Recently, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from students asking the right way to take notes. As I’ve been answering them, I realized that the question of note-taking neatly encapsulates a lot of deeper thinking about the right way to learn things.
Instead of explaining how to take notes, then, I’d like to explain how I think about taking notes. This, it turns out, has a lot to say about how to think about learning anything.
What are Notes For?
The first question with any learning task, be it reading a book, watching a video or doing practice tests, is to ask what you’re trying to accomplish with it.
The way I see it, notes serve two functions:
- They record what you learned, for easy access later.
- They orient your attention, allowing you to remember more.
Most people focus on the first part. Admittedly, this used to be a much bigger problem. Information access was limited, so if you missed an important part of what a teacher told you during a class, you might never get access to it again. Thus notes that form an exhaustive record of what was taught were paramount.
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