The Power Of Notes

This method combines the best of what I’ve found in a system that I believe is the most thorough and helpful.

Notes are going to be central to every single step because it’s essentially going to become your second brain that you refer to, organize information with, and review.

I recommend four steps to take notes that lead to a deep understanding of your subject of study.

My method does require more work than normal notetaking, but that’s part of what makes it more effective.

(Sorry, there were never going to be any shortcuts in this book, just smarter approaches.) Instead of allowing notetaking to be a brief, mostly passive exercise, my strategy forces you to highlight the key points in your subject, and compels you to extract the salient information for yourself, in your own words.

It enables you to process and elaborate upon the information you’re studying in a reliable, systematic way, which makes learning and retaining information infinitely easier.

The four steps are: (1) normal notetaking with as much detail as you can, (2) summarizing the information in your own words, clarifying the significance and noting questions, (3) connecting this particular piece of information to the lesson at large, and then (4) answering remaining questions and then summarizing each distinct page or section again.

The first step of my method is to take notes as you ordinarily would.

Copy down the information you need to know as you encounter the material, but leave two blank lines beneath each note you take.

These lines give you space to process and analyze the information in the second and third steps.

For maximum retention, it’s best to engage in these later steps immediately after you finish your class, video, or reading.

So the first step is to simply carry on as you normally would in as much detail as you can.

For example, if you were researching the diet of King Henry VIII, you might write (the following is all fabricated information for the purpose of illustration), "King Henry and his court consumed up to twenty different types of meat in one sitting.

Serving less was considered an insult to nobles of the time.

Vegetables and wine were also served, but the focus was on the meat as it was considered a sign of wealth and status.” Step two: Once you’ve taken your initial notes, you move on to what really differentiates my method from other forms of notetaking.

It starts on the second line for each note, where you left space, and you summarize what you wrote in step one in a complete sentence.

When you do this, it’s important not to just repeat the initial note, even if you took your notes in complete sentences.

Using your own words, converting the note to language that helps you understand the meaning is essential.

Ideally, you are able to extract a deeper level of understanding.

Really seek to make connections and find relationships within the information.

This isn’t applicable to every piece of information, but do it anyway.

Why? While it can seem redundant, the repetition itself also helps to cement the knowledge in your mind.

The emphasis on repeating the knowledge in your own words, and in a fully coherent, complete sentence, requires you to process the information and chew on its meaning, thus entrenching it more deeply in your mind.

When rephrasing the information from our example above, you might write, “Henry VIII’s diet was mainly meat.

In those years, rich and noble people expected a lot of different meats, and felt insulted when offered too little variety.

Wine and vegetables didn’t matter much.” On the second line of your notes, you can also list any questions you have about the notes you took in step one.

These are points of clarification, or gaps in your knowledge, that you feel you would need to form a complete picture.

Before you move on to the next step of my method, mull over the directions this information might lead, and what that all means.

Whether you can or cannot answer it, considering the subject deeply enough to form a question will help you remember the facts.

Questions you might have about Henry VIII’s diet are, “What were the health effects with such a protein-rich diet?” or “How many people were involved in getting that much meat on a daily basis, and how did they do it?” or “What did peasants eat by contrast?” or “What did other nobles from other cultures or countries consider high status?” Use a highlighter or a different-colored pen or pencil to make this section stand out, as this is the actual information and message you’ve extracted from the brain dump of the first step.

It’s actually unlikely that you’ll ever refer back to what you produced in the first step.

Step three: In the third line, the final blank line you left for yourself, state any connections you can find between the subject of that note and the broader topic you’re studying.

If you notice that the content of your note has some sort of cause- and-effect relationship with the broader topic, write that here.

If this new information helps you understand the motivating factors or connects events or allows you to guess at people’s perspective/perceptions, write those here too.

Anything you can do to form lateral connections to related information should be written down here so that the links—and thus the original information— can become consistent residents of your memory banks.

The rule of thumb is to simply ask how the information fits in and why it matters.

Following our example, suppose the greater lesson is about Henry VIII’s life and legacy.

Why is information about his diet and eating habits important? So here you might note that the royal’s diet contrasted dramatically with peasant diets, which were largely composed of fruits, vegetables, and hearty grains they farmed themselves.

Perhaps this led to Henry’s subjects hating and eventually executing him.

You might also note that such ample, stately meals likely contributed to Henry VIII’s well-known obesity.

Finally, you might also see that this type of opulence was a sign of how absurdly rich the nobility was at the time.

Or perhaps it was just an interesting anecdote to illustrate his opulence.

Find how the information contributes to an overall narrative or story.

See it as a living and breathing factor instead of a dry factoid.

Step four: The final step of my method is to take a break every page (or applicable chunk) to write a summary of the information from your second and third steps.

Also make sure to try to address the questions you wrote in the second step if they are still applicable.

The final step creates a fourth opportunity for you to revisit, synthesize, and transform the information you’re learning on paper.

If most people review information once, then you’ve done it four times in four different ways.

To say this is helpful would be an understatement.

The mental work will go a long way toward making sure you truly remember and understand the facts you’re learning and the implications of that information.

This doesn’t only help you comprehend the information, but will help you apply and manipulate that information if necessary.

To finish up your notes on Henry VIII’s diet, you write, “Henry VIII’s court expected to consume ten types of meat with each meal.

This consumption of meat was unusual at the time, as most couldn’t afford much meat at all, and consumed only fruits, vegetables, and grain they could raise themselves.

This may be why Henry VIII and people who ate as he did were obese.

I wonder how they got so much meat, and what other health effects resulted from this diet? What effect did this type of spending have on his people’s perception of him?” As you can see, my method pays notetaking the respect and attention it deserves.

When we take notes, we are not just recording information, we are creating the mental blueprint for how we perceive and understand this information for all time.

This is our chance at making an accurate and deeply comprehensive first impression, so we can’t spoil it with normal notes.

The method leads to a much deeper, much better integrated knowledge set—and that’s exactly what makes information stick.