Summary - How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning, and Thinking – for Students, Academics, and Nonfiction Book Writers.

 

Book title: How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning, and Thinking – for Students, Academics, and Nonfiction Book Writers.

Author: Sönke Ahrens

Publisher: [North Charleston, South Carolina] : [Createspace Independent Publishing Platform], 2017. ©2017

Date published: February 24, 2017

The number of pages: 176 pages

Genre (Type of book): Tips

Why did you decide to read this book? 

Because I want to know how to take good notes.

Were you glad that you decided to read it? Explain!

I enjoyed reading it because there were many useful tips even though this book was a little difficult to read.

What did you like best about this book?

Explain in detail good tips and tools for taking good notes.

What did you like least?

There are too many prefaces to each sub-chapter and too many words. Many languages are difficult to understand

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Explain!

I would recommend this book to friends who like to take good notes and also who like to read books full of words.

On a scale of 1-10, how difficult was this book for you? (1 easy, 10 difficult) Why?

6, Because it is difficult for ordinary people to read.

 

Resume :

This is exactly what we do when we take the next step, in which we write and add permanent notes to the slip-box. We don’t just play with ideas in our heads, but do something with them in a very concrete way: We think about what they mean for other lines of thoughts, then we write this explicitly on paper and connect them literally with the other notes. 

 

• Make a Career One Note at a Time 

The first time one faces the challenge of writing a long text, say a dissertation, it is pretty normal to feel intimidated by the prospect of filling a few hundred pages with well-conceived ideas, source-based research, and correct references on every page. If you don’t feel some kind of respect for this task, there is something wrong with you. On the other hand, most people feel that writing a page a day (and having a day a week off) is quite manageable, not realizing that this would mean finishing a doctoral thesis within a year – something that does not happen very often in reality. 

 

• Think Outside the Brain

Taking permanent notes of our thoughts is a form of self-testing as well: do they still make sense in writing? Are we even able to get the thought on paper? Do we have the references, facts, and supporting sources at hand? And at the same time, writing is the best way to get our thoughts in order. Writing here, too, is not copying, but translating (from one context and one medium into another). No written piece is ever a copy of thought in our mind.

 

• Learn by not Trying

Now we elaborate these ideas within different contexts and connect them with other ideas in a durable fashion. The literature notes are going to be archived, which means the ideas would be lost in the reference system if we didn’t do something with them.

 

•  Adding Permanent Notes to the Slip-Box

The next step after writing the permanent notes is to add them to the slip-box. 

1. Add a note to the slip-box either behind the note you directly refer to or, if you do not follow up on a specific note, just behind the last note in the slipbox. Number it consecutively. The Zettelkasten numbers the notes automatically. “New note” will just add a note with a new number. If you click “New note sequence,” the new note will be registered at the same time as the note that follows the note currently active on the screen. But you can always add notes “behind” other notes anytime later. Each note can follow multiple other notes and therefore be part of different note sequences. 

2. Add links to other notes or links on other notes to your new note. 

3. Make sure it can be found from the index; add an entry in the index if necessary or refer to it from a note that is connected to the index. 

4. Build a Latticework of Mental Model. The key to good and efficient writing lies in the intelligent organisation of ideas and notes. This book helps students, academics and nonfiction writers to get more done, write intelligent texts and learn for the long run. It teaches you how to take smart notes and ensure they bring you and your projects forward. The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking-technique. This is the first comprehensive guide and description of this system in English, and not only does it explain how it works, but also why. It suits students and academics in the social sciences and humanities, nonfiction writers and others who are in the business of reading, thinking and writing. Instead of wasting your time searching for notes, quotes or references, you can focus on what really counts: thinking, understanding and developing new ideas in writing. It does not matter if you prefer taking notes with pen and paper or on a computer, be it Windows, Mac or Linux. And you can start right away