@How to Take Smart Notes

Highlights

• To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft; to get a good draft written, you only have to turn a series of notes into a continuous text.

• While the literature notes will be stored within the reference system together with the bibliographic details, separate from the slip-box, but still close to the context of the original text, they are already written with an eye towards the lines of thoughts within the slip-box. Luhmann describes this step as follows: “I always have a slip of paper at hand, on which I note down the ideas of certain pages. On the backside I write down the bibliographic details. After finishing the book I go through my notes and think how these notes might be relevant for already written notes in the slip-box. It means that I always read with an eye towards possible connections in the slip-box.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 150)

• Here, everything is about building up a critical mass of useful notes in the slip-box, which gives us a clear idea of how to read and how to take literature notes.

• But all of this would be just an extra step before you do the only step that really counts, which is to take the permanent note that will add value to the actual slip-box.

• So if you are writing by hand, you are forced to think about what you hear (or read) – otherwise you wouldn’t be able to grasp the underlying principle, the idea, the structure of an argument.

• The very moment we decide on a hypothesis, our brains automatically go into search mode, scanning our surroundings for supporting data, which is neither a good way to learn nor research.

• We just seem to happen to read the publications that tend to confirm what we already know.

• Confirmation bias is tackled here in two steps: First, by turning the whole writing process on its head, and secondly, by changing the incentives from finding confirming facts to an indiscriminate gathering of any relevant information regardless of what argument it will support.

• With practice comes the ability to find the right words to express something in the best possible way, which means in a simple, but not simplified way. Not only will the readers of your text appreciate your ability to explain something clearly, those you talk to will benefit from this ability as well, as it is not limited to writing.

• The ability to spot patterns, to question the frames used and detect the distinctions made by others, is the precondition to thinking critically and looking behind the assertions of a text or a talk. Being able to re-frame questions, assertions and information is even more important than having an extensive knowledge, because without this ability, we wouldn’t be able to put our knowledge to use. The good news is that these skills can be learned.

• Taking smart notes is the deliberate practice of these skills. Mere reading, underlining sentences and hoping to remember the content is not.  10.4

• Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman once said that he could only determine whether he understood something if he could give an introductory lecture on it.

• Reading, especially rereading, can easily fool us into believing we understand a text. Rereading is especially dangerous because of the mere-exposure effect: The moment we become familiar with something, we start believing we also understand it. On top of that, we also tend to like it more (Bornstein 1989).

• And while writing down an idea feels like a detour, extra time spent, not writing it down is the real waste of time, as it renders most of what we read as ineffectual.

• We face here the same choice between methods that make us feel like we learned something and methods that truly do make us learn something.

• Writing, taking notes and thinking about how ideas connect is exactly the kind of elaboration that is needed to learn.

• The slip-box takes care of details and references and is a long-term memory resource that keeps information objectively unaltered. That allows the brain to focus on the gist, the deeper understanding and the bigger picture, and frees it up to be creative. Both the brain and the slip-box can focus on what they are best at.

• What good readers can do is spot the limitations of a particular approach and see what is not mentioned in the text.

• psychologist Lonka refers to, goes a step further and

• Lonka recommends what Luhmann recommends: Writing brief accounts on the main ideas of a text instead of collecting quotes.

• Academic or nonfiction texts are not written like this because in addition to the writing, there is the reading, the research, the thinking and the tinkering with ideas.

• More notes mean more possible connections, more ideas, more synergy between different projects and therefore a much higher degree of productivity. Luhmann’s slip-box contains about 90,000 notes, which sounds like an incredibly large number. But it only means that he wrote six notes a day from the day he started to work with his slip-box until he died.

• In contrast to manuscript pages per day, a certain number of notes a day is a reasonable goal for academic writing.

• We reinvent and rewrite our memory every time we try to retrieve information.

• Luhmann states as clearly as possible: it is not possible to think systematically without writing (Luhmann 1992, 53).

• Richard Feynman once had a visitor in his office, a historian who wanted to interview him. When he spotted Feynman’s notebooks, he said how delighted he was to see such “wonderful records of Feynman’s thinking.” “No, no!” Feynman protested. “They aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process. I actually did the work on the paper.” “Well,” the historian said, “the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.” “No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper, and this is the paper.”[33] This, obviously, was a very important distinction to Feynman, much more than just a linguistic difference – and for a good reason: It is the distinction that makes all the difference when it comes to thinking. 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 (Levy 2011, 290) Concluding the discussions in this book, Levy writes: “In any case, no matter how internal processes are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinely concerned with what enables human beings to perform the spectacular intellectual feats exhibited in science and other areas of systematic enquiry, as well as in the arts, they need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.”

• A common way to embed an idea into the context of the slip-box is by writing out the reasons of its importance for your own lines of thought.

• Robert and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork from the University of California suggest distinguishing between two different measurements when it comes to memory: Storage strength and retrieval strength (Bjork 2011). They speculate that storage strength, the ability to store memories, only becomes greater over one’s lifetime. We add more and more information to our long-term memory. Just by looking at the physical capacity of our brains, we can see that we could indeed probably store a lifetime and a bit of detailed experiences in it (Carey 2014, 42).

• Luhmann wrote an index with a typewriter on index cards. In the Zettelkasten, keywords can easily be added to a note like tags and will then show up in the index. They should be chosen carefully and sparsely. Luhmann would add the number of one or two (rarely more) notes next to a keyword in the index (Schmidt 2013, 171).

• 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.

• Comparing, differentiating and connecting notes are the basis of good academic writing, but playing and tinkering with ideas is what leads to insight and exceptional texts.

• Only if nothing else is lingering in our working memory and taking up valuable mental resources can we experience what Allen calls a “mind like water” - the state where we can focus on the work right in front of us without getting distracted by competing thoughts.

• Only if you can trust your system, only if you really know that everything will be taken care of, will your brain let go and let you focus on the task at hand.

• Instead of adding notes to existing categories or the respective texts, he wrote them all on small pieces of paper, put a number in the corner and collected them in one place: the slip-box.

• The best way to maintain the feeling of being in control is to stay in control. And to stay in control, it’s better to keep your options open during the writing process rather than limit yourself to your first idea.

• Luhmann had two slip-boxes: a bibliographical one, which contained the references and brief notes on the content of the literature, and the main one in which he collected and generated his ideas, mainly in response to what he read.

• Whenever he read something, he would write the bibliographic information on one side of a card and make brief notes about the content on the other side (Schmidt 2013, 170). These notes would end up in the bibliographic slip-box. In a second step, shortly after, he would look at his brief notes and think about their relevance for his own thinking and writing. He then would turn to the main slip-box and write his ideas, comments and thoughts on new pieces of paper, using only one for each idea and restricting himself to one side of the paper, to make it easier to read them later without having to take them out of the box. He kept them usually brief enough to make one idea fit on a single sheet, but would sometimes add another note to extend a thought.

• He did not just copy ideas or quotes from the texts he read, but made a transition from one context to another.

• Writing that an author struggles in one chapter to justify his method can be a much more adequate description of this chapter’s content than any quote from the text itself (this would call for an explanation, of course).

• If the existing note had the number 22, the new note would become note number 23. If 23 already existed, he named the new note 22a. By alternating numbers and letters, with some slashes and commas in between, he was able to branch out into as many strings of thought as he liked.

• The last element in his file system was an index, from which he would refer to one or two notes that would serve as a kind of entry point into a line of thought or topic. Notes with a sorted collection of links are, of course, good entry points.

• At this point, it should become clear that you don’t need to wait for a genie to appear, as each step is clearly not only within your abilities, but also straightforward and well defined: Assemble notes and bring them into order, turn these notes into a draft, review it and you are done.

• Thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas is the main work of everyone who studies, does research or writes.

• 2. Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing.
• 4. Now add your new permanent notes to the slip-box by: a)    Filing each one behind one or more related notes (with a program, you can put one note “behind” multiple notes; if you use pen and paper like Luhmann, you have to decide where it fits best and add manual links to the other notes). Look to which note the new one directly relates or, if it does not relate directly to any other note yet, just file it behind the last one. b)    Adding links to related notes. c)    Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to the index.

• Something to write with and something to write on (pen and paper will do) ·       A reference management system (the best programs are free) ·       The slip-box (the best program is free) ·       An editor (whatever works best for you: very good ones are free)

• Even though you could basically emulate the slip-box with any program that allows setting links and tagging (like Evernote or a Wiki), I strongly recommend using Daniel Lüdecke’s Zettelkasten.

• To give you all the resources you need to work in the best possible way with the best technique available.

• critically. By writing, students demonstrate what they have learned, show their ability to think critically and ability to develop ideas.

• Many students and academic writers think like the early ship owners when it comes to note-taking.

• In the old system, the question is: Under which topic do I store this note? In the new system, the question is: In which context will I want to stumble upon it again?

• The slip-box is the shipping container of the academic world.

• To achieve a critical mass, it is crucial to distinguish clearly between three types of notes: 1.   Fleeting notes, which are only reminders of information, can be written in any kind of way and will end up in the trash within a day or two. 2.    Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way. They are always stored in the same way in the same place, either in the reference system or, written as if for print, in the slip-box. 3.    Project notes, which are only relevant to one particular project. They are kept within a project-specific folder and can be discarded or archived after the project is finished.

• The only permanently stored notes are the literature notes in the reference system and the main notes in the slip-box. The former can be very brief as the context is clearly the text they refer to. The latter need be written with more care and details as they need to be self-explanatory. Luhmann never underlined sentences in the text he read or wrote comments in the margins. All he did was take brief notes about the ideas that caught his attention in a text on a separate piece of paper: “I make a note with the bibliographic details. On the backside I would write ‘on page x is this, on page y is that,’ and then it goes into the bibliographic slip-box where I collect everything I read.” (Hagen, 1997)

• The first teaches the formal requirements: style, structure or how to quote correctly. And then there are the 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.

• the rough order is always the same: Make a decision on what to write about, plan your research, do your research, write. Interestingly enough, these road maps usually come with the concession that this is only an idealised plan and that in reality, it rarely works like that.

• Basically, that is what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the hermeneutic circle (Gadamer 2004).

• It accompanies everything: We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts.

• By focusing on what is interesting and keeping written track of your own intellectual development, topics, questions and arguments will emerge from the material without force. Not only does it means that finding a topic or a research question will become easier, as we don’t have to squeeze it out of the few ideas that are on top of our head anymore, every question that emerges out of our slip-box will naturally and handily come with material to work with.

• I am convinced that the attempt of these study guides to squeeze a nonlinear process like writing into a linear order is the main reason for the very problems and frustrations they promise to solve.

• Nothing motivates us more than the experience of becoming better at what we do.

• It is the simplest test: We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words.

• The same goes for writing permanent notes, which have another feedback loop built-in: Expressing our own thoughts in writing makes us realise if we really thought them through.

• It is not the slip-box or our brains alone, but the dynamic between them that makes working with it so productive.

• Give Each Task Your Undivided Attention

• less successful ones. The right question is: What can we do differently in the weeks, months or even years before we face the blank page that will get us into the best possible position to write a great paper easily?

Literature note

Permanent note

卡片盒的价值

• 很多小说家会强迫自己每天写作多久以或写多少字，就好像储蓄一样。学术写作除了写之外，还有很多其他的步骤需要花费时间，但是每天写的卡片其实是可以相互链接的内容，这就是复利的力量。[[网络效应]]

Ref

• [[Youtube]] 作者访谈 Interview and Q&A with Sönke Ahrens on How to Take Smart Notes - YouTube

• 作者在 Quora 上的一个回答：Sönke Ahrens’s answer to What is the best way to take notes? - Quora

  • 记下的笔记，依旧是孤立的。利用 [[Zettelkasten]] 的方法将笔记链接起来。

  • 尽可能集中收集你的一切想法、笔记

  • 快速记录灵感，一天之内整理成为笔记。

    • First, don’t worry too much about the notes you take while you are doing something else. 快速记录 index，避免影响你正在干的事情

    • as quick notes are only reminders of an idea, you need to turn them (ideally within a day)__ into permanently understandable notes.__ 当天修改成为可以永久理解的笔记。

  • 如何构建系统的一些实践[[方法]]

    • 标准化 Standardize：集中在一个地方保存格式相同的笔记，每一篇笔记有一个唯一的编号。

    • 阐述 Elaborate：思考新的笔记是否和旧笔记相关(相斥、互补、相互修正)，并将思考过程清晰记录在新的笔记中。

    • 链接 Connect，大部分笔记方法只是孤立的将笔记分到一个类别中。区分他们之间的相同点或不同点。不要事先将笔记分类，而是通过笔记之间的相互连接聚类成一个主题，从中产生思考感受，从「可以怎么用」来思考。

    • 每一篇笔记都有独立的 ID，新增加的笔记在与它最相关笔记的ID基础上增加编码。

    • 有编码之后，可以更加方便在不同的笔记中应用。比如今天看的文章笔记 id 为 ml001，就可以在日记中写下 ml001。相应的利用 grep 语法能快速查到引用这个id的笔记。

    • 建立 note-sequences，通过这种方法写文章或者书。

    • 笔记以字母排序建立笔记索引，每一次拥有新的主题方向，都可以建立一次索引。

    • 将这些记笔记的方法当成习惯养成。笔记收集 - 建立联系 - 编码存储 - 再联系

  • 其他人的笔记 [[vitamindy]]

• 又一个读书笔记 How to Take Smart Notes: A Step-by-Step Guide - Nat Eliason

  • Smart Notes 来取代之前高亮文字，摘要+想法。

    • 高亮浪费时间，高亮的意义在于带来的想法，记录你的想法。

      • why did I highlight this?

    • 单纯高亮的文字，脱离语义后没有意义

    • 笔记对你的价值，而不是和书的相关程度

  • Grab your own copy of How to Take Smart Notes

  • Get a good notebook for taking notes as you read

  • Handwrite ideas as you have them while reading, and reference where they came from

    • 手写想法+来源

  • Upload your ^^highlights and ideas^^ once you finish a book

    • 看完书之后有足够多的想法吗？尝试去记录哪一些刷新自己的认知？

  • File those ideas in their most useful contexts

    • 对笔记按主题分类，roam 可以使用引用 [[爱]]

  • Use those ideas to create new works!

    • 知识的复利