Notes – Who Needs Them?

When we took notes back in college, we probably thought of them as tools for our tests—but notes are helpful in a much broader way. Basically, note-taking is an antidote to two sad facts of life: That human beings tend to be bad listeners—and that we have faulty memories. When receiving new information that we’ll wish to recall later, notes force us to pay closer and more selective attention to the speaker or text we are utilising, and to condense the information and pick only the most relevant, factual, and pertinent bits, as we cannot write down every word or sentence. Notes do double duty—we pay better attention when receiving the information, and we have the most concentrated information to review later.

Notes can also be helpful in our diaries or journals—look at someone like Thomas Edison, who was famous for keeping meticulous notes in his journals, had fantastic recall. If there is something we wish to remember (and it need not be academic, but any topic or happening of interest to us), notes can really help jog our memories when we go back and review them.

Taking Good Notes – The Basics

Taking good notes is not difficult—but it does require a little practice and there are a few tips that can make the process easier for you. First of all, organisation is essential. Make sure you don’t waste effort in producing indecipherable notes by doing it right, from the start:

• Use A4 paper, or notebooks with loose-leaf paper— standard-sized paper works best, not small scraps or post-its.
• Write legibly, cleanly, and use a word-processor if you don’t trust your own handwriting.
• Use symbols, abbreviations, markings, arrows, and underlines, as well as highlighter pens or different colored ink, to color-code and mark the most important information, so you can easily see it upon review.
• Make sure your notes are taken in a systematic way: Mark clearly at the top of the page the topic you are covering and the date and then use numbers, or bullets, to differentiate and clearly section the information.
• Use mind maps or charts when relevant to make the information easier to review at a glance.
• Be ready to really listen. Taking notes in non-academic life is a great way to sharpen your listening skills. Engage with the speaker; really listen to what he or she is saying and take down only the information you need.

Taking Good Notes – Advanced…

Once you are physically ready to take notes, you may need a few tips on how to glean the most relevant information from the material you face. A good habit is to formulate a few questions before you start listening or reading—what information do you expect to get out of this material? Are you looking for general understanding or specific points? Once you’ve defined your aim, you can hone in with your notes.

Keep the Pareto Principle in mind—likely only roughly 20% of the material will be useful. When taking notes, do not attempt to record the information verbatim. You are looking for the most relevant nuggets, keywords and phrases to jog your memory later—not word for word transcriptions. You can listen for audio clues such as “And the three most important things are—” or “What you need to keep in mind is—.” When reading, you can find these cues in bolded text or italics, as well as in the beginning and end of sections and paragraphs.

The 80/20 rule also applies to your results—even with thorough and condensed notes, you will probably need much less information than what you originally recorded—and that is alright. As long as the notes are taken in a systematic and orderly way, you will have no problems finding the pertinent information at a glance. Mind maps and charts in your notes can also help with this.

Two Systems for Notes

Note taking needs to be intuitive to the taker for maximum results—but there are several systems out there that you can try if you don’t have your own.

The Cornell Method: Take an A4 sheet of paper and draw a line down the first third from the left. Roughly 30% of space should be left to the line—the rest of the space to the right. When taking notes, use the right side to record the information you are looking for. When you are done, formulate questions that answer this information, and write them on the left side, by the corresponding text. You can test yourself by covering the right side and asking yourself the questions. (You can also do this method by writing the main points on the right and the details on the left.)

The SQ3R Reading Method: Survey/question/read/recall/review. Helpful for written text, this method has you survey the information you will have to read, then formulate questions on what you are looking for and need from the text. You read the text, take notes, then review (or recite) the information you just read, as it is important to you. Then you review your notes.

Thomas Edison had a famously sharp memory and he may have had his painstaking notes to thank for that—Notes are wonderful memory tools. Just taking ten minutes a week to review recorded information can dramatically improve recall. By recording the most important information, we can review facts or events in our notes and journals quickly and retain a much higher portion of the information we receive, than if we relied on our memories alone or on sloppy, unstructured notes.

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