How to take really smart notes

Sep 01, 2020

Mariana's Study Corner - How to Take Really Smart Notes 🌲

🔑 Why should I take smart notes?

🔑 What is wrong with the current ways of taking notes?

Successful students are aware that information is interconnected across different areas of knowledge
By using a more structured and formal approach of note-taking, the student would need to use the first batch of notes to create study guides for the exams
Study Guide: highly crucial and makes information easy to assimilate for practical solving
Smart notes drastically reduce the time necessary to make a study guide
Smart notes are actually study guides that you are creating for yourself while you're reading a textbook or attending a lecture

🔑 What kind of material requires me to make smart notes?

Anything! Discussions, videos, articles, lectures, podcasts- the possibilities are endless
Turns this:

🔑 How do I take smart notes?

Translating bigger ideas into single sentences that should be
- Simple in syntax, grammar, and vocabulary
- Each time there is an idea you need to summarize, you should make an effort to build a single sentence that can identify and explain that idea
Break down an idea or argument into multiple, numbered sentences
- They should be independent of each other
Make sure that your notes only feature one sentence per line

🔑 What are some good things to include in my smart notes?

Typical questions that usually come up in exams
Common misconceptions about specific topics and how to solve them
Useful references for other materials that you should either check out or actually reference in your answers
Q & A formulas that speed up your problem-solving processes
Examples
When you add all of these things, textbook learning begins to feel boring compared to this type of in-depth learning

🔑 Where do I store my notes?

In a knowledge base: a space to organize and review your notes
- Goes beyond just your lecture notes
Everlasting depository of information
- You never know when information in one class may help you in another (or at work)!
Even more useful digitally
- Allows you to search, filter, share, and reference them easily
- Mariana endorses Notion (so do I)
- If you want to try out Notion, I made a guide here

🔑 How do I organize my knowledge base?

Create a generalized table
Notion allows you to easily categorize each note by subject, length, data, importance, or literally any filter you could want
Page per subject, subpage for chapters or areas of interests within each subject

🔑 How do I consolidate information and review my notes?

This is important to convert the short-term information to long-term
Repetition- review the information regularly
Schedule short, focused sections to study one or two guides daily should work