“How to take smart notes” (Sönke Ahrens)

The last book I read in the last couple of days is one of those I can group in what I call “the meta-content”: like similar study-related materials, this one is about a skill we always take for grant, since it’s something we do without thinking. A lot of people may think that it’s absurd to think we need to learn how to learn (and especially when we’re adult, after countless years spent on books while getting our degrees), but without prejudice let’s think about: nobody really teach us how to properly take notes (or, as I’d better say, produce notes). If we want to get insights beyond what everyone else see, it’s fundamental to learn this ability to not just copy “the important quotes”, but also to think about them and produce our own links to our previous knowledge (semantic and episodic memories, like it’s said in the great “Memory” book by Baddeley, click here for my notes and conceptual map to learn more). All the book is about a method called Zettelkasten, coded the first time by a XVI sec. Swiss physician, naturalist, bibliographer, and philologist (it was not a coincidence he was a kind of polymath, as you may better understand when you’ll learn about this system) and developed/perfectioned mainly within German-speaking people over time, with a major example by Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten with approx. 90.000 index cards (here the online archive). It seems that this method was used by a lot of people working with creativity and knowledge, including the famous American comedian George Carlin.

Following, the concepts I extracted from the book, with just a few personal considerations (highlighted as “NOTE” and/or with “//” at the beginning, so you can distinguish from what the author wrote). Lastly, the main few things that I tried to graphically summarize (I’m so bad in drawing, it’s only for the sake of knowledge!). Trust me (…I’m an engineer, as a meme would complete the sentence): producing notes having in mind the principles and actions you’re about to read, will lead your to a higher level, much more than just storing information to read before an exam.

Introduction

• Writing is the medium, not the content, to proceede on projects and studies
  • //NOTE: It’s what I call a “meta-skill”, a skill for other skill, like properly reading or learning how to learn
• Like breathing, it’s vital but we are almost not aware of doing it
  • //NOTE: that’s why there’s also someone that can teach us the great Mindfulness principles, including ways of breathing
• What does make a difference along the whole intelligence spectrum is self-discipline and self-control
  • //NOTE: concepts well explained in the Dopamine Nation and Deep Work, you can also read some considerations on “Procrastivity”
  • Since willpower is diffucult to improve, it better to focus on the environment to be changed

Everything you need to know

• A good structure is something that you can trust
  • //see GTD by David Allen: brain is good to generate thoughts, not to store them
  • Enable Flow (RIP Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
  • Planning is good for a short term goal (e.g.: passing an exam), but not to make you an expert in learning/writing/note-taking!
  • Good for people that are passing the first part of the Dunning-Kruger effect
  • //NOTE: KISS – Keep it simple stupid: complexity comes from content, not from the structure
  • Be consistent over time with the new workflow to get a habit
  • GTD can’t work with academic/development fields, since it was designed with defined goals in mind
  • The struture is called “Slip-box” (originally, in German, “Zettelkasten”)
    • not just copy, but use your own words, even in a different context, but keeping the same meaning

Everything you need to do

• “Notes on paper or on a computer screen [..] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible” (Neil Levy in the introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics)
• Understand before writing, like Feynman and B. Franklin stressed about understanding.
• Steps
  • Make fleeting notes; have always something to write on, when everything comes to mind
  • Make notes about content, short and selective
  • Make permanent notes: from the fleeting ones, link notes to what you already have
  • Develop topics, question and research projects bottom up within the system: the more you’re interested in something, the more you will read and think about it, the more notes you’ll collect.
  • Collect all the relevant notes about a topic/project onto a “desktop” (one different for every project) and let them in order
  • “Translate” all the selected notes in something coherent. Detect holes in the argument and fill them or change argument.
  • Edit and proofread the manuscript

Everything you need to have

• Something to write with and something to write on //NOTE: for temporary notes, it could be a notebook, pen+paper, vocals… something to process ideally once per day in a centralized system, like David Allen shows in GTD
• A reference mgmt system (like Zotero)
• A slip-box (Evernote, Wiki, Luedecke’s Zettelkasten,…) //NOTE: personally, I use Obsidian
• A text editor (like MS Word)

Few things to keep in mind

• Slip-box is not intended to be used as a note archive or a graveyeard for thoughts

Four underlying principles

Writing is the only thing that matters

• Common (“wrong”) way to write:
  • questions to be answered
  • ovrview of the literature
  • discussion
  • conclusion
• Pupils are not encouraged to follow their paths and discuss everything //NOTE: here it’s worth mentioning what Professor Milo Jones said in his course “Intelligence Tools for the Digital Age“: “The people in the room are smart. They’re smart because just like everywhere else on Earth, from about the age of six, they were let into a room when a bell rang. First, we had to sort them by date of manufacture, so everybody’s the same age, and then we put them in a room with a stranger and the stranger ask them questions.  If they give the right answer, congratulations, they’re smart. They can go on to the next grade. Then they do it again, and again, and again, and we end up with 18 year old who think they’re smart because they’re really good at answering other people’s questions.“
• Studying is research: is about gaining insight, that someone has also to write done for the public
  • an idea kept private is as good as one you never had
• Having a clear purpose when attending a lecture will make you more engaged

Simplicitiy is paramount

• Don’t keep the notes and highlighted phrases to the book, nor store them in something boxed like “topics” or “semester/year”
• Everything in the same box of same shape/format, like containers on ship/truck
• Only cathegorization can be:
  • Fleeting notes (quickly captured)
  • Permanent notes (clear to understand even without a context)
  • Project notes (related to a specific folder and then archived once the project is finished)

Nobody ever start form scratch

• You can’t just start the process of “acquiring resource” before writing without at least having read a bit and not just about just the topic.
• Hermeneutic cycle
• Focus on what is interesting and then write intellectual development, topics, questions and arguments emerging from what we are reading, without force.
• Your notes are the resource to look at, instead of just a random “brainstorming” in your brain (that is not so reliable as a good structure full of notes)

Let the work carry you forward

• A work could be a thermodynamic spontaneous or non-spontaneuos process: sometimes, we feel like a work is draining our energy, sometimes it’s like the process gains momentum pulling and energizing us.
• The more connected information we have, the easier is to learn new stuff (//see book “Memory”, already cited)

The six steps to successful writing

Separate and interlocking tasks

• Constant interruptions are really bad for us
• Multitasking is a myth and it’s really bad
• //see the books I cited at the beginning of this post

Read for understanding

• Read with pen in hand
• Keep an open mind
• Distinguish relevant from irrelevant info is a skill that can be developed only by doing
• Learn to read
  • “If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself” (John Searle)
• Learn by reading

Take smart notes

• Successful academics have the ability to think beyond the frames of a text
• Scientific thinking is impossible if focusing only on the information itself thinking only within a given frame (Bruner 1973)
• Don’t focus on writing a few pages a day before breakfast (as novelist Trollope), since developing/writing non-fiction is totally different
  • Researchers always underestimate the time needed to learn resources for their thesis and the time to complete to write it
• Focus on writing a little bit (a few notes) per day, it’s like compounded interest
• It’s known (Levy 2011) that it’s fundamental to externalize out of the brain the knowledge (//see: GTD already cited + Second Brain)
• Notes are personal: everyone has different background and focus on different aspects, so linking differently and gaining different insights
• The important ability is to build connections, not to remember everything
• Feynman was more into first principles than useless words in books and lot of fake/distant real life comparisons
• Too much “order” impede learning (Carey 2014) –> deliberate creation of variations and contrast

Develop ideas

• Zettelkasten is for thinking, it’s not a complete reference as an encyclopaedia: don’t struggle for completeness
• Adding tags:
  • As an archivist: more focused on the content of the note stand alone, so it will be easy to retrieve searching for the specific reference (like having a plan before writing the note)
  • As a writer: focusing on the concept(s) I will work with, so the note will automatically popup when I’ll work on the topic (even if I will completely forget the note)
• As a side effects, casually reading some notes when working on a topic, will also help in remember them, like flashcards against the progressive fading of memory (at irregular time intervals)
• For Munger (Buffett’s partner), broad theoretical toolbox (academic + real life) is extremely important to adopt different Mental Models to adopt, otherwise we’ll see everything as a nail to be hammered
  • Just remembering sparse notions in #school, it’s useless, if not linked with experience and properly placed in a mental latticework
• Creative people are more able to see connections that others don’t see
• Only abstraction and re-specification make us able to transfer knowledge to other fields and situations
  • Same apply to engineers finding solutions
• Our culture is focused on success and neglect important lessons from failure (book “The antidote” by Burkeman 2003)
• Good thought eperiment is asking “What if?” about every extreme situations
• Ideally, one note will fit on the screen (no multi pages)

Share your insights

• “Writing itself makes you realise where there are holes in things […] and you have to go back and you have to rethink it all” (Carol Loomis)
• Structure the text and keep it flexible
• Try working on the same time on different manuscripts
• Consider we always understimate time to finish a project (Kahneman)

Make it a habit

• More than motivation , make sure it will become a habit!

Afterword

• Be aware of the Tunnel effect (Mullainathan 2013): make sure taking notes this way is simple, so you won’t be tempted to turn back on bad habits

TL;DR: my ugly drawings for the key concepts