Coaching practices for How to Take Smart Notes
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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My notes are basically the book copied out in my own handwriting
- There’s one note I keep coming back to again and again, and every single time I have to re-read the whole thing to remember what it’s even saying
- I highlight and save almost everything I read "just in case," and now my notes are so bloated that finding anything is harder than just reading the original again
- My notes are just one long undifferentiated wall of text with no place for me to ever question or test myself on them
- I scramble to write down every word the speaker says, word for word, and end up with a perfect transcript that I understood none of
Practices that may help
- Take notes in the Q&A format, not verbatim
Write notes as question–answer pairs, not as copied sentences.
The SQ3R Method for Active Reading - Zettelkasten: Thinking in a Slip-Box
The Zettelkasten ("slip-box") is a note-making system, used famously by sociologist Niklas Luhmann and popularized by Sönke Ahrens in "How to Take Smart Notes". You write atomic notes in your own words and link them to each other, so a network of ideas accumulates over time. The system is a practitioner method, but it runs on well-studied mechanisms like elaboration and generation. - Layer three: write a brief executive summary
For the most important notes, add a two- to three-sentence summary at the top that captures the whole note’s essence.
Progressive Summarization, Made Practical - Capture what resonates — not everything
Save notes, highlights, and ideas only when they genuinely spark something — not out of obligation.
Building a Second Brain (BASB), Made Practical - Set up the Cornell three-section page
Divide your page into three sections: a wide main column, a narrow cue column, and a summary section at the bottom.
Cornell Note-Taking: A System for Learning, Not Just Recording - Record: capture main ideas, not verbatim transcripts
During a lecture or meeting, capture the key ideas and relationships in your own words — not word-for-word.
Cornell Note-Taking: A System for Learning, Not Just Recording - Link notes to each other
Connect each new note to related ones, building a web instead of a list.
Zettelkasten: Thinking in a Slip-Box - Schedule spaced review sessions using your Cornell summaries
Review your Cornell notes on a spaced schedule — day 1, day 3, day 7, day 21 — to consolidate into long-term memory.
Cornell Note-Taking: A System for Learning, Not Just Recording - Layer one: highlight the most important sentences
On first or second reading, highlight the sentences that carry the most signal in this note.
Progressive Summarization, Made Practical - Distill notes through progressive summarization
Highlight within highlights — each pass through a note extracts the most essential signal.
Building a Second Brain (BASB), Made Practical
Related concerns
- Layered Note Taking
Divide your page into three sections: a wide main column, a narrow cue column, and a summary section at the bottom.
Set up the Cornell three-section page
- Note Taking Format
The Cornell note-taking system — developed by Walter Pauk at Cornell — structures notes into a main column, a cue column, and a summary section to encourage review and self-testing. While studies specifically on the Cornell format show mixed results, the cognitive principles it encodes (retrieval practice, elaborative processing, spaced review) are robustly supported in the learning science literature.
- Visual Note Taking
During a lecture or meeting, capture the key ideas and relationships in your own words — not word-for-word.
Record: capture main ideas, not verbatim transcripts
- Analog Note Taking System
The Cornell note-taking system — developed by Walter Pauk at Cornell — structures notes into a main column, a cue column, and a summary section to encourage review and self-testing. While studies specifically on the Cornell format show mixed results, the cognitive principles it encodes (retrieval practice, elaborative processing, spaced review) are robustly supported in the learning science literature.
- Avoid Copy Paste Notes
Never copy-paste; translate the idea into your own language.
Rewrite ideas in your own words
- Extended Mind Note Taking
During a lecture or meeting, capture the key ideas and relationships in your own words — not word-for-word.
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