--- title: How to Take Smart Notes author: Sönke Ahrens category: Academic writing publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform publish_date: 2017 total_page: 170 cover_url: https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DGMTzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api Status: Completed start_read_date: finish_read_date: my_rate: book_note: isbn10: 1542866502 isbn13: 9781542866507 --- **Title:** How to Take Smart Notes **Author:** Sönke Ahrens **Type:** #litnote #book #todevelop --- This book is for you, the good students, ambitious academics and curious nonfiction writers who understand that insight doesn’t come easy and that writing is not only for proclaiming opinions, but the main tool to achieve insight worth sharing. --- Every intellectual endevour starts with a note. We write for various reasons. It's surprising that how little we think about writing when it plays a key role in learning, studying and researching. Note-taking is the main part of the writing process. It is often forgotten that the process of writing starts much earlier than facing the blank screen. > Writing is not what follows research, learning and studying, it is the medium of all this work. If you learn how to take smart notes and organize your everyday writing accordingly, you'll never have the problem of a blank screen ever again. A productive writing starts with a good note-taking system. If something is already writtern somewhere, its incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrive it from there. Therefore, the indicator of academic success is not to be found in people's head but in the way they do their everyday work. Doing work in smart ways somehow leadds to success. We can not do everything with our brain alone. That's why self-discipline and and self-control are hard to achieve only with willpower. But if the environment is changed, it becomes easy. So, imagine you don't have to use your willpower of mental resource as much when you start writing. Why? Because you already have a system and a different environment. This is where the organization of writing and note-taking comes into play. # Everything you need to know A good structure is allows you to do the work seemlessly. It enables the flow state. It also put us back in charge and increases our freedom to do the right thing at the right time. The challange everyone face is to structure one's workflow in a way that insight and new ideas become the driving forces that push us forward. Therefore, a system is needed to keep a track of the ever-increasing pool of information, which allows one to combine different ideas in an intelligent way with the aim of generating new ideas. # Good solutions are simple, unexpected The new way of taking smart notes can feel artificial at first. BUt as soon as you get used to taking smart notes, it will feel so much natural that you will wonder how you were ever able to get anything done before. Even the best strategy won't improve your productivity if you don't change your daily routines that the tool is embedded in, just as the fastest car won't help you much if you don't have proper roads to drive it on. Writing is not a linear process. We constantly jump back and forth between different thoughts. Even the best tools won't make much of a difference if they are used in isolation. Only if they are embedded in a well-conceived working process can the tools play out their strengths. There is no point in having great tools if they don't fit together. # Slip-box Slip-box is a open-ended process of writing, learning and thinking. In the 1960s, Niklas Luhmann, invented the slip-box system. He used to read a lot and like many others he had colleted many notes. He soon realised that his notes were not taking him anywhere. So, he developed a system to collect all of them in one place called slip-box. He found out that one idea, one note was only as valuable as its context, which was not necessarily the context it was teake from. He thought about how one idea could relate and contribute to different contexts. He collected his notes in slip-box in such a way that, it became his partner, main idea generator and productivity engine. In the span of 30 years, luhmann published 58 books and hundreds of articles. Even after his death, about a dozen more books on different topics like religion, politics, and education were published under his name, all based on the manuscripts lying around in his office. When he was asked about his secret to productivity, he always mentioned the slip-box. The slip-box helps you create a smart working or writing environment that helps to avoid resistance. # The Slip-box manual Althoug the slip box method is so simple and so valuable, why don't many people practice it? Because writing these notes is the main work. It takes enormous amounts of effort, time, patience and willpower. Writing these notes is also not the main work. Thinking is. Reading is. Understanding and coming up with ideas is. [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/🍀Permanent Notes/Why many don't practice zettlekasten Method]] The notes are just the tangible outcome of thinking and reading. All you have to have is a pen and paper or laptop under your hands while you are oding what you are doing anyways. And writing is the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have. These notes build of as you go on. Richard Feynmann stresses it as much as benjamin franlin. You have to externalise your ideas, you have to write. If you develop a systema and write your notes in a smart way, it will propel you forward. ## Writing a paper step by step: 1. [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/🍀Permanent Notes/Fleeting Notes]]: Fleeting notes are the reminders of what you have on your head. They are your everyday thoughts that you might think to be important. You don't have to worry about where or how you can write them. You can have a simple notebook or an inbox system. But if your thoughts are already sorted and you have time, you can skip this step and write down the ideas directly as permanent note for your slip-box. They are only the reminders and can be written in any kind of way and will end up in trash within a day or two 3. [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/🍀Permanent Notes/Literature Notes]]: Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don't want to forget or can use in your own writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective and use your own words. Don't just copy the content. Understand first and write them on your own words. Now place all of these notes in the same place with bibliographical details. They are tools for understanding and grasping the text. In challenging cases, you may need to elaborate notes while in easier cases, it might be sufficient to just jot down some keywords. Sometimes it is necessary to slowly work our way through a difficult text and sometimes it is enough to reduce a whole book to a single sentence.Sometimes it is necessary to slowly work our way through a difficult text and sometimes it is enough to reduce a whole book to a single sentence. 5. [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/🍀Permanent Notes/Permanent Notes]]: Go back to your slip-box and through the fleeting and literature notes ideally once a day. Think about how they relate to what is relevant fo your research. The idea is not to collect but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions. Can you add something? Does something contradict? Can you combine ideas to generate something new? What questions are triggered by them? Use full sentences, make references and be as precise, clear and brief as possible. They will never be throw away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way. They are always stored in the same way in the same place. Every permanent note can be elaborated enought to have the potential to become part of or inspire a final written piece. permanent note that will add value to the actual slip-box. Literature notes are short and meant to help with writing slip-box notes. Everything else either helps to get to this point or is a distraction. Permanent notes, too, are directed towards an audience ignorant of the thoughts behind the text and unaware of the original context, only equipped with a general knowledge of the field. 6. Throw away the fleeting notes and put literature notes into your reference system. T - Add permanent notes to your slip-box by addding links to relevant notes. - In the old system, the question is: Under which topic do I store this note? In the new system, the question is: In which context will I want to stumble upon it again? - See what's missing and what questions arise. Read more to challange and develop your arguments according to the new information you are learning about. Take more notes, develop ideas further and see where things will take you. - You will have developed enough ideas to decide what topics to write about. Look through the connection and collect all the relevent notes on the topic. Bring them in oder and look for what is missing and what is redundant. - Turn your notes into a rough draft. Don't just copy your notes. Translate them intor something coherent. Detect holes in your argument and fill them or change the argument - Edit and proofread your paper. # Everything you need to have The slip-box focuses on the russina model: Focus on essentials, don't complicate things unnecessarily. If you have a pen and paper, editor, your slip-box, reference system at hand, you are ready to go. # The Four Underlying Principles ## Writing is the only thing that matters Studying done properly is research. There is no such thing as private knowledge. An idea kept private is as good as one you never had. To make something public means to write it down so it can be read. Even if you decide to never write a single line of manuscript, you will improve your reading, thinking and other intellectual skills just by doing everything as if nothing counts other than writing. ## Simplicity is paramount It is often believed that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But, it is the simplicity of the idea that makes it so powerful. biggest advantage compared to a top-down storage system organised by topics is that the slip-box becomes more and more valuable the more it grows, instead of getting messy and confusing. ## Nobody starts from scratch The process of writing is vastly misunderstood. Make a decision on what to write about, plan your research, do your research, write. Writing can't be this linear. Evey intellectual endeavour starts from an already existing preconception, which then can be transformed during further inquiries and can serve as a starting point for following endeavours. Nobody ever teaches or discusses about a proper note-taking system. If you develop a proper note-taking system, you will never ever have to face the blank screen again. ## Let the work carry you forward Once we get into the workflow, it is as if the work itself fains momentum, pulling us along and sometimes even energizing us. Having a growth mindset is crucial, but only one side of the equation. Having a learning system in place that enables feedback loops in a practical way is equally important. Reading with a pen in the hand, for example, forces, us to think about what we read and check upon our understanding. The ability to express understanding in one’s own words is a fundamental competency for everyone who writes. The better we become at it, the more effective our reading will become, the more we can read, the more we will learn. The slip-box is not a collectio of notes. It's about letting ideas mingle. Its usability grows with its size not just linearly but exponentially. # Read for understanding ## Always read with a pen and paper in hand To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft; to get a good draft written, you only have to turn a series of notes into a continuous text. And as a series of notes is just the rearrangement of notes you already have in your slip-box, all you really have to do is have a pen in your hand when you read. [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/🍀Permanent Notes/You are taking notes the wrong way]] Sometimes people just underline sentences in the book or make some comments in the margins of the book. It's like taking no notes at all. And more ofte, reading is not accompanies by taking notes. # Keep an open mind Our brains are not very smart in selecting information by default. Therefore, we should always seek information, arguments and facts that challenge our way of thinkng. We are naturally drawn to everything that makes us feel good. Confirmation bias is a subtle but major force. # Get the gist The ability to seperate relevant from less relevant information is a skill taht can only be learned by doing. # Learn to read If we don’t try to verify our understanding during our studies, we will happily enjoy the feeling of getting smarter and more knowledgeable while in reality staying as dumb as we were. Understanding is not just a precondition to learning something. To a certain degree, learning is understanding.