SmartNotes
How to take Smart Notes
- Outstanding! (Should change my life.)
- Starting to take lecture note instead of copying text.
- Will also implement the slip box system.
- p0: Thinking is something that is best done externally, in notes or in conversation, not all in ones head. SystemsNotGoals
- p1: Writing critical to thinking and the end product of knowledge work, yet crazy how little time/effort is put into training us on how to do it right. Most training skips the most important aspects of learning/developing ideas, which is how to take good notes. ShouldTeachKids
- p2: This book teaches you a system for taking good notes. The system organizes your notes in a way that makes it easy to lead to new knowledge by building a web of interconnected ideas. Advantage that its fun to do and proceeds in simple, well-defined steps that are easy to make progress on. Protocols
- p5: The system can be seen as a cheat to being productive, doing meaningful, well-defined work is something that doesn't take will power. Protocols Rationality
- p5: The well-defined structure of the system, allows you to focus on the content of your ideas, not on making sure you remembering to keep track of them.
- p9: The top-down organization of notes is not a good idea. It quickly becomes complicated and silos ideas such that making unexpected connections – a genuine source of novel knowledge – is difficult. UnpopularTruth
- p11: David Allen had important insight, we need to take care of everything in a consistent and well-defined way. Otherwise, untreated minor issues become emergencies. Protocols
- p70: Dont have to finish a task to relive mental burden, writing it down in a reliable system also works.
- p18 The system: Protocols SystemsNotGoals -) Notes on the content of a book "Literature notes" in your own words with references (These are literature notes) -) Read the literature notes in the context of your own thinking. -) Then make "permanent" notes in the slip box based on any ideas you have. -) Check the slipbox for other relevant notes -) The permanent notes usually follow other notes as comments on them or additions/corrections to ideas there. (This is the only step that really counts.)
- p78: The whole purpose of literature notes is to help writing permanent notes
p19: Dont just copy, or underline text. Translate it into your own words, with literature notes, and translate it into different contexts, with permanent notes.
- p54: trying to write something in your own words gives you direct feedback on whether or not you understand it.
- p78: verbatim notes are useless, can be taken with almost no thinking
- p82: Extracting and summarizing main ideas in our own words is the daily bread and butted for academics (like playing for a pianist)
- p20: The slipbox is a simple reliable structure that compensates for the limitation of our brain.
- p22: Writing is the best facilitator for thinking, understanding and generating ideas.
- p23: Always read with a pen, to capture any idea that comes to mind.
- p75: Aim should be to have a dialog with the text.
- p24: Literature Notes: keep it short, be very selective, and use your own words
- p76: more elaborate notes can be used for difficult texts (or "physics lessons") / Just keywords if simple enough
- p94: Form of deliberate practice, with direct feedback on our comprehension of the text.
- p76: more elaborate notes can be used for difficult texts (or "physics lessons") / Just keywords if simple enough
- p29: The system is designed to give us everything we need: an undistracted brain and a reliable collection of notes to think in.
- p35 Studying/Learning is research
- p43: Notes in margins and underlined text become useless unless you do something with them, put them in the context of your thinking (in your slipbox)
- p44: Review your fleeting notes, think how about they relate to your thinking and make permanent notes. These notes are not reminders, but contain the standalone ideas themselves.
- p50: The interesting ideas we naturally develop in the slipbox. Those that are too speculative or vague will not collect a critical mass of related notes.
- p65: Should always prefer the paramedics in the field to perform CPR on you, not the teachers of paramedics. Experienced paramedics know how to do CPR, teachers of paramedics know the rules to be taught to novices. Experts have internalized these rules and apply them differently in different situations as needed.
- p67: The slipbox provides framework for deliberate practice: short well-defined tasks that provide instant feedback.
- p81: Slipbox develops ideas from bottom-up, (most other methods/note taking strategies are top-down)
- p81: The primary purpose of reading and take notes should be to add to the discussion in the slip box. Biggest challenge in starting the slipbox system is shifting focus from what we think the individual topics/projects are to focusing on open connections/discussions within the slipbox.
- p85: Permanent notes should be stand alone accounts of our ideas, independent of the context that they came from.
- p90: Not using what we read to move our thinking forward in a concrete way is a waste of time. (As bad or worse than not reading at all!)
- p90: The slipbox and the brain complement each other. Each does what they do best. Brain - understand big picture /make connections. Slipbox: high-fidelity permanent record of ideas/details.
- p94: Permanent notes translate ideas from one context to another. Only when something is written out is is fixed enough to be examined in detail.
- p96: Explaining the reason why an idea is relevant is a perfectly good way of embedding them in the slipbox.
- p103: Connecting ideas to various meaningful contexts is how we learn. This is what the slipbox is designed to facilitate.
- p108: Not meaningful to have an "overview of the slipbox". More appropriate to think in terms of "overviews" of various different lines of thinking within the slipbox. These lines of thinking are what can be turned into standalone papers
- p110: Our current (always impermanent) organization of a topic is really just another permanent note how to think about this line of thought.
- p111: Keywords should be assigned based on what your interests are not what the current topic is. Should be designed for easy for retrieval, not easy storage.
- p119: A wise person is not someone who knows everything, but someone who can make sense of anything based on a "latticework of mental models"
- p122: Critical to train ourselves to see subtle differences between apparently similar concepts, this is often how important breakthroughs begin.
[BROKEN LINK: Research] Mental Models
- p142: Should be skeptical of any long-term planning esp when it focuses on outcomes and not the actual work that needs to be done.
- p151: Slipbox is as simple as it gets. Write ideas in your own words. Translate them to context you care about and make connections to your other ideas. Everything else will come along for the ride.