Keys to Effective Note-Taking
Spending time taking notes means not wasting time in the longer term. But there is no point in doing this if your notes are not done efficiently because when you re-read them you will not understand them. That’s why I will try to give you some useful tips for effective note-taking.
Don’t write everything down
Both to be faster and to exercise your brain, it is important not to write everything down. You need to focus on the essentials and identify what is important to you when looking at content.
We can apply Pareto’s law: 80% of what we retain comes from 20% of the content we consume. For example, when you read a 500-page book, you will only retain 20% of the pages, i.e. about 100 pages. It’s useless to take notes of everything and then only be interested in 20% of the content of our notes, so it’s more important to take notes of only 20% of the content to be interested in 100% of our notes.
By not writing everything down, you will save time and learn to focus on the essentials, to spot the important points. After a while, it will become automatic and you will know immediately when to take or not to take notes.
Make notes you understand
Some people will tell you to make notes in the same way as they do. “Only take keywords”, “Underline important words”, “Put color in your notes”, etc… It is important to understand that there are as many ways of taking notes as there are people in the world and that the best way is simply the one that works best for you.
To find the way that works for you you can be inspired by what others are doing, or even copy it completely, but you shouldn’t impose a certain way of taking notes on yourself just because everyone says it’s the best if you don’t feel comfortable with that way.
Don’t focus too much on note-taking
When you are reading a book, watching a lecture, or a video, note-taking should be the secondary action, in the background.
It is important to enjoy your book or video first before worrying about taking notes.
Secondly, it is when you focus too much on note-taking that you take bad notes. That’s because you’re not going to have a holistic view of the content you’re consuming anymore. After all, you’re only going to see the notes. The notes, the notes, and the notes. You won’t be able to distinguish the important points and what to retain.
So, first the content, then the note-taking!
Now, we will review my way of taking notes depending on different supports. As I said earlier, remember that what is important is what works for you. Don’t think my way of doing things is the best way of taking notes because I know it’s not.
Book notes
I don’t take notes while reading because I think it’s a waste of time. Instead, I highlight what I think is important so that I can come back to this later when I’m making my notes.
I read most of my books on Kindle so that I can use the highlight feature to quickly create highlights and export them to my computer. For paper books, I use a highlighter to highlight important passages and come back to them when the book is finished to create my notes.
Video notes
When I watch videos, I take notes during the video. Applying the principle I mentioned of putting the note-taking in the background, it works very well. If you need to take down very specific information, it’s best to pause the video from time to time.
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