How to Take Smart Notes

And writing doesn’t necessarily mean papers, articles or books, but everyday, basic writing. We write:

• when we need to remember something
  
• when we want to organise our thoughts and
  
• when we want to exchange ideas with others
  
• those things we fear we won’t remember otherwise, but also
  
• the very things we try to memorise.
  

Writing plays such a central role in learning, studying and research that it
is surprising how little we think about it.
the focus lies almost always on the few exceptional moments where we write a lengthy piece (Big Idea Fallacy), the essays and theses we have to hand in.
that makes immediate sense: these are the tasks that cause the most anxiety and with which we struggle the longest.
these “written pieces” are also what most self-help books for academics or study guides focus on, but very few give guidance for the everyday note-taking that takes up the biggest chunk of our writing.

1. The first teaches the formal requirements: style, structure or how to quote correctly.
   
2. psychological ones, which teach you how to get it done without mental breakdowns and before your supervisor or publisher starts refusing to move the deadline once more.
   

—

• they both start with a blank screen or sheet of paper (but Nobody Ever Starts From Scratch)
  

they ignore the main part, namely note-taking, failing to understand that improving the organisation of all writing makes a difference.

efficiently turn your thoughts and discoveries into convincing written pieces and build up a treasure of smart and interconnected notes along the way.

• to make writing easier and more fun for yourself,
  
• to learn for the long run and generate new ideas.
  
• you can write every day in a way that brings your projects forward.
  

Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work.
And maybe that is the reason why we rarely think about this writing, the everyday writing, the note-taking and draft-making.

Like breathing, it is vital to what we do, but because we do it constantly, it escapes our attention.
Unlike breathing, any improvement in the way we organise the everyday writing will make all the difference for the moment we do face the blank page/screen

We don’t experience any immediate negative feedback if we do it badly.

• there is also not much demand for help
  
• there is not much help in supply for this lack of demand either
  

—
If we take notes unsystematically, inefficiently or simply wrong, we might not even realise it until we are in the midst of a deadline panic and wonder why there always seem to be a few who get a lot of good writing done and still have time
some form of rationalization will cloud the view of the actual reason, which is most likely the difference between good and bad note-taking.

The quality of a paper and the ease with which is written depends more than anything on what have you done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic

Self discipline or self-control are not easy to achieve with willpower alone, since willpower is a limited resource that deletes quickly
Environment → Not having to use willpower instead of not having it (nobody needs it to do something they wanted to do anyway)

• A good structure allows you to honestly say “I never force myself to do anything I don’t feel like. Whenever I am stuck, I do something else.”, to move seamlessly from one task to another without threatening the whole arrangement or losing sight of the bigger picture (no long term vs short term conflict)
  
• A good structure is something that you can trust. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything (like GTD, a trusted system)
  
• A good structure enables flow
  
• A good, structured workflow puts us back in charge (from procastination and lack of motivation) and increases our freedom to do the right thing at the right time
  
• A good/clear structure to work in is completely different from making plans about something
  

If you make a plan, you impose a structure on yourself; it makes you inflexible, you have to push yourself and employ willpower to keep going according to plan.
This is not only demotivating, but also unsuitable for an open-ended proess like reserch, thinking or studying in general, where we adjust our next step with each new insight, understanding or achievement
We do not want to make ourselves dependent on a plan that is threatened by the unexpected (a new idea, discovery, or insight): the challenge is to structure one’s workflow in a way that insight and new ideas become the driving forces that push us forward

Sure, planning will get you through your exams if you stick to them and push
through. But it will not make you an expert in the art of
learning/writing/note-taking (there is research on that: cf. Chapter 1.3).
Planners are also unlikely to continue with their studies after they finish their
examinations. They are rather glad it is over. Experts, on the other hand,
would not even consider voluntarily giving up what has already proved to be
rewarding and fun: learning in a way that generates real insight, is
accumulative and sparks new ideas. The fact that you invested in this book
tells me that you would rather be an expert than a planner.

Sorting by topic and subtopics makes notes look less complex, but quickly becomes very complicated «(in the Cynefin sense)»
Plus, it reduces the likelihood of buidling and find surprising connections between the notes themselves, which means a (false) trade-off between its usability and usefulness

• Technique of the simple slip-box
  
• The slip-box manual
  

GTD cannot be transferred to insightful writing.

1. GTD relies on clearly defined objectives, whereas insight cannot be predetermined by definition
   
2. GTD requires projects to be broken down into smaller, concrete “next steps”. Insightful writing or academic work is also done one step at a time, but these are more often too small to be worth writing down (looking up a foot note, rereading a chapter, writing a paragraph) or too grand to be finished in one go.
   It is difficult to anticipate which step is the next one.
   Writing is a non linear process.
   

A note is only as valuable as its context, which is not necessarily the context it is taken from.
Success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place
Even hard work can be fun as long as it is aligned with our intrinsic goals and we feel in control. The structure of our work cannot be inflexible (flexibility), since new ideas, discoveries or insights occur all the time; it’s better to keep your options open during the process rather than limit yourself to your first idea.
This you are in control or your ideas instead of the other way around
To be successful in academia and writing, you need an extended system to think in and organise your thoughts, ideas and collected acts, and embed it on your overarching daily routines

noteflow

1. Read something, write the bibliographic information on one side of the card and make brief notes about the content on the other side (bibliographic slip-box)
   
2. Look at your brief notes and think about their relevance for your own thinking and writing. Then turn to the main slip-box and write your ideas, comments and thoughts on new pieces of paper, using only one idea and restricting yourself to one side of the paper
   
3. Write this notes with an eye towards already existing notes in the slip-box, with great care in a sytle close to the final manuscript; a new note will likely follow up on another notes
   
4. Then add references to another notes (directly related comments, but also not-so-obvious connections)
   Luhmann did not organize his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers (21/3d7a7, 21/3d7a6)
   
5. Whenever you add a note, check your slip-box for other relevants notes to make possible connections between them
   
6. Adding a note after anoter and making links are both ways of augment notes. Thus the topics are developed bottom-up instead of top-down
   

noteflow

1. Make fleeting notes
   Always have something at hand to write with, to capture every idea that pops into your mind. They should not cause any distraction.
   Put them into a place, which you define as your inbox
   If your thoughts are already sorted out and you have the time, you can skip this steps and write your idea directly down as a proper, permament note in your slip-box
   
2. Make literature notes
   Whenever you read somethings, make notes about the content. Keep it very selective and short, use your own words, and treat quotes carefully (don’t use them to avoid understanding).
   What you don’t want to forget or think you might use later? These are bibliographic notes
   
3. Make permanent notes
   Go through the notes you made in step 1. or 2. (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how to connect them to your own research, thinking or interests.
   The idea is not to collect ideas but to develop them.
   Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible.
   
4. Add your new permanent notes to the slipbox by:
   
   1. Adding each one before one or more related notes
      
   2. Adding link to related notes
      
   3. Making sure you will be able to find this note latter by either linking from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entrypoint.
      
5. Develop your topics, questions and research projects from the bottom up from within the system
   What is there? What is missing? What questions arise?
   Read more to challenge and strengthen your arguments and develop them with new information.
   Take more ntoes, develop ideas further and see where things will take you.
   If your slip-box is empty, you don’t start from scratch (you have ideas/opinions/questions on your mind)
   Do not brainstorm for a topic. Look into the slip-box to see where chains of notes have developed and ideas have been built up into clusters.
   Don’t cling to an idea if another, more promising one gains momentum
   ↑ become interested in it ⇒ ↑ # of notes you collect about it ⇒ ↑ likely to generate questions from it ⇒ different interests (insight)
   
6. You have now developed ideas for enough to decide on a topic to write about. Collect all the relevant notes on this topic and bring them in order. Look for mising and redundant, but don’t wait until you have everything together: rather try ideas out and give yourself enought time to go back to reading and note-taking to further improve ideas, arguments, structure… (non linear process)
   
7. Turn your notes into a rough draft: don’t simply copy them, translate them into a coherent draft, build context, and look for holes in your argument
   
8. Edit and proofread your manuscript
   

In reality you will be working with many ideas at the same time, and that’s where the system plays out its real strenghts.
This steps are a never-ending, iterative process. They allow you to go back to rn earlier idea where you left it, right after having jumped to another idea
Your notetaking system has to be as simple as possible while also being holistic

Wee need four tools:

• Something to write with and something to write on (pen and paper will do)
  
• A reference management system
  
• The slip-box
  
• An editor
  

–

1. You need something to capture ideas whenever/wherever they pop into your head (inbox): it should not require any thoughts, attention or multiple steps to write it down. These notes functions as a reminder of a thought and don’t have to be properly phrased and fact-checked. Make sure everything ends up in one place
   
2. The reference systems has two purposes: to collect the references and the notes you take during reading. Ideally use integrated software that lets you take integrated notes on the documents, and always keep the references
   
3. The slip-box. Computers can only speed up a relatively minor part of the work, like adding links and formatting references - they can’t speed up the main work; thinking, reading and understanding
   

Archiver: which is the best topic to archive this?
Writer: In which context will I want to stumble upon it again?

• Keep a scientific journal
  All notes are permanent: the good ideas are diluted to insignificanfe by all the other notes, which are only relevant for a specific project or actually no that good ina second sight
  
• Collect notes only related to specific projects
  Without a permanent archive of ideas, each project is treated independently. You lose all other promising lines of thought of ideas after finish and have to start all over each new project
  You can try to open a new folder for each new project, but then you will soon end up with a overwhelming amount of unfinished projects, which is either demotivating, unmanageable, or both
  
• Treat all notes as fleeting notes
  Creates a cycle of slowly growing piles of material followed by the impluse for mayor cleanups: just collecting unprocessed fleeting notes inevitably leads to chaos
  

They all have in common thath the benefit ot note-taking decreases with the number of notes you keep

It is obvious that we are surrounded by more sources of distractions and less opportunities to train our attention spans than ever

Multitasking makes you feel more productive, but your productivity is actually decreased a lot. Productivity and the quality of work decreases with multitasking, but it also impairs the ability to multitask!

• Focused attention: one thing only, requires wilpower to sustain, lasts only few seconds, has not changed over the years
  
• Sustained attention: stay focused on one task (learning, understanding, getting smth done), lasts longer, has decreased over the years
  

You can train sustained attention if you avoid multitasking, remove possible distractions and separate different kinds of tasks as much as possible so they will not interfere with each other

Productivity for Precious Snowflakes: a Mood-First Approach to Knowledge Work
Don’t make plans. Become an expert. Different task require differents kinds of attention/roles: fast vs slow, shallow vs deep
Mental flexibility to be extremely focused for on moment and playfully explore ideas in the other, but also you need an equally flexible structure that doesn’t break down every time you depart from a preconceived plan

The moment we stop making plans is the moment we start to learn.
Experts rely on embodied experience, which enables them to reach virtuosity.
To be able to become an expert, you need the freedom to make your own decisions and all the necessary mistakes that help us learn.
Teachers tend to mistake the ability to follow (their) rules with the ability to make the right choices in real situations: unlike the expert they not look at the unique circumstances and check if their students do the best thing possible in each individual situation. Instead, they focus on the question of whether the students act according to the rules they teach.
Experts internalize the knowledge to shty don’t have to actively remember rules or think consciously: instead they are able to rely on their intuition and their decisions come from the gut.
The more experience you gain, the more you will be able to rely on your intuition to tell you what to do next.

Hooks
Information in short-term memory kind of floats around in our heads, seeking our attention and usint mental resources until it is either forgotten, replaced by something more important (according to ou brainr) or moved into long-term memory
Things we understand are connected, either through rules, theories, narratives, puer logic, mental models or explanations.

Confirmation bias ⇒ we just seen to happen to read the publications that tend to confirm what we already know. How to tackle it?

1. Turn the whole writing process on its head
   
2. Change the incentives from finding confirming facts to an indiscriminate gathering of any relevant information regardless of what argument it will support.
   

If insight (unexpected ideas in your plan) becomes a threat to your academic or writing process, you are doing it wrong
Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead ot top-down is the first and most important step for opening ourselves up for insight (No preconceived ideas)
The only criteria when adding to the slip-box is whether something adds to a discussion in the slip-box: does it connect or is open to connections? Addition, contradiction, the question of a seemingly obvious idea, the differentiation of the argument…
Dis-confirming data suddenly becomes very attractive, because it opens up more possible connections and discussions within the slip-box, while mere confirming data does not

Write in your own words
Extracting the gist of a text is for academics what daily practice on the piano is for pianists: the more often we do it and the more focused we are, the more virtous we become ⇒ leads to shorter, simpler (but not simplified) notes
Immaturity is inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance: this is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use your own mind. Sapere Aude!
What is not meant, what is excluded if a certain claim is made? What distinction is made?
This skill spills over into speaking and thinking

Our future selves become and audience ignorane of the thoughts and context of the text. Writing for others is writing for our future selves.
Feeling smarter (reading without understanding, feeling good because of the mere exposure effect) vs becoming smarter (rephrase arguments in your own words)
Test is the only way to check if you have learnt something (deliberate practice)
This is also true in programming

Don’t focus exclusively on the text. Learning requires effort
Sort information into modules, cathegories, themes makes more difficult to learn it deeply, to have connections: like fast food, it’s neither nutritious nor very enjoyable, it is just convinient.
Flashcards → variation, spacing, introducing context, testing vs constant conditions, predictable and massing trials → long term retention and transfer vs enchace the rate of learning during instruction or training

Slip-box: details and references, long-term memory, objectively unaltered
Brain: focus on the gist, deeper understanding, bigger picture, freeing it up to be creative
Cramming is not learning

Critical skill: the ability to think beyond the given frames of a text
read a text with questions in mind and try to relate it to other possible approaches,
inexperienced readers tend to adopt the question of a text and the frames of the argument as given.
What good readers can do is spot the limitations of a particular approach and see what is not mentioned in the text.

• Don’t collect de-contextualized noees, it makes almost impossible to understand them
  

Measure your productivity by the number of notes written since more notes ⇒ more possible connections
Adding n notes to a huge database of N notes N ≫ n creates this many possible connections:
(N+n)² - N² = 2Nn + n² ≈ 2Nn
So when N is huge, the number of possible connections increases linearly with the number of existing notes
more ideas, more synergy between different projects, and therefore a much higher degree of productivity (interest compounds)

Taking literature notes ⇒ a form of deliberate practice to test what we understand,
while the effort to put into our own words the gist of a text is the best approach to understand.
Taking permanents notes of our own thoughts ⇒ self-testing and also te best way to get thoughts in order
Do they still make sense in writing? Are we even able to get the thought of paper? Do we have the references, facts and supporting sources at hand?
Any thought of a certain complexity requires writing. It’s not an entirely internal process - far from it.
Write notes in dialogue with the already existing notes.
Brain as a machine for jumping into conclusions (not rational/logical but psycho-logical), makes everything fit together when it doesn’t.
One has to mark differences, keep track of distinctions, either explicitly or implicitly in concepts
noteflow

1. Write out the reasons of importance of a text for you
   
2. Is this convincing? What methods do they use? Which of the references are familiar?
   
3. What does this all mean for my own research and the questions I think about in my slip-box? Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest?
   

=

1. Fleeting note ⇒ 2. Literature note ⇒ 3. Permanent note
   

1. Elaboration throught taking smart literature notes increases the likelyhood that we will remember what we read in the long term (11.2 Think Outside the Brain)
   
2. Transfer ideas into the network of thoughts of the slip-box
   
   1. Allows us to forget them, to get it out of our mids
      

Memory seems to be about making sure the right cues trigger the right memory (hooks), rather than saving information.
Useful learning is to connect a piece of information to as meaningful contexts as possible

noteflow

1. Add a note behind the note you directly refer to (follow up) or behind the last note
   
2. Add links to other notes or links on another notes to your new note
   
3. Make sure it can be found from the index
   
4. Build a Latticework of Mental Models
   

• The slip-box is not an encyclopaedia ⇒ don’t worry about completeness
  
• The slip-box is not a book with one topic ⇒ an overview of the slip-box is impossible
  
• The slip-box is the medium we think in, not something we think about
  

After adding a note to the slip-box, make sure it can be found again
Luhman ⇒ one or two keywords (rarely more) per note: it is not an archive. We don’t always know upfront what we are looking for ⇒ instead, liberate your brain from the task of organizing your notes

noteflow

1. Overview links to structure thoguts. Luhmann connected up to 25 links to other notes (can grow organically)
   
2. Overviews of a local physical cluster of the slip-box
   
3. Follow-up notes (links to them) (only physical)
   
4. Note-to-note references (most common)
   Patterns may not be visible right away, but they might emerge after multiple note-to-note links between two topics have been estabilshed.
   

Making those links is not a chore: it is a crucial part of the thinking process towards the finished manuscript

Every great new idea is lekely to be already on the slip-box, and it may ne comeone else’s idea. Instead of falsely believing you have new, original ideas and feel like you are moving forward, actualy move forward towards uncharted territory.

Just by working with the slip-box (retrieve old ideas and facts in an irregular basis and connect them with other bits of information), we are only doing the equivalent of flashcards: unelaborated, out of context information.
Context is important also in everyday life through the use of mental models: assemble a toolbox by looking out the most powerful concepts in verey discipline and understand them so thoroughly that they become part of your thinking.
The moment one starts to combine these mental models and attach one’s experiences to them ⇒ gain “wordly wisdom”.
Have a broad range of models, if you have few you risk becoming too attached to one or two and see only what fits them (like The Hedgehox and the fox)

A truly wise person is not someone who knows everything, but someone who is able to make sense of things by drawing from an extended resource of interpretation schemes

We don’t have to lear from experience always: it is much better to learn from other’s experiences - especially if they build a mental model usable in different situations
«(Contradicts 9.4 Become an Expert Instead of a Planner ? No, just we don’t always have to learn from experience. Then, when?)»

Breakthroughs are the result of spending a lot of time thinking about hard problems, playing with ideas and tinkering with possible soultions, being experienced with a problema and inteimately familiar with the tools and devices we work with to the point of virtuosity, even for purely theoretical work (feel your way around the problems and questions)
Steve Johnson: How people come up with new ideas? Precondition: to make use of this emodied, intuitive, practical kwonledge ⇒ importance of open experimental spaces where ideas can freely mingle

Creative people are better at recognizing relationships, making associations and connections and seeing thing in an original way - seeing things that others cannot see

By restricting ourselves to one format, we also restrict ourselves to one idea per note and force ourselves to be as precise and brief as possible, and is also a precondition to recombine them later
Paradox of Choice: more choice would be worse
Limitations bread creativity

The biggest threat to creativity and scientific progress is therefore the opposite: a lack of structure and restrictions

Brainstorming ⇒ fixation on thinking without external tools (learning everything by heart)
makes immediate sense,Feature positive bias
The brain prioritises ideas easily available in the moment, recent, with emotions attached, lively, concrete, specific, and dismisses abstract, vague, emotionally neutral, or things that do not even sound good. Don’t cling to an idea
Every time we read something, we make a decision of what is worth writing down and what is not. Every time we make a permament note we also make a decision about what is relevant for our long-term thinking and for the development of our ideas
A visibly developed cluster ⇒ ↑ # of ideas attracted, ↑ # of possible connections ⇒ influence what to read and think later
As the slip-box grows, we replace what we think is interesting and relevant with a look of what truly proved to be interesting and where we found material to work with. Let questions arise from the slip-box (dialogue with it)

Developing topics from what we have, bottum up:

1. Ideas already embedded in a content-righ context, but surprisingly:
   
2. We become more open to new ideas the more familiar we are with ideas we have already encounter, as we can see its limitations, what is missing or possibly wrong; being intimately familiar with something enables it to be playful with it, to modify and tinker with it
   

Chesterton’s Fence

Accompany every aspect of your work with the questions:

• What is interesting about this?
  

Accompany everything you read with:

• What is so relevant about this that is worth writing down?
  

⇒ Chase information not only according to our interest but also elaborating on what you encounter, we discover new aspects and therefore develop our intersts along the way.
Ability to change the direction of your work opportunistically, different from trying to control the circumstances by clinging to a plan.
The more control we have to steer your work towards what we consider interesting and relevant, the less willpower we have to put into getting things done. Only then can work itself become the source of motivation, which is crucial to make it sustainable

Overconfidence bias → be generally sceptical about planning, especially if it’s merely focused on the outcome and not on the actual work and steps required to achieve a goal.
Your goals should be, say, write three notes, review one paragraph we wrote the day before and check all the literature we discovered in an article, we know exactly at the end of the day what we were able to accomplish and can adjust our expectations for the next day.
Law of Parkinson: every kind of work tends to fill the time we set aside for it
The opposiite is true for tasks that can be finished in one go, partly to the Zeigarnik effect, but the biggest difference is that it’s much easier to get started if the next step is feasible and concrete rather than vague and ill-defined

Emotional aspects:
Blank page problem: the first draft is just a draft, you are merely writing it down for yourself (convince yourself)
Instead of deleting what doesn’t fit, move it to another document and convince yourself you will use it later

Tunnel effect: the more pressure we feel, the more we tend to our old routines.
The solution: Change is possible when the solution appears to be simple