How to Take Notes

A lot of people, when they take notes, try to write everything they can word-for-word. Some students are even explicitly taught this. However, this is not a good notetaking strategy as it is a passive form that relies on System 1 Thinking, resulting in weaker neuron ensembles.  Just imagine if I asked you to copy down a paragraph in a language you don't speak. You could do that without too much trouble, but you would likely remember very little if any of it.

An active form of notetaking that incorporates System 2 Thinking is to summarize the information and write it in your own words. It requires thinking about the information and processing it to do so, which is naturally harder. And this is precisely why it results in greater recall - because it requires deeper levels of thinking and strengthens your neural connections.

Needing to summarize and put information into your own words or explanations requires that you understand the concept. Will you ever encounter a situation when you don't understand the material and where you don't know what to write? Of course! What you need to do in that situation is to ask your teacher/professor to explain it in another way or to give you more details. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you don't understand it - it's part of the learning process.

Nowadays, there is a large divide among students who prefer to handwrite or type their notes. A lot of research has gone into this topic and found that one is better than the other.

While typing the notes is significantly faster, it results in worse concept retention and grades in the class. Even ignoring the high rate of distraction that comes from using devices in class, this difference comes from two major problems. 

1. The faster notetaking capabilities result in a greater tendency to write word-for-word, which is shallower thinking. 

2. The physical act of handwriting activates neural pathways in a different way that aids in memory formation.

Handwriting results in deeper processing of the class material and therefore better recall of concepts later on.

When taking notes, a common concern is that there isn't enough time to write everything. It can be helpful to develop simple symbols or abbreviations that you can use to save time. For example, using ↑ instead of "increases" takes a lot less time. Likewise "E" could be used instead of the word "energy". Just make sure, in cases like the E for energy, you have notes somewhere indicating what your abbreviations are so you don't forget once it's time to review your notes.

Compare the following two sentences to see how this could be used to write faster: 

The burning of more fossil fuels results in increased emissions of greenhouse gas, amplifying climate change. 

↑ FF = ↑ GHG = climate change

Writing down the information once in class is often the extent of what one does for notetaking. A way to really bring out the most of your learning from creating notes is to go back to them the day of or shortly after you write them. Annotating the notes with more details, writing in new examples, or emphasizing key points (such as by underlining or highlighting) allow you to not only review the material, but also to think about it actively while improving your notes. This results in a stronger memory of the concepts while also giving you a better resource to study from later.

If you will be writing in new details or examples, it may be helpful to use a different color to prevent the notes from becoming too messy and cluttered. In addition, some research has shown that the use of different colors can impact and improve memory.

In classes where you are given a reading or the slides ahead of time, this strategy can work incredibly well. If you go through the reading/slides and take notes on them before class, and then use the in-class lecture for further annotations and emphasis, you will not only understand the notes in class more, but have much better notes in the long run.

Similarly, after you finish notes on a topic, you can summarize them, which results in benefits for the same reasons. These aspects of notetaking are what certain established strategies, like Cornell Notes, are developed upon. They are used throughout the world, and encouraged by so many academics, because this usage of System 2 Thinking results in stronger memory formation, making the notetaking a part of the learning experience, rather than purely for the creation of a review resource.