4-3: Notes

Why Bother?

At some point in your educational career, you were probably told to take notes. If you were very lucky, you were given a method to do so. Maybe it was simple outlining, or maybe it was as involved as Cornell Notes. If such a system still works for you, great! But let's make sure it actually works, and it's not just the thing you know.

Note-taking has two purposes, and most people ignore the more important of the two. The obvious purpose of note-taking is archival, so you have a thing to look back on and review when necessary, like before an exam. This is valuable, but secondary to the secret, primary purpose of note-taking: helping you synthesize ideas as they are received.

This how we judge whether your note-taking system "works." Any system can be reviewed later to refresh memory, but not every system effectively creates the memory of learning the idea. See, part of how you remember concepts is remembering when you learned it. It's the episodic memory component of knowledge: first you remember learning a thing, then over time, you remember remembering it, telling and retelling the story of the knowledge to yourself and others.

Sound crazy? Think of any subject you know well. Maybe it's cooking, maybe it's a musical instrument, maybe it's computer programming. Now think of a core principle in that subject, a foundational concept. Got it? Now, I'm betting that in recalling that concept, part of your recollection was the moment you learned it. Maybe the words of a teacher, maybe the setting, maybe a feeling of finally understanding. Your knowledge is not just a collection of facts; it is the story of how you learned it.

If you're listening to a lecture (and for these purposes, any version of information conveyed via speech is a "lecture") or reading a complex text, notes are a way to help your mind organize and digest the information coming at you. To do this successfully, the notes have to be shorter than the information they reference. That's the act of synthesizing the information at work.

Handwriting vs. Typing

If you're typing your notes, that means it's deeply important that you not transcribe material. Even if you can type quickly enough to do so, direct transcription is unhelpful for creating memories. Your brain isn't doing any extra work to synthesize the information. Handwritten note-takers have to do this, but typists need to be mindful of what they're committing to the page.

You may have heard that handwriting notes is "better" than typing. Almost every study that arrives at these conclusions has some serious methodological issues. For one thing, the computer note-takers were largely transcribing. When coached to synthesize, measurable retention differences tend to go away. For another, the computer note-takers are not provided tools—technological or behavioral—to remove the additional distractions afforded by the computer. Those distractions, resulting from the many useful functions of a computer, will absolutely impact note-taking efficacy if not mitigated.

So let's mitigate 'em.

In addition to the advice about minding your hand location (off the keyboard when not typing), you may want to employ some techniques to keep focus. Consider closing all other browser tabs when studying. You might even use a browser extension like StayFocusd that will limit time on distracting sites, or hard-lock them for a given amount of time.

I also think having a separate application for note-taking, as opposed to just another tab in a browser, can be a valuable mental separation. That's yet another reason I had you download Obsidian!

Notes in Obsidian

You've gone to all this trouble to download Obsidian and learn a bit about how it works. Wouldn't it be nice to use it for your notes as well? I have been an advocate of taking notes in Markdown for a long time. Markdown offers a solid balance of document organization with expedience. Different levels of headings allow you to consider what ideas are subordinate to other ideas. Numbered and unordered lists allow you to consider sets of ideas or concepts. And of course, the easy inclusion of images helps along the way as well. With these simple tools, you can add just enough structure to your notes to organize your thoughts, but not so much that playing by the rules of the note-taking system becomes burdensome.

Obsidian adds to these Markdown features the simple interlinking of notes, allowing you to create a web of related knowledge. You can even use the Graph View feature to see a visualization of these relationships. Combined with the other organizational aids available, Obsidian is the simplest, most comprehensive note-taking tool I've encountered.

But no matter what you choose, make sure you enjoy using it, and that it works.

Other Modalities

For some people, writing itself is quite distasteful, or a singular challenge that is not worth the effort. I've taught many students with learning differences that meant traditional writing was not a good option for them to demonstrate their understanding, or cement it in the form of notes. If this is you, I strongly recommend using a tool like the built-in dictation assistants in most modern operating systems. What matters is not putting pen to paper or finger to key; what matters is giving order to your thoughts in the form of language. Speech does this well. Speaking your notes as you consume learning material is a perfectly acceptable alternative. I've even recommended that students record short videos that synthesize what they're learning. Again, what matters is the synthesis, not the medium.