the words aren't changed. Instead of simply highlighting passages, the Smart Notes system encourages you to manually create notes of the ideas you get as you read. And if you don't already take book highlights, even better! You're going to dramatically level up your reading comprehension and retention. If you've ever looked back at your book highlights and thought to yourself, 'why did I highlight this?' then you know what problem we're solving here. Or even if you do feel some spark when revisiting the highlight, it might be a different interpretation. A highlight speaks to you when you take it, but if you don't capture the idea that the highlight gave you, you're unlikely to remember the importance of that highlight later. The core idea of Smart Notes is that purely extracting highlights is generally a waste of time. How to Take Smart Notes aims to provide the most accurate presentation of the 'Zettlekasten' system Luhmann developed, and regardless of the accuracy, it is a phenomenal system for getting more out of what you read. Many writers and researchers have attempted to describe how other people can replicate this system themselves, but according to Sonke, they miss the mark.

How to Take Smart Notes is a book by Sonke Ahrens explaining the 'Zettlekasten' methodology developed by Niklas Luhmann, a 20th century Sociologist who published a prodigious amount of work: 70 books and more than 400 articles before his death.Īccording to interviews with Luhmann, work was 'effortless' for him because of the system he'd developed for taking, and utilizing notes on everything he'd read and thought.