The Ahrens’ Method

Inspired by Luhmann and his principles, Ahrens published the book How to Take Smart Notes, to help people create notes that they could use to write articles or books. For our purposes, we can use Ahrens’ method to create study notes and materials that consolidate and encourage our learning.

Step 1: Pause frequently as you read to ask questions and make notes, in your own words, either in a notebook, on index cards or using the method of your choice. You may even like to use a note-taking app like Zotero to keep it neat and quick. These are called “fleeting notes” and don’t need to be complex or organized. They’re primarily to jog your memory and help you catch the gist of certain fleeting ideas.

Step 2: Create permanent “literature notes.” These should be “atomic” (on just one topic), permanent (you’ll never change them), self-contained (understandable even out of context, weeks from now when read again) and concise (keep it simple). Literature notes are essentially conceptual breadcrumbs—remember to include some bibliographic details and be selective about what you keep as a note.

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Some tips on creating notes that will work hard for you:

● Use abbreviations when possible (you may need to create your own abbreviations list until you get the hang of it)

● Use concise terms when possible, and create shorthand for common words (for example “w/” for “with” or outing a small “20” inside a Capital letter C to signify “The Twentieth Century”)

● Use color to categorize (for example red for something you disagree with or something incomplete, or different colors for different subjects or projects)

● Consider using note-taking apps and software if it works for you (don’t worry too much if it doesn’t! Pen and paper work just as well). In fact pen and paper might well be better. Ahrens quotes a study in his book where students’ learning was compared based on whether they use physical or digital notes. The study found that while typing speeds up the note-taking process, it does so at the expense of learning and retention. This is because when we write, it is impossible to note down words we hear or come across verbatim, forcing us to translate some of the material in our own words. On the other hand, typing makes it easier to take notes without thinking, thereby reducing how much information we retain.

● If you’re a more visual learner, use stickers, decals, doodles, mind maps or artistic elements to help you quickly grasp the essence of a card or note at a glance.

● Keep things simple! You don’t necessarily need a system of note-taking as elaborate as the one Luhmann followed. The important thing is to be able to rely on your notes to understand the topic(s) they cover while also allowing you to bring notes on different sub-topics together.

In sum, there are eight main steps you need to follow if you want to build an efficient note-taking system like Luhmann’s. We’ve already covered the three different types of notes that are going to be a part of this method: fleeting, literature, and permanent notes. The first three steps involve making these notes in the aforementioned order.

Let’s say you’re trying to study ethics and you’re reading a book that lays out the two dominant strands within this topic, deontological ethics and utilitarianism.

Your first step is to create fleeting notes based on your first impressions of what these two concepts are. So, you could write that “deontological ethics points to any ethical system that has certain fixed rules, for one reason or another” and that “utilitarianism is the ethical position which says that all moral considerations should be based on which action provides the maximum benefit to the most people involved.”

You might also make a third fleeting note that carries an example you made up yourself to illustrate the difference between the two, like the infamous trolley cart dilemma. As you can see, these aren’t formal definitions of these systems, but rather informal characterizations of them.

Next, you must make literature notes based on relevant information you come across related to these two ethical models. Select only the most important quotes that you find, and rewrite them in your own words using as few words as possible. On the back of your note, write its bibliographical source for future reference. To use our example, this might be information related to the most important thinkers on both sides of the aisle and why they have chosen the side that they did.

For your third step, you’ll be combining the information in your fleeting and literature notes to make permanent notes. Of the three, these are the ones that’ll actually make their way to your slip box or note chest. To make effective permanent notes, consider the content of your other notes and relate them to the reason behind you wanting to learn about, in this case, ethics.

The goal here is to develop strong arguments based on what you read. As such, while compiling permanent notes, look for inconsistencies or contradictions in your subject matter. For instance, once you’re familiar with utilitarianism, you might realize that a utilitarian will happily oppress and subjugate individuals or minorities if doing so serves the larger interest. Do you think that is justified? Why or why not? As questions like these pop into your mind, use different notes to take them all down separately. You can now dispense with the fleeting notes and literature notes, although Luhmann himself collected his literature notes in a separate slip box.

Here is where, depending on your propensity for note-taking, things can get slightly complicated. Once you’ve arranged your permanent notes in the slip box, you’ll want to create an index note. This fourth step is optional, but will help you connect different notes in a way that makes studying complex topics easier. Your index note is essentially a table of contents that contains keywords related to your topic.

To take our example, you could have an index note with just two keywords, utilitarianism and deontology. Write the keyword on top of permanent notes that relate to these particular keywords and arrange them in an accessible way. One good idea might be to use different colors of notes or ink for different keywords. The length of your index note is entirely up to you, so use as many keywords as you think you might need.

Once you have your index and permanent notes in place, you’re done with the note-taking part. Now, you need to extrapolate information from your notes and put them to good use. Go through your permanent notes to discover ideas and interesting arguments that might serve your purpose behind learning ethics.

You may also choose to turn your notes into a single manuscript for coherence and ease of access. To do this, you’ll need to connect all your permanent notes to form a coherent argument about why, say, one system of ethics is better than the other. As you discover holes in your own argument, try to fix them as best as you can. Finally, edit and proofread your manuscript to get rid of any mistakes that might have escaped your notice.

What helps you learn better is what helps you learn better. Depending on what you want to learn, why, your strengths, weaknesses, goals, context and skill level, your optimal technique may look nothing like someone else’s. That said, there are definitely a few general principles behind most successful learning methods that are backed up by research.

Most of us are familiar with the same handful of standard study techniques from school or university, such as spaced repetition (gradually increasing the time between a stimulus and a learnt response, for example with flashcards) or all the different methods that come with deliberate learning (i.e. sitting down at a set time and place to learn something very specific).

Some study techniques really work, while others merely give the illusion that you know more than you do. The following four principles cover a range of different techniques. As you chart your learning path, try to include as many of these as possible, in a way appropriate to your topic.

Technique 1: Self-Explanation and Purposeful Elaboration

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The researchers’ study was simple: students asked to learn a passage in order to complete a test later on performed worse than students asked to learn the same passage specifically with the intention of teaching it to someone else. The latter students were better able to recall main points and details, and the information they retained was better organized.

The trick may lie in adopting a more active stance to what you’re taking in. How many times have you read a paragraph, eyes glazed over, scanning the words on the page but not really taking in any of their meaning? Expecting to teach may prime your mind and get you to read more actively, looking for key points and clues to important information. As you read, your brain is already actively assembling a mini-curriculum in your mind.

There are variations on this principle. “Elaborative interrogation” is the act of making a thorough explanation for why a certain fact is the case. Investigated by educational psychologist Michael Pressley and colleagues since the mid-’90s, this technique has plenty of promise as a way of learning details and facts—even confusing ones. Rather than merely learning what is true, you force yourself to explain the reasons for it being true. By slowing down and asking your brain to truly understand, you bypass the need for rote memory and retain the concept at a deeper level.

Importantly, this doesn’t just mean accessing and memorizing an explanation, but creating one yourself; it’s the process that enables better understanding. What’s great about this is that the more prior knowledge you have, the better this method works, because you have more mental “scaffolding” to build on when learning something new.

This technique may entail nothing more complicated than regularly asking “why?” Sometimes we think we understand something, but when asked to outline it clearly (literally speaking it aloud, if possible), we reveal to ourselves the gaps in our knowledge. If you get something right, explain how you arrived at your answer, or think about how you would outline the process for a fellow student. By understanding the steps and method, you give yourself a better chance of repeating them in future when you solve a similar problem.

Self-explanation is a related technique, and also depends on the most available resource you have: the things you already know. Self-explanation uses prior knowledge to explain and understand new knowledge. Rather than approaching any new data from scratch, you try to anchor it and contextualize it to what you already understand.

Many of us practice the technique without even knowing it, but it’s something that we can certainly take better advantage of. The effectiveness of this method depends heavily on the content and the degree of your prior knowledge. It’s best combined with other techniques and approaches.

A simple way to bootstrap new knowledge using old knowledge is to make analogies. If you’re an expert cook trying to learn a complicated laboratory technique, you might draw parallels between the two, imagining the lab process as a “recipe.”

Even creating a summary can be said to draw on this same approach to learning, provided you are crafting the summary in a spirit of extracting the essence of a concept to share with someone else, i.e. to teach them. Some people find it enormously helpful to imagine they are teaching themselves as they learn. This can be combined with questioning or creative note-taking.

A person learning a new musical piece on an instrument might notice themselves struggling on a particular section. They slow it down, take it apart and look at it more closely. They imagine themselves explaining to others why this piece is so difficult. By elaborating this way, they understand what needs to be learnt—a new fingering pattern, a different position of the hands, etc.

The person might then coach themselves mentally as they go: “Hm, that didn’t seem to work so well… why do you think that is? Take a look at the position of your fourth finger. You already know that in the previous piece you learnt, the fourth finger can sometimes be a problem with this technique… OK, sit up straight and try again, breathe deeply and pull your fourth finger away on the third count, like this…” They trial and error a new approach, engaging and responding dynamically to their own learning, rather than mindlessly repeating the same pattern over and over without getting anywhere.

Another way to improve your self-explanations is to use concrete examples while trying to learn. Let’s go back to the discussion of ethics we used in the previous chapter while learning how to effectively take notes. We can use the classic example of dividing a cake between three children to illustrate the principles we learned of. The deontologist would divide the cake based on some preconceived rule such as “everyone gets equal parts.” However, the utilitarian would say that we should divide the cake to maximize the total happiness derived by the division. So if one kid is hungry while another is full, the former gets more than the latter.

This is just one example, but you can utilize several different ones to help self-explain different ideas to yourself. If you can, discuss your examples with others to gain feedback or constructive criticism. Alternatively, if you have access to a teacher, verify your examples with them to ensure that you’ve implemented the principles they’re meant to convey accurately.

A recent study at the University of Waterloo found that the dual action of speaking and listening to yourself recite content helps you retain information much better than reading or writing in silence. This is because saying things out loud has a deeper impact on your long-term memory. You might initially feel slightly awkward talking to yourself, but that is a small drawback of an infinitely helpful technique. The following method of reading out loud will doubtless prove beneficial in your learning endeavors:

1) While reading your notes or subject material, underline any key concepts that you deem to be important.

2) Once you finish doing so for all your notes, go back to everything you underlined and read each concept out loud slowly, and as many times as you feel is necessary.

3) After finishing this, take a three-minute break. Following the break, cover your underlined concepts and test yourself to see how well you were able to memorize them. Testing yourself after being exposed to new information has been shown to improve recollection in the future, making this step particularly important.

4) Repeat the above steps for any concepts you weren’t able to memorize.