How To Take Smart Notes

My Take

How to Take Smart Notes explains how a well-organized note-taking can effectively help us think better and understand more. It walks us through a system called Zettelkasten used by a German sociologist named Niklas Luhmann. Using this approach, Luhmann wrote more than 70 books and published over 400 scholarly articles on a variety of subjects, including law, economy, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has a thirst for learning, and is interested in learning how to learn.

Summary

Writing is not the result of learning, studying, or research. It is the medium that produces the effect. Output (in the form of writing) is not created in isolation from Input.

The content and quality of writing are pre-determined by the preparation that has already gone in. Notes and thoughts on paper beat IQ and mental planning.

It is easy to be over-confident when you are not good at something. Those who dive deep know what they do not know, developing the imposter syndrome. The fact is they are more knowledgeable than those who are falsely self-assured.

It is important to have a structure and a process to manage the note-taking process. Planning is not sufficient, nor is the right mechanism for such an insight-driven process.

The process can be simple but has to be holistic. If all parts of the process, along with tools, don't gel well, then things will start slipping through the cracks.

Our work process has to be set up flexibly to allow constant, small adjustments to itself. The work itself will then be effortless. Success has more to do with designing the work environment intelligently, than depending on strong willpower.

Niklas Luhmann organized his Slip-box in two parts - a bibliographical system that would contain brief notes and the main slip-box that would contain the synthesized ideas from notes.

Each note would be linked to other nodes in the ecosystem. If a note is standing by itself, it usually is to serve as an entry point to an idea.

The notes themselves would be organized by a fixed numbering scheme, to allow diffusion of ideas across different topic clusters. New notes would be added behind relevant notes, with the next-in-line numbering scheme.

Luhmann would then add a note sorting the collection of links in the idea cluster, followed by an index that would serve as an entry point to the idea cluster.

Thinking, reading, and coming up with ideas is the main work - Writing is the best facilitator to accomplish this. Writing helps clarify and understand what we learn.

Four important steps to capture insight in the form of notes:

• Make Fleeting Notes - These are ideas and thoughts that pop into your head while reading or learning, taken on a discardable medium (like a notebook)
• Make Literature Notes - These are notes generated from content, written in your own words, capturing the essence of an idea
• Make Permanent Notes - Derive one note per idea from the literature notes, to be developed over time with new ideas, arguments, and discussions. These are written as if they are meant for someone else.
• File Permanent Notes in the Slip-box - Aim for maximum discoverability. Link to either an index page or an existing note that serves as the entry point.

Four steps to write about a specific topic:

• Review notes, and read more about interesting topics, capturing notes along the way
• Pull ideas together from notes
• Turn the notes into a rough draft, translating them into a coherent essay - Identify more research needed
• Edit and proofread your manuscript for publishing

Focus on the essentials to accomplish the task and don't complicate the workflow. Use only those tools that reduce distractions.

All that is needed to implement the system are

• a simple note capturing system (a pocket notebook, an app on the phone)
• a reference system (to store the notes you capture)
• a slip-box (pen and paper version, or custom implementations) and
• an editor (to add/update notes)

Review your workflow regularly. Even the best tool would not be of much help if you use a tool without thinking about the way you work with it.

Use the Russian model - focus on the essentials, discard all things that complicate. Good tools do not add features - they help reduce distractions from the main work, which here is **thinking**.

The tools you need are:

• A simple note capturing system (a pocket notebook, an app on the phone)
• A reference system (to store the notes you capture)
• A slip-box (pen and paper version, or custom implementations)
• Editor (to add/update notes)

If you use a tool without thinking about the way you work with it, even the best tool would not be of much help.

The only work that counts is writing. It is the medium of research and studying is actually research. Focusing on writing helps you zoom in on the most relevant aspects of what you are reading.

The most important question to answer when it comes to filing a note is: **In which context will I want to stumble upon it again?** This is useful only if everything goes into the same slip-box, in a standard format, aimed at generating insights.

The slip-box should be designed to present you with ideas that are already forgotten.

A slip-box can lose its value if notes are added into it indiscriminately. It is effective only when you aim for a critical mass, which is not just the notes but their quality and linkages.

To achieve a critical mass, it is important to distinguish clearly between the three types of notes:

• Fleeting Notes - reminders of information, can be written in any kind of way. It is important to review and discard them within a day or two, otherwise their context will be permanently lost.
• Permanent Notes - stored in a reference system or written as if for print, in the slip-box. The only permanently stored notes are the literature notes in the reference system and the main notes in the slip-box. The former can be very brief as the context is clearly the text they refer to. The latter is written with more care as they need to be self-explanatory.
• Project Notes - only relevant to one particular project. They can be discarded after the project is finished. Project notes are kept separate and distinct from the slip-box system. When the project is done, the project folder is deleted or archived.

There are a few mistakes that people do with their slip-boxes:

• Noting everything down, as if they belong to the **Permanent Note** category, without combining or rearranging notes into ideas for insight
• Collecting notes only related to specific projects
• Treating all notes as fleeting notes

Nobody ever starts from scratch - they just think so because they are unable to track their ideas back to their origins.

You tend to start with what you already know, get informed more about the topic, update what you know, and look for the next insight, forming a virtuous circle.

By externalizing the thought process, your thoughts tend to be more developed and mature, with references to where a thought originated from. You also tend to spend more time on the necessary aspects - reading, thinking, discussing, writing, and developing ideas - instead of remembering what you have learned.

A good sign of good writing structure is when you have too many topics to work with - you land up here because you are following leads instead of starting with a preconceived topic. In case a line of inquiry turns out to be fruitless, it is just about moving on and finding another topic to research. The process ensures that the right questions bubble up over time.

When the process of writing bears fruit and helps us write better, we enter into a positive feedback loop, and the slip-box is an effective feedback mechanism to improve consistently.

The slip-box not only tests our understanding of concepts when it forces us to rewrite it in our own words but also bubbles up inconsistencies and contradictions in our understanding.

The primary purpose of a slip-box is not to act as a container of notes for retrieval. It is to point to facts and generate insight by letting ideas mingle. It is not important what we find in a search; it is important on what we stumble upon while searching.

Reduce interruptions, avoid multi-tasking, and streamline workflow to generate insights. Dealing with different kinds of writing tasks (proofreading, formulating ideas, reading, writing, etc.) is also a kind of hindrance.

Dump your thoughts into the note, while indications on what to do next, before you disengage from it. It is like a note to your future self to kickstart their thought process next time they visit the note.

Closing out on thoughts helps clear working memory, freeing you up for other tasks. The reverse is true as well - loading up on an incomplete thought into memory will ensure your mind does not let it go until it finds a possible solution or path ahead.

Use a standard workflow and environment to reduce the number of decisions, thereby reducing the barrier to productive work. Use the same notebook, the same processes, the same tools to eliminate the need for decisions.

Writing while reading forces you to understand the content truly. Your ideas, mental models, and theories are put to the test as you struggle to elaborate on what you read, focusing on the gist and underlying meaning.

The literature note can be brief or elaborate, depending on the complexity of the idea you are capturing, but you have to capture it in your own words. You should focus on not only what is present in the text, but also what is not being expressed.

Capturing ideas in your words as close to their meaning will help you avoid confirmation bias. You are not searching for facts or statements that support what you already know - you are collecting facts indiscriminately to understand how they fit into the overall picture. The only question to be asked while adding a note is not whether it is relevant or irrelevant to a topic area.

As you deliberately practice collecting the gist of the information, you will get better at it. You will read faster, understand better, and produce quicker.

Writing also serves as a note to your future self, by when you would have completely forgotten most of what you read.

Not testing yourself on what you have learned is like not having learned at all. You may end up knowing something by rote, but you will lack true understanding. Because you don't understand what you read will not contribute to building up your expertise in an area.

An excellent measure of learning is the number of permanent notes added to the slip-box over time. Notes in a slip-box have a compounding effect.

The slip-box should be treated as an external memory that allows us to forget things. Forgetting is important because we want only memories relevant to that moment and that context to be triggered. This triggering can be built up by embedding deliberate cues between pieces of information. These cues are nothing but links in the slip-box.

Writing, and the elaboration necessary to be able to write, helps us understand better. Only with understanding do you truly learn.

Too much ordering of notes by topic impedes learning because it narrows down the knowledge and does not allow us to embed cues by linking notes from different contexts. Elaborating on differences and similarities is actually helpful - it helps us classify the note better.

When you add a new note to the slip-box, ensure that it is linked to relevant notes. They could be directly behind another note, linked to an index, or simply linked explicitly with notes in other contexts.

A slip-box is not intended to be an encyclopedia, but a tool to think with. Completeness is not among its aims. We only write if it helps with our thinking - we don't write to bridge gaps in notes.

Note sequences built up in the slip-box are the backbone of text development. These loose order of sequences moves away from the strict hierarchy and allows freedom to change course when necessary and provides enough structure to build up complexity.

A slip-box is not to be used as an archive, where we just take out what we put in. It is a system to think with.

Add a note to an index to be able to find it again. Use keywords sparingly - the references between notes are much more important than getting to them from the index or the tag cluster. If you want to get to a note from the index, it usually means that you already have the fully-developed plan in your head.

All we need in the index are entry points - a few wisely chosen notes are sufficient for each entry point.

Links are of two types - they are in notes that give an overview of a topic, or they link two related notes regardless of where they are within the slip-box in different contexts.

**We are building a latticework of mental models when we interact with the slip-box - focusing on principles behind an idea, adding and connecting notes, looking for patterns and thinking beyond the obvious interpretations, combining different ideas, and developing new lines of thought.**

We learn better because of different aspects:

• Elaboration: expand a concept to try and understand its broader implications
• Spacing: retrieve the information at different times
• Variation: in different contexts
• Contextual Interference: with the help of chance
• Retrieval: with a deliberate effort

The slip-box is a way to hack learning: it provides an opportunity to learn

Creativity is in connecting things - it is seeing something that others were not able to see (Steve Jobs). It takes time for good ideas to form and mature.just by using it.

With experience and practice, we gain an intuition that naturally pushes us towards more promising ideas. Groundbreaking paradigm shifts happen as a consequence of many small moves in the right direction instead of one big idea. Having our ideas in front of our eyes helps us think so much better.

Even when slip-box is maintained in digital media, restrict the size of a note. Restrictions bring in a certain mundane aspect to the act of storing, helping drive creativity.

Identify the biggest clusters that have built up in the slip-box and start writing from there. Permanent notes are anyway in a ready-to-publish state, so it is only about pulling them into a paper and organization them around a topic.

Don't fixate on a topic upfront - let the topic emerge from ideas in your notes. That will preserve your interest and motivation, and help you stay on the task.

Aim to get the first draft done. The rest will follow.

Don't try to break old habits, or use willpower. Strategically build up a new habit that can replace the old one.