People often say that smart students’ notebooks are beautiful and easy to read.
But when you try to imitate that and take neat notes in class, you often end up simply copying the board, spending too much time, and generally not getting very far.
The most important thing about note-taking is finding and mastering a style that works for you.
Here I’d like to write about note-taking techniques, using my own approach as an example.
Rules for taking notes
First of all, no matter how much you study note-taking methods, you won’t be able to put them into practice.
What matters is deciding on your own set of note-taking rules.
There are three important points to consider when setting those rules.
- Keep it as simple and clear as possible
- Are you the type who reviews notes later, or the type who memorizes on the spot?
- How you categorize information
Keep it as simple and clear as possible
In situations where you take notes, such as classes and lectures, information keeps flowing past you.
To take notes under those conditions, you need to get things down on paper quickly.
That’s why, rather than making things pretty with a wide variety of color coding, you need to keep up with the flow of information.
Taking notes isn’t the main task—taking in the information is.
So your rules shouldn’t be something you have to stop and recall. They need to let you choose colors and decide how to write intuitively.
Are you the type who reviews notes later, or the type who memorizes on the spot?
After class, you’ll probably use your notes when studying for exams.
What you write down changes depending on whether you use your notes like a textbook or as cues to jog your memory.
If you use them like a textbook, you need to write down as much of the information from class as possible, which takes time.
On the other hand, you can then study primarily from those notes, which makes them extremely convenient later on.
If you use them as memory cues, you filter the information down to some degree, which lets you concentrate on the class.
The catch is that when you sit down to study later, you’ll often need to consult the textbook or other materials.
It will also depend on your teacher’s style and the exams, but decide which type you mainly are.
If you’re the type who remembers most of what was covered in class, the latter approach is fine.
If you need repeated exposure to remember things, the former is probably better.
What you shouldn’t do is decide based on the fact that your notes will look nicer, or on a vague anxiety about missing some piece of information.
How you categorize information
Color coding in a notebook is really just a way of categorizing information.
In other words, once you’ve sorted information into categories, you can settle your color-coding rules simply by assigning a color to each category.
Before thinking about colors, you need to decide what kinds of information you actually need to distinguish.
I’ll describe my own categorization scheme below.
One way to categorize is important information versus everything else.
Then, how many levels of importance do you want?
Two levels, three levels, or more?
Besides importance, there are also headings, things the teacher said, things not in the textbook, supplementary information, and so on.
If you decide in advance how to provisionally handle exceptions when they come up, you can get through the moment without hesitating and refine your rules afterward.
Set your rules with these key points in mind and you’ll end up with your own ultimate note-taking method.
How I take notes
I’ve been talking in the abstract so far, so let me give my own note-taking method as a concrete example.
First, I’m the type who memorizes on the spot, so I treat my notes as supplementary and put the emphasis on absorbing information during class.
Since I don’t want to spend much time writing, I keep my rules extremely simple.
My categorization is just important versus not important.
Important information goes in red, everything else in black.
Since I write a lot in red, I use an erasable ballpoint pen (FriXion) for it.
For information that might be important, or that turns out to be important after I’ve written it, I underline it in red.
Offhand remarks and anecdotes from the teacher are valuable for recalling the content, so I jot them down small in black next to the related material.
Plenty of books have been published on how University of Tokyo students take notes, and they usually tell you to keep your notes neat—but that suits some people and not others.
It didn’t suit me.
(My handwriting isn’t nice to begin with, so I never got into the habit of reviewing my notes when studying for exams.)
And using many colors just made me hesitate, so by accepting that my notes are simply memos, I was able to find a method that works for me.
You can get good at studying even if your notes aren’t beautiful.
There’s no single correct way to take notes that works for everyone, so try various approaches and find a style that fits you—and that you enjoy!!