# How to Take Smart Notes  ## Metadata - Author: Sönke Ahrens - Full Title: How to Take Smart Notes - Category: #books ## Highlights - “One cannot think without writing.” – Niklas Luhmann ([Location 17](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=17)) - Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work. ([Location 72](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=72)) - They struggle because they believe, as they are made to believe, that writing starts with a blank page. ([Location 92](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=92)) - That is why good, productive writing is based on good note-taking. Getting something that is already written into another written piece is incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrieve it from there. ([Location 94](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=94)) - To sum it up: The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic. ([Location 96](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=96)) - What does make a significant difference along the whole intelligence spectrum is something else: how much self-discipline or self-control one uses to approach the tasks at hand (Duckworth and Seligman, 2005; Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone, 2004). ([Location 103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=103)) - Luckily, this is not the whole story. We know today that self-control and **self-discipline have much more to do with our environment than with ourselves** (cf. Thaler, 2015, ch. 2) – and the environment can be changed. Nobody needs willpower not to eat a chocolate bar when there isn’t one around. ([Location 112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=112)) - **Having a meaningful and well-defined task beats willpower every time**. Not having willpower, but not having to use willpower indicates that you set yourself up for success. ([Location 116](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=116)) - **A good structure is something you can trust**. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, **you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas**. ([Location 123](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=123)) - **A good structure enables flow**, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as the work becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). ([Location 127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=127)) - **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. ([Location 143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=143)) - Studies on highly successful people have proven again and again that 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** ([Location 292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=292)) - He did not just copy ideas or quotes from the texts he read, but made a transition from one context to another. It was very much like a translation where **you use different words that fit a different context, but strive to keep the original meaning as truthfully as possible**. ([Location 332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=332)) - We need a **reliable and simple external structure to think** in that compensates for the limitations of our brains. ([Location 354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=354)) - If you want to **learn something for the long run, you have to write it down**. If you want to really **understand something, you have to translate it into your own words**. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=388)) - 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. ([Location 414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=414)) - If **writing is the medium of research and studying nothing else than research, then there is no reason not to work as if nothing else counts than writing**. ([Location 585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=585)) - You **will read in a more engaged way**, because you **cannot rephrase anything in your own words if you don’t understand** what it is about. By doing this, **you will elaborate on the meaning, which will make it much more likely that you will remember it**. ([Location 599](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=599)) - We tend to think that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But more often than not, **it is the simplicity of an idea that makes it so powerful** (and often overlooked in the beginning). ([Location 606](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=606)) - **you can’t force insight into a preconceived direction** ([Location 808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=808)) - Chess players, for example, seem to think less than beginners. Rather, **they see patterns and let themselves be guided by their experience** rather than attempt to calculate turns far into the future. ([Location 1041](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1041)) - **Success in academic writing depends to a great degree on the organization of its practical side**. ([Location 1043](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1043)) - **Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead of top-down is the first and most important step to opening ourselves up for insight**. ([Location 1249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1249)) - The slip-box forces us to be selective in reading and note-taking, but **the only criterion is the question of whether something adds to a discussion in the slip-box. The only thing that matters is that it connects or is open to connections**. ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1257)) - To a certain degree, **learning is understanding**. And the mechanisms are not so different, either: **We can only improve our learning if we test ourselves on our progress**. ([Location 1340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1340)) - To understand how groundbreaking this idea is, it helps to remember how much effort **teachers still put into the attempt to make learning easier for their students by prearranging information, sorting it into modules, categories and themes. By doing that, they achieve the opposite of what they intend to do**. **They make it harder for the student to learn because they set everything up for reviewing, taking away the opportunity to build meaningful connections** and to make sense of something by translating it into one’s own language. It is like fast food: It is neither nutritious nor very enjoyable, it is just convenient. ([Location 1361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1361)) - It is not surprising, therefore, that **the best-researched and most successful learning method is elaboration**. It is very similar to what we do when we take smart notes and combine them with others, which is the opposite of mere re-viewing (Stein et al. 1984) **Elaboration means nothing other than really thinking about the meaning of what we read**, how it could inform different questions and topics and how it could be combined with other knowledge. ([Location 1387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1387)) - The educational psychologist Kirsti Lonka compared the reading approach of unusually successful doctoral candidates and students with those who were much less successful. One difference stood out as critical: **The ability to think beyond the given frames of a text** ([Location 1405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1405)) - Experienced academic readers usually **read a text with questions in mind** and try to relate it to other possible approaches, while **inexperienced readers tend to adopt the question of a text and the frames of the argument and take it as a given**. ([Location 1407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1407)) - **Taking literature notes is a form of deliberate practice as it gives us feedback on our understanding or lack of it**, while the effort to put into our own words the gist of something is at the same time the best approach to understanding what we read. ([Location 1455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1455)) - **Taking permanent notes of our own thoughts is a form of self-testing** as well: do they still make sense in writing? Are we even able to get the thought on paper? Do we have the references, facts and supporting sources at hand? ([Location 1457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1457)) - And at the same time, **writing it is the best way to get our thoughts in order**. Writing here, too, is not copying, but translating (from one context and from one medium into another). No written piece is ever a copy of a thought in our mind. ([Location 1459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1459)) - When we take permanent notes, it is much more **a form of thinking within the medium of writing and in dialogue with the already existing notes** within the slip-box than a protocol of preconceived ideas. ([Location 1461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1461)) - Philosophers, neuroscientists, educators and psychologists like to disagree in many different aspects on how the brain works. But they no longer disagree when it comes to the need for external scaffolding. Almost all agree nowadays that **real thinking requires some kind of externalization, especially in the form of writing**. “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen [...] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible” is one of the key takeaways in a contemporary handbook of neuroscientists ([Location 1483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1483)) - What does this all mean for my own research and the questions I think about in my slip-box? This is just another way of asking: Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest? If I were a psychologist, this book would interest me for completely different reasons than if I were a politician or a debt adviser, or if I had bought it out of personal interest. ([Location 1503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1503)) - There are no natural cues: **Every piece of information can become the trigger for another piece of information**. ([Location 1589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1589)) - What does help for **true, useful learning is to connect a piece of information to as many meaningful contexts as possible**, which is what we do when we connect our notes in the slip-box with other notes. ([Location 1598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1598)) - From the standpoint of evolution, it makes sense that our brains have a built-in preference to learn meaningful information and a disregard for meaningless letter combinations. ([Location 1605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1605)) - Memory artists instead attach meaning to information and connect it to already known networks of connections in a meaningful way. ([Location 1612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1612)) - We only write if it helps us with our own thinking. ([Location 1682](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1682)) - **the references between the notes are much more important than the references from the index to a single note**. ([Location 1695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1695)) - **Focusing exclusively on the index would basically mean that we always know upfront what we are looking for** – we would have to have a fully developed plan in our heads. But liberating our brains from the task of organizing the notes is the main reason we use the slip-box in the first place. ([Location 1696](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1696)) - **Good keywords are usually not already mentioned as words in the note**. ([Location 1738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1738)) - **The first type of links are those on notes that are giving you the overview of a topic. These are notes directly referred to from the index and usually used as an entry point into a topic that has already developed to such a degree that an overview is needed or at least becomes helpful.** ([Location 1748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1748)) - **intuition is not the opposition to rationality and knowledge, it is rather the incorporated, practical side of our intellectual endeavors, the sedimented experience on which we build our conscious, explicit knowledge** ([Location 1892](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09V5M8FR5&location=1892))