16 Note-Taking Secrets of the Top 1% of Students

Summary

In this engaging video, Justin Sung, a seasoned learning coach, distills 13 years of experience in teaching over 25,000 learners into 16 powerful note-taking tips designed for effective learning. He debunks common misconceptions and emphasizes that real learning is about processing and understanding information, not just writing it down. From advocating less writing and more thinking to leveraging AI for summarization, Justin encourages students to focus on integration and understanding. He discusses innovative strategies like nonlinear note-taking, the Cornell method, and even using flashcards effectively. This guide is a must-see for anyone wanting to elevate their study habits and join the top 1% of students.

Highlights

• Justin Sung advocates writing less and thinking more to enhance learning. ✏️💡
• AI tools can simplify and summarize lecture content, preventing information overload. 🤖🔥
• The use of highlighters is discouraged; instead, deeper engagement with material is recommended. 🚫📓
• Nonlinear and free-form notes align better with how the brain organizes information. 🧠🔗
• Implementing the Cornell note-taking method boosts active engagement with the material. 📚✨

Key Takeaways

• Write less, think more! 🌟 Focusing on processing information leads to better learning.
• Use AI to help you condense and understand information. 🤖 AI can save you a ton of time!
• Ditch ineffective study tools like highlighters and focus on understanding instead. 📚
• Nonlinear notes can enhance understanding and memory retention. 🔍
• The Cornell method is a great transitional strategy for better note organization. 📋

Overview

Justin Sung, a learning coach with over a decade of experience, shares invaluable insights into effective note-taking strategies that transcend mere documentation to focus on real learning. His advice centers around writing less and thinking more, advocating for an understanding-driven approach over mindless transcription. This method not only saves time but also aligns with how the brain naturally synthesizes information, making learning a deliberately active process.

Sung introduces novel tactics like using AI to automate and streamline the summarization of lectures. This technological angle ensures students can focus on understanding rather than merely capturing information verbatim. He also critiques the overuse of highlighters, emphasizing instead the importance of creating mental connections. The idea is to reduce physical writing and enhance cognitive engagement with the material.

Further, Justin promotes nonlinear note-taking as a superior strategy, designed to reflect knowledge networks rather than linear text. This approach, along with techniques like the Cornell method, encourages deeper cognitive processing and better retention of information. His step-by-step guidance offers students across various disciplines a path to pursuing excellence, potentially joining the ranks of top-performing learners.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Overview of Importance of Effective Note-taking The chapter introduces the significance of effective note-taking, based on the speaker's 13 years of experience as a learning coach. The speaker has coached over 25,000 learners worldwide, emphasizing that note-taking is crucial in the learning process. The difference between a beginner and an experienced notetaker is encapsulated by 16 rules, starting with the principle of writing less and thinking more, supported by personal anecdotes.
• 01:30 - 04:00: Writing Less and Thinking More The chapter emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity when it comes to taking notes. The author reflects on their own experience of preparing for medical school, where they initially wasted a lot of time writing extensive notes without effective learning. The key lesson learned and shared is that simply writing notes does not equate to learning. The text suggests that better learning involves not just writing notes but engaging with the material in a way that promotes deeper understanding and retention.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Using AI for Efficient Note-taking The chapter discusses the importance of active engagement in the process of note-taking. It emphasizes that merely writing notes without engaging the brain in understanding and processing the information is ineffective. The effectiveness of note-taking lies in the active and thoughtful involvement of the brain in evaluating and processing the information. Without this active cognitive involvement, the learning process is compromised. The chapter dispels the myth that there is a secret method to effective note-taking, reinforcing that it is the active mental engagement that truly matters.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Critiquing the Use of Highlighters The chapter discusses the effective use of highlighters and critiquing common practices in note-taking. It emphasizes the importance of integrating note-writing with learning, rather than treating them as separate tasks. The goal is to maximize the overlap between writing notes and active learning to enhance understanding and retention. The use of highlighters should be more strategic, focusing on integrating the learning process rather than just marking text.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Avoiding Copy and Paste The chapter titled 'Avoiding Copy and Paste' discusses how excessive note-taking can become counterproductive. It emphasizes the goal of spending more time on thinking, processing, evaluating, and organizing information, rather than on redundant note-writing. To improve this habit, it suggests progressively writing fewer and shorter notes, using reduced sentences, and focusing on capturing essential thoughts to streamline the thought process while making note management easier.
• 09:00 - 12:00: The Drawbacks of Color Coding In this chapter titled 'The Drawbacks of Color Coding', the author discusses the inefficiencies associated with color coding systems and how they can be improved by developing shorthand symbols. The author also advocates for utilizing AI tools to save time, in contrast to traditional methods such as using voice recorders during university lectures. The chapter highlights the shift towards more efficient practices to enhance thinking and minimize time spent on manual tasks.
• 12:00 - 23:00: Embracing Nonlinear Note-taking The chapter focuses on the concept of effective note-taking, emphasizing that writing excessive notes is not necessarily beneficial. It suggests that many people fear missing important details, which leads them to document everything. However, the ideal approach is to avoid using note-taking as a method to record every single piece of information unless there is no other way to access it later. Situations where exhaustive note-taking is advisable involve instances where the information cannot be reviewed later through other means or when recording is not permitted. In such scenarios, note-taking becomes essential for capturing necessary details.
• 23:00 - 26:00: Exploring the Corell Note-taking Method The chapter discusses the Corell Note-taking Method, emphasizing the use of AI to enhance efficiency. Instead of spending time documenting every detail during meetings or lectures, the recommendation is to record the session and later use AI tools to extract the main ideas. This approach allows for generating concise summaries, like a single paragraph, thus saving time and effort while still capturing essential information.
• 26:00 - 34:00: Advantages of Digital Free Form Note-taking Apps The chapter explains the benefits of using digital free form note-taking apps, illustrating how they simplify complex topics. It discusses how having a basic understanding makes delving into more detailed, technical aspects easier. Additionally, it advises against the overuse of highlighters in favor of other methods, suggesting that frequently purchasing new highlighters signals ineffective study habits.
• 34:00 - 42:00: Importance of Zooming Out for Contextual Understanding The chapter emphasizes the importance of taking a broader perspective (or 'zooming out') to enhance contextual understanding. It advises against simply highlighting text when reading. Instead, it suggests dedicating extra time, about 20 to 30 more minutes, to directly learn the material rather than just preparing to learn. This approach encourages engaging with the content immediately, thereby fostering genuine comprehension rather than just marking what seems important.
• 42:00 - 48:00: Emphasizing Important Points Through Exaggeration The chapter discusses strategies to emphasize important points when studying, suggesting alternatives to traditional highlighting. Instead of simply highlighting, the chapter recommends engaging with the material to better understand and remember the information. Suggestions include taking extra notes, doing additional reading, and connecting information to a broader network of knowledge. Highlighting can still be used, but it should be part of a broader strategy to deepen understanding, rather than solely relying on the act itself.
• 48:00 - 56:00: Writing Questions to Guide Learning The chapter discusses the efficacy of writing questions as a learning method compared to other techniques like highlighting, which shows little overlap with actual learning. The author emphasizes that despite extensive studies requiring high detail retention and mastery, success was achieved in assessments without using highlighters, thus suggesting alternative strategies for effective studying should be considered.
• 56:00 - 62:00: Problems with Flowcharts and Solutions The chapter titled 'Problems with Flowcharts and Solutions' emphasizes the drawbacks of copy-pasting information, such as notes or diagrams, into one's own materials. It compares this action to watching someone else work out at the gym and expecting to gain strength, stressing that learning should occur in the brain through active engagement and organization of information.
• 62:00 - 68:00: Applying the 24-hour Rule in Note-taking The chapter discusses the misconception associated with note-taking, particularly when using the copy-paste method. It points out that while copying and pasting information into notes might seem useful, it doesn't equate to internalizing or truly understanding the material. This act can create a false sense of security as though accumulating more notes leads to better knowledge, but in fact, it hasn't engaged the brain in processing and comprehending the information. The chapter critiques this passive approach and implies the need for active engagement with the content for effective learning.
• 68:00 - 73:00: Structuring Notes by Topics Not Lectures The chapter emphasizes the importance of structuring notes by topics rather than lectures. It suggests that when encountering valuable information, one should not simply copy and paste it. Instead, the chapter recommends taking extra time to extract personal meaning, summarize, paraphrase, and connect the information with existing knowledge. This process not only aids learning but also results in personalized and meaningful notes.
• 73:00 - 80:00: Creating a Blueprint with Pre-study The chapter discusses how pre-study can enhance memory and understanding. By integrating new information into an overall framework, every piece of data becomes a chance to synthesize and relate to the broader context of learning. The narrative includes an example of a younger student who was particularly diligent in her note-taking, illustrating the application of pre-study techniques.
• 80:00 - 88:00: Using Flashcards for Weak Points The chapter discusses the importance of using study techniques that actually aid learning rather than just taking time. It highlights an example of a person who spent four to five hours a day writing notes and realized that the process was not helping her learn the material. The chapter suggests that spending time on activities that do not directly contribute to learning, such as creating aesthetically pleasing notes, is not productive. It also questions whether incorporating diagrams or flowcharts into notes is effective. Overall, it emphasizes the need to focus on study methods that strengthen weak points rather than only producing extensive notes.
• 88:00 - 89:00: Conclusion In the chapter titled 'Conclusion,' the emphasis is on the value of actively engaging with learning materials, particularly through the creation of diagrams. The chapter suggests that while crafting diagrams may seem time-consuming and challenging, it presents a significant learning opportunity as opposed to merely copying and pasting. The process of observing, understanding, and recreating diagrams enhances comprehension and retention. The act of testing oneself by rebuilding these diagrams and verifying accuracy provides a deeper learning experience than passive methods.

16 Note-Taking Secrets of the Top 1% of Students Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I've been a learning coach for the past 13 years I've coached over 25,000 Learners worldwide on learning to learn and a big part of that is note taking and I found that the difference between a beginner and an experienced notetaker comes down to these 16 rules so here's 13 years of no BS advice on note taking number one write less think more these are the notes that I wrote back when I
• 00:30 - 01:00 was trying to enter into medical school all those years ago and I spent hours every single day writing these notes most of it was a waste of time I now spend probably a 20th of the time that I used to writing notes and I've never been more confident in my learning here's the belief that needs to evaporate from your brain writing notes does not mean you're learning writing notes is just an activity there are ways of writing notes that help your brain think about the material in a certain way that helps with the learning but
• 01:00 - 01:30 there are also ways of writing notes that absolutely do not help your brain or like you can have your brain completely turned off and you can be writing notes for hours but what matters is what your brain is doing and thinking and how it's processing that information while you are writing the notes it's an active effortful thing if you are writing notes and you don't feel like your brain is actually actively engaged in evaluating and thinking about and processing that information you are not learning there is isn't some secret
• 01:30 - 02:00 process happening in the background that's making it all work and so if we sort of think about the time you spend writing notes as one Circle and then you've got the time you spend on learning in another Circle there is an overlap in those Vin diagrams but for a lot of people and for how it used to be for me that overlap is really really small and becoming a bit of notetaker is about making that overlap as close to just becoming a single Circle as possible so if you're writing notes and you recognize that your brain is a essentially Switched Off you have to
• 02:00 - 02:30 realize you're wasting your time the ideal situation you want to end up at is that you are spending most of your time thinking processing evaluating organizing that information and then you're writing your notes to help you track that thought process and to make that thinking easier so if you're in this camp where you write a lot of notes here's what you should do aim to progressively write less and less start by just getting into the habit of reducing sentences not writing full sentences using more
• 02:30 - 03:00 keywords summarizing things a little bit more tightly start developing shorthand use symbols just get less time spent finger moving on the page and more time spent thinking what to even put on the page number two use AI to save time I remember in uni they didn't record the lectures for us so at the beginning of every lecture all the students would go down and put their voice recorders like lecture recorders on the table well doing that and recording it is a lot
• 03:00 - 03:30 better than writing lots of notes to try to keep up when I tell people to write less notes one of the big problems that people have is that they're afraid they're going to miss stuff they're afraid they're going to miss detail you don't want to be in a position where you're using your note taking because you need to just document everything the only situation where you would do that is if there's a lot of information that you won't be able to review again later like there's no other access to it there's no recording that you can review you you're not allowed to record it yourself like if that is the case and
• 03:30 - 04:00 you've got like one opportunity to get this information then sure you might want to type things up you know leave much more notes than you normally would but if that's not the position you're in don't spend your time and effort and energy writing notes just for documentation purposes record it get the recording and then Chuck that recording through AI to generate you a summary a great tip is to take a recording and then to use AI to pull out just the main ideas and generate like a single paragraph summary at the simple level
• 04:00 - 04:30 and then that gives you this really simple Layman's understanding of the topic and it's so much easier to now make sense of the more complicated technical stuff when you go through it in more detail number three ditch the highlighter I have a highlighter here and and this highlighter that sits on my desk I've been using this highlighter for like 7 years but if you are going and buying a new highlighter like every couple months you're definitely doing it wrong when you highlight something you're basically the deciding that you
• 04:30 - 05:00 going to forget something important you've made the decision that the thing you have highlighted is important enough to learn but you are not willing to do something that allows you to learn it instead of spending an hour reading through stuff and highlighting all the things that you think is important to learn just spend the time while you're reading it take an extra 20 30 minutes make that hour go to an hour and a half but actually just learn it right there
• 05:00 - 05:30 on the spot when you're studying and you see something that you feel like you would want to highlight instead of highlighting it just think about that process it write some extra notes do some extra reading do things that help that information connect with the bigger picture do things that give it meaning in relation to something else form a network using that that's what creates good memory that's what helps you to develop a strong understanding and you can still highlight it if you want but the problem with the way that a lot of people use a highlighter is that it creates this illusion like because I've
• 05:30 - 06:00 highlighted a bunch of these notes it means that okay therefore I've kind of studied it but again like the VIN diagram of highlighting things versus actual learning happening in the brain there's almost no overlap between them I've done years of undergraduate and postgraduate study for high volumes of content high levels of detail to remember high levels of Mastery performed extremely well in my assessments without ever using a highlighter number four don't copy paste
• 06:00 - 06:30 when I say copy paste I'm talking about uh having someone else's notes having something else and like something you find online copying that and then pasting it into your notes or even a diagram like copying a diagram and then putting it into notes try to avoid doing that copy pasting is like going to a gym watching someone else work out and then assuming that you're going to get stronger remember learning is something that has to happen in the brain as a byproduct of you thinking about and organizing that information in a way
• 06:30 - 07:00 it's a very active process when we copy paste something we're saying hey this piece of information is valuable like this is useful to know I want that and so we put that into our notes but just because it's in our notes doesn't mean that it's in our knowledge we haven't done the workout we haven't done the exercise we haven't done any of the heavy lifting or thinking about it in our brain and so again it creates this illusion that like now my notes are getting longer bigger there's more INF in here we feel more safe and secure in
• 07:00 - 07:30 our studying even though our knowledge has not grown when you see something that you feel like this is valuable enough for me to copy and paste take a little bit longer to extract your own meaning from it summarize it paraphrase it connect it with something else that you have learned turn it into something that is truly your own that you have really evaluated and when you do this not only does it help you to learn that actual valuable thing and then create notes that are more personalized that are more meaningful to you you that
• 07:30 - 08:00 immediately improve your memory and understanding but it also ripples out through to everything else that you're learning about because every valuable piece of information that you would normally highlight or copy and paste is an opportunity to connect that to the bigger picture so everything that you've been learning so far gets sort of reviewed every time you're thinking about how it might connect together this younger student that I coached years ago I remember she was so proud of her notetaking that she had a lot of
• 08:00 - 08:30 attachment to writing really nice looking notes and she would spend like literally four or 5 hours a day just writing these notes and I asked her okay so after these four or five hours let's say that you set an exam how well do you think you would do and then she said oh no like I haven't really started learning it yet like I've just written the notes and so you never want to get to that position where you've actually spent hours doing this thing that hasn't helped your learning there's no point okay well what about diagrams like surely it's okay to copy paste a flowchart or a diagram into your notes
• 08:30 - 09:00 even though it can be more timec consuming and you may not be bothered to try to do it actually creating the diagram yourself is a more valuable learning opportunity than just copy pasting it in the act of seeing a diagram trying to understand what you're seeing putting it together making sense of it to the point where you can remember it and actually almost test yourself and your ability to recreate it into your noes and then check whether it was right or wrong that is a much more valuable learning activity than copy
• 09:00 - 09:30 pasting and just like annotating things on top it's using a different type of learning one is trying to create active recall opportunities and the other is creating a recognition opportunity recognition is basically you just look at something and ask yourself okay is this right or not like do I recognize this piece of information our ability to recognize is going to be Sky High it's going to be much higher than our ability to actually recall it and unless you're being tested purely through recognition which probably not you're going to need
• 09:30 - 10:00 that recall ability and so if you need to get that recall ability at some point you you may as well just do it right now when you're first learning it and writing your notes number five stop color coding when I was in medical school I used to have this very specific color coding system that I used where anything that was an investigation like an x-ray or a CT scan or taking some blood test that in my notes would always be blue and then anything that was a treatment would always be green and
• 10:00 - 10:30 anything that was like a serious consequence or a massive risk that would be red like you know it all kind of makes sense right in a way and if you have tried color coding your notes before one thing that you'll probably realize is that it's actually very difficult to remember colors what you probably remember is that something was probably this color because you have a color coding system that you use so you know that because this is a treatment it probably would have been green but when you try to actually
• 10:30 - 11:00 remember we don't really have a great memory of colors in themselves so most of the benefit of color coding actually comes from the fact that when we learn it and write the notes in the first place we're forced to make a decision about what kind of information this is and therefore we choose to color it's the decisionmaking part that provides most of the value not the fact that it was colored and so when I say stop color coding I really mean stop only color
• 11:00 - 11:30 coding or relying on color coding by all means use a color coding system in your notes it makes it nicer to look at it's a more organized experience it's you know visually looks nicer that's all good like keep doing that but don't think that the color coding is a thing that really enhances the memory realize instead that it's the decision- making process that goes into categorizing and trying to put that information in the context of the the big picture that
• 11:30 - 12:00 provides the benefit and if we realize that we can do more than just color coding so if you've ever had this experience where you've sat an exam and you know the answer to this you know you have studied it you know it's in your noes and when you think about it you can even remember where on the page this information is but you just can't remember what the information actually is this is an example of our spatial
• 12:00 - 12:30 memory coming into play and so this is actually even more powerful than color coding and so don't just make decisions about what color to make the noes also make decisions about where on your page you're going to put put this information so for example if you've got three different concepts that are related to each other you can make the decision to put those three concepts in a similar area of the page even if they might have been you know three four pages apart on a textbook you can see how making an active decision about where on my notes
• 12:30 - 13:00 should I put this information is actually forcing us to evaluate a single piece of information against that bigger picture it helps us make these connections it helps us fit it somewhere that it really belongs and form a network and so the benefit is we're we're improving our memory and our understanding through that thought process alone and we're also gaining the advantage of a spal memory so we've got now multiple memory cues to help us remember this and then you can also color code on top of another quick one
• 13:00 - 13:30 is thickness of lines and size of text you could decide that this concept or this group of Concepts is more important than this other one and so you distinctly make this larger and the other one smaller or you might say this thing is related to here so you put an arrow going through it but you might decide that this other relationship with another group of Concepts is more important and so that Arrow becomes much bigger much thicker and so so you're now
• 13:30 - 14:00 creating many more visual cues for your memory while also putting yourself in a position where you're forced to make these value judgments and decisions which promotes deeper thinking better processing and therefore better memory better performance number six use nonlinear notes if you're following the advice so far you can see that writing notes like typing them out makes a lot of these strategies more difficult or a lot more timec consuming and that's because knowledge fundamentally exists
• 14:00 - 14:30 in networks that's how our memory is organized something stays in our memory because it fits into the network or schema as sometimes it's called in the research and when knowledge does not exist in the network or in a schema then our brain finds it irrelevant and will prune that information it will prune it very efficiently sometimes within minutes that's why you can read an entire page get to the bottom of the page maybe have even written notes for it but literally like 5 minutes later you just forgot what you spent you know 20 minutes reading through on
• 14:30 - 15:00 that page that's because our brain is very very good at pruning irrelevant information and in fact it's that ability that helps keep our brain alive otherwise there'll be this extreme energy consuming organ just trying to hold on to every single piece of information that it's hit with every single day like it's an important function of the brain and you're not going to be able to fight that like it's biologically programmed in so when we use nonlinear notes we're actually leaning into a biological tendency instead of fighting against it we're
• 15:00 - 15:30 saying hey you want to like hey brain you want to organize this information in a network you want to create a schema out of it that's how it's going to make sense to you I'm going to help you to do that by representing that and thinking in networks as well through my notetaking as opposed to thinking about things linearly and then getting your brain to somehow like almost subconsciously piece things together and some people can uh subconsciously piece things together pretty well and and those people are usually the ones that
• 15:30 - 16:00 are like just more naturally intelligent uh but you can also just train your ability to do that as well and you can make it a more active process using nonlinear notes is also the key to reducing how volume heavy the notes are and I'll give you just a really really quick example let's say I write some notes that look like this so when you look at this it looks fairly simple but if you were to try to express What's Happening Here in sentences and through linear notes then it would sound something like a leads to B when C and D
• 16:00 - 16:30 combine to create e and then e influences a so if you look at that like as a series of words and then you compare that to this you can see that this image is actually much faster and easier to process what's going on even though it's actually the same information being communicated and it scales too like for example if we start introducing uh a few more Concepts STS here and now it looks like this okay
• 16:30 - 17:00 it's getting a little bit more complicated but it's still much more intuitive to follow than adding on like an additional thing like however once e influences a a then goes back to reinforce e but only in the presence of f which is interchangeable with G you know you can see like and then when you review the notes reading through that and then like mentally trying to process that it just takes so much longer and so much more effort in fact studies say that it takes about 40,000 times longer to process than looking at something
• 17:00 - 17:30 that's more visual that's just because our brain is much better at uh processing visual information than um just just written words and really when you read it what you're trying to do mentally is actually pretty much reconstruct this in your brain so you can see if you just skip the part where it's linear to begin with and you just construct it to look like this from the first place then when you review your notes when you think about it when you test yourself it's all just very aligned it's just making a lot easier for your brain to hold on to and understand that
• 17:30 - 18:00 information so if you are a heavy linear Note Taker and you want to transition to being able to do more nonlinear note taking then I recommend doing it in steps so you would go from writing just less words more shorthand reducing your sentences more bullet points then start adding a few arrows in things connecting ideas in your linear notes so okay maybe this bullet point is connected to this bullet point you're just creating tiny little flows and then compress that down even more just start working with keywords just main IDE ideas and create
• 18:00 - 18:30 little mini Maps within your notes once you get more comfortable with that expand that out try to just get more and more of that information through a nonlinear note taking method and then naturally at some point you just feel like you don't really need the linear notes anymore cuz you realize it's just not providing you any value by the way if you are getting value from these tips and you're enjoying these then you may also want to check out my free Weekly Newsletter every week I send you more tips and advice and techniques on studying and note taking and
• 18:30 - 19:00 productivity to give you even more support the emails only take a few minutes to read each but they aim to save you tens of hours through becoming a b learner the news data is completely free to sign up to so if you're interested I'll leave a link in the description for you now on to the next note taking tip number seven try the Corell method the Corell note taking method is this quite popular note taking method that came out of Cornell University uh and for for good reason uh the idea is that you just take a single page and you divide it up into these
• 19:00 - 19:30 different sections on one side you have something called cues on the bottom you have a summary and then on the right column you've got your sort of main body of notes and the idea is that you write your normal sets of notes and then in the cues you actually leave yourself like interesting prompts and questions about what you're writing notes on and then at the bottom you summarize the stuff above it so you you create a synthesize summary of it and I'm
• 19:30 - 20:00 actually a fan of this method I don't think it's a good end goal for writing notes but I think it's a phenomenal transitionary step that helps you to go from being a more passive notet taker writing lots of notes and putting you a little bit more in the driver's seat forcing you to engage your brain more critically and really think about and process that information you can also combine this with what I was saying before in terms of transitioning from a linear to a nonlinear style you can start adding certain nonlinear aspects within your notes or you can even make
• 20:00 - 20:30 your summaries at the bottom of the page into little mini mind maps as well now again this is not the end goal you do want to get to a point where just doing it the nonlinear way is effective enough for you because the main benefit of the cor now note taking method is not in this part which is writing your notes it is in being curious exploring the information connecting things together and being able to actually produce the summary like that's actually where the value of the method comes in so the less
• 20:30 - 21:00 of this stuff you can get away with and the more of thinking summarizing synthesizing and exploring the cues thinking of these questions the more of that you can spend your time doing the closer that VIN diagram gets in terms of the time you spend on not taking versus the time you spend on learning number eight use digital free form note taking apps I want you to imagine trying to rearrange a warehouse like a warehouse
• 21:00 - 21:30 full of packages let's say you've got a package that needs to be sent over to Berlin over here but then you've got another one that needs to be sent to Australia over here and you're thinking okay well I'd like to move all the stuff that's being sent to Australia in the pile with all the other Australian packages and I want to move this Berlin one you know over here alongside the other European countries like let's say that you want to organize your warehouse this way but imagine that every time you want to reorganize the packages in your
• 21:30 - 22:00 Warehouse you have to demolish the warehouse and then Build It Again from scratch and then fill in all the packages again this is what it's like trying to learn effectively while you're note taking in a fixed linear set of notes when you normally write notes in a fixed way especially if it's linear you create this structure of ideas that connect together in a certain way and so if you decide hey actually I think this idea connects more with this thing and
• 22:00 - 22:30 I'd rather place it over here and I connect it through this thing and I actually think this part here that I wrote before is incorrect and I want to revise that or add even more detail into it you have to actually pretty much like write the notes again which is fine if you've got plenty of time but if you are running short on time that in itself is not only a huge time waste but just the thought that you need to do that and like rebuild it again can be enough to make you feel like you just can't be bothered and then you're missing this
• 22:30 - 23:00 valuable incredibly important learning opportunity but when you use a digital app for this you just write the notes and then you realize you want to move it around you can delete it or you can just like lasso it like literally move it somewhere else and like connect it again and it is a small thing but if you can afford to get yourself a tablet with a writing stylus then it is legitimately a valuable investment and there are many things that are in the learning space that I would say that if you just put
• 23:00 - 23:30 money into it it just immediately provides you value but using a digital note taking app that is free form with Infinite Canvas that lets you really move the ideas around is very valuable a lot of note taking apps on tablet are like it's it's basically the same as paper but just digital like it's you've still got an A4 size you've still got these lines on the page the only difference is that like it's infinite scrolling for example useless don't use
• 23:30 - 24:00 that I don't have any of them installed even if those are the apps that you use it probably means that there's something else in terms of the advice I've given about not taking that you're not following and the good thing is that if you do end up getting an iPad and this is not a plug for Apple by the way but uh Apple does actually have native to it an app called free form and free form is a Infinite Canvas nonlinear note taking app and I've played around with it
• 24:00 - 24:30 enough to tell you that it is legitimately a very good option especially given that it just comes bundled with your tablet to begin with in fact I even had the privilege of being invited in bu Apple uh as one of the early users to give my feedback on the app and how useful I think it is number nine zoom out often let me draw something for you [Music]
• 24:30 - 25:00 so I used to be like kind of a little bit into my art and as you can see my skills have not exactly improved by much uh over the last several years but one thing that I noticed is that when I drew these faces I would get really detailed and I'd like zoom into things a lot and I'd like add a bunch of this detail like for example let's say we go down to the nose and I'd create like what I think is like a nice looking like nostal and then I'd create like what I think is this you
• 25:00 - 25:30 know like a nice looking sort of smile and i' create like what what I think would be a nice looking eye and then I'd zoom out and i' realize it just looks terrible like the proportions are out of work like this what is this eye even doing and the reason I'm showing you this terrible drawing is to show you that there are a lot of things that you can't detect when you're Zoomed In Too Close and this is especially true when it comes to learning because when you think about learning something
• 25:30 - 26:00 especially if it's detailed dense uh difficult conceptual information a lot of your effort is spent on really trying to understand what it's talking about and often an easier way of understanding it is to actually find the things related to it that you already understand that you can connect it to and so when I say zoom out often it means that yes spend time going into the detail s spend time understanding it and
• 26:00 - 26:30 wrapping your head around it do that fine but every now and again zoom out and just connect what you've been working on with the bigger picture is there somewhere else that this should fit is this similar to anything else does it connect or influence or is influenced by some other concept and surprisingly often very important connections and influences and ways of understanding it that would have made it so much easier
• 26:30 - 27:00 for you and would help you to hold on to and retain this information are not taught to you outright it's not mentioned in the textbook the lecturer never said that but when you zoom out you give yourself the opportunity to look for these additional connections and it means that by the time you finish the study session you actually end up with a set of knowledge that you feel really comfortable with like you see how it's all organized you see how it fits together you feel confident and you just feel like it's locked into your memory as opposed to getting to the end of a study session and feeling man I covered
• 27:00 - 27:30 so much stuff it's overwhelming I hope I don't forget this but you know you are already starting to forget it number 10 emphasize the important points before I talked about how you shouldn't copypaste diagrams into your notes and one of the reasons that you really don't need to is because diagrams that you draw into your notes don't actually have to be textbook accurate the reason is because your brain doesn't remember things with
• 27:30 - 28:00 perfect accuracy anyway so let me give you an example so let's say that this is a diagram okay this is a diagram of a very poorly drawn diagram of not an egg uh is actually meant to be a cell so if this is a diagram that you draw and this is you know let's just say it looks like this in your textbook when you remember this and you recall it you may redraw it and recall something that looks like this okay and you might look
• 28:00 - 28:30 at this and this is what you recall so if we compare what we have been able to remember and recall from the diagram with the actual original diagram you can see that there are some subtle differences for example I've missed this one I've missed this I've missed this and actually did you notice that there are these tiny little bumps on this so you can see that these are very small subtle details but because our brain is not remembering things like perfectly like a robot it means that the things that are more likely to be forgotten
• 28:30 - 29:00 should be more exaggerated and so we can know that it's not in reality like this but we can use it as a memory aid by exaggerating the diagram so an exaggerated version of this diagram where I am focusing on these highrisk areas that I might forget might look like this so now you can see that it's completely not factually accurate I mean I've turned those bumps into little houses that sit on grass I've turned those tiny little things up here into like angry caterpillars and I turn that
• 29:00 - 29:30 small little hole up here into like a like a Vortex so you can see I've actually made the decision that these things are important enough to remember and high risk of forgetting so I've overcompensated by making them less factually accurate but more memorable and so as long as I remember that it's not literally a house or a angry caterpillar or a Vortex it's a Memory cue for helping remember the thing that is actually accurate and we can even do
• 29:30 - 30:00 this when we write like nonlinear mind maps as well we can actually use that spatial memory and that visual coding to enhance our ability to remember something so for example let's say we've got a coming here leading to B and then off of a there are three points so I could write those three points like this alternatively I could represent those three points let's just do that again I could represent those three points like this
• 30:00 - 30:30 there's no real big difference one of them is bullet points underneath the a the other one is like arrows coming from underneath the a they seem roughly the same but let's start adding a few more points so let's say coming off from B there are two points so now we've got B with two points now I want you to think about being able to remember this structure that we've created right here versus really INF EMP izing that a has three versus B having two and instead of
• 30:30 - 31:00 using numbers we're using spatial arrangement to represent that so that might look something like this so if you look at this one the shape itself becomes more distinctive and it means that we might remember this top one and the the bottom one but then we just we know there's something here we know there's a third
• 31:00 - 31:30 one because the shape is like that we remember there was something there and then that can help us to review it and recall it and eventually perform with that knowledge whereas if we had the former one you'd be forgiven if you remember two of these and then you just kind of forgot that there's a third one because it just all looks the same number 11 right questions I remember my first few lectures in University and thinking the volume of information being
• 31:30 - 32:00 thrown at me in this 1eh hour lecture is like what would normally have Tak taken me like two to three weeks during high school and the reason I'm telling you this is because there is a strategy for dealing with high volumes of dense information there are basically two decisions that you can make when you're in that position decision number one I'm going to try to get all of it down write my notes on it like just collect as much of that information that decision is saying I'm foro me trying to learn it now in favor of setting up myself later
• 32:00 - 32:30 to learn it and again sometimes you have to do that because you don't have access to the material later and so like this is your one and only shot but the other part that you can take is that you can try to engage in this process of like fitting it into the big picture and evaluating and thinking about how it all connects together and like making sense of the overarching the topic as a network and realize that it's too fast for you to finish those thoughts and
• 32:30 - 33:00 explore those things right now so you start exploring them and then you write questions for yourself to prompt your studying later so I might be sitting there in a lecture and I'm listening to a bunch of stuff and I have this feeling like this thing and this thing could be connected but I don't have time right now to think about it too much or to really explore that so that becomes a question is this and this connected and if so how and then I'd write that down separately so now after this lecture I would have a dedicated study session
• 33:00 - 33:30 where I'm starting off with the questions that I've created and then answering those questions is what helps me to figure out how it all connects together and then I can build my network and build my schema now if you are going to write questions I want you to remember that not all questions are equal some questions are less valuable than others and often the less valuable questions are the ones that ask on just a single isolated fact like creating the question what's the definition of this word that's a very isolated specific qu
• 33:30 - 34:00 question that question is not going to do much for you because how does that help you to form a network and build a relationship because you could ask the question of how does this relate to this other concept and in trying to answer that You' figure out the definition anyway so you can see we're getting the benefit of the specific definition but also how that word fits in with something else the definition has meaning it has relevance it has
• 34:00 - 34:30 importance that creates much more structure in our memory number 12 avoid flow charts a lot of the time when people start writing nonlinear notes they actually start writing flowcharts instead of mind maps and there's actually a really big difference between them let's say I create a flow of knowledge that looks like this so here this is a flowchart now it's nonlinear it's connected to each other what's the
• 34:30 - 35:00 problem the problem is that it creates a very high dependency it's kind of like that drawer on your back party game you get a bunch of people in a line and the person at the very front of the line uh is shown a picture of something and so that person will turn around and then on the back of the person that's next in line they'll draw the picture and so this person has to like figure out what's being drawn based on their sensation of their own back and then
• 35:00 - 35:30 they will then draw on the back of the next person and then you figure out what picture you end up with at the very end and usually after like five people just drawing on backs the person at the very end like ends up drawing like a muffin and then the initial picture was like a spaceship and this is basically what we are doing with our memory if we do flow charts if the only reason you remember e is because it's led to by D which is led to by C which is led to by B which
• 35:30 - 36:00 starts from a it means that any point of failure along this line means that you also diminish the memory of what comes after that so you want to avoid this by looking for more lateral connections and then grouping these ideas together so there's less of a chain so for example this thing I could say A and B are kind of doing the same thing and then C and D are sort of doing the same thing like a similar purpose so I might call this Alpha and beta for this example and i' say Alpha leads to Beta which leads to e and
• 36:00 - 36:30 Alpha is composed of A and B and then beta is composed of c and d so you can see that just by grouping the information and looking for these similarities it reduces how much dependency there is on this chain and we might also decide that hey actually you know Alpha is influenced by something else and you know somewhere else on the map and then we can start creating even more of these kind of lateral connections between other ideas and so it goes from a linear flow chart to a
• 36:30 - 37:00 real Network and a Web of Knowledge number 13 apply the 24hour rule the 24-hour rule says that you should review the notes that you have written within 24 hours of First writing them this is mostly for when the first time you wrote the notes is also the first time you properly try to learn it the reason this works is because memory has a very fast Decay curve this means that something that you learn is forgotten relatively
• 37:00 - 37:30 quickly in a pretty short period of time and if you're able to consolidate and re-encode that information before it decays it's strengthened and it decays more slowly afterwards so let's say that you spent one hour learning something on a Monday but you don't review it again until the next Monday well there's been a weak Gap and if you've forgotten let's say 50 to 70% of it then you now need to spend let's say another hour hour or 45 minutes relearning and reeming the stuff
• 37:30 - 38:00 that you already forgot so now for that 1 hour material you'll spent almost 2 hours to study it whereas if you use the 24-hour rule you might spend one hour learning it on the Monday and then on the Tuesday you review it again now because you've only forgotten 10% of it since then you only need 5 10 minutes to plug those gaps so now when it comes to next Monday instead of having forgotten 50 to 70% of it you might have only forgotten 20% of it but obviously this
• 38:00 - 38:30 cumulates so you're not just learning 1 hour on a Monday you're learning like 3 hours on Monday and then 3 hours on Tuesday and then 3 hours on Wednesday so if the future version of you always needs to spend another one or two hours to relearn the things that you always forgot you're just going to get progressively further and further behind and more and more overwhelmed now one thing I will say is that the value of the 24-hour Rule and how much it helps with your memory and how much time it saves you in the long run strongly depends on the way that you learned it
• 38:30 - 39:00 in the first place if you learned it really terribly you didn't follow any of the other tips that I've given and all you do is the 24-hour rule after a week you will still have forgotten 50 to 70% of it if that's the situation the problem is not how often you're reviewing it the problem is how you're actually trying to put it into your memory in the first place number 14 write notes by topics not by lectures imagine you're building a house but you can only build it one section at a time like you start with
• 39:00 - 39:30 the master bedroom and then you just build it like completely the walls you do the paint like it's completed but like the entire rest of the house isn't there and then you go and build the kitchen you complete that and then after each of these segments is completed then you try to like bring them together and like close them together and maybe you realize like you built the kitchen in the wrong place you got to like relocate the entire kitchen and then everything breaks and Cheddars and you know it's a complete mess there's a reason we don't
• 39:30 - 40:00 build houses that way and it's the same reason why you shouldn't learn that way as someone who has lectured when we think about a lecture the number one thing that we start with is the time constraint how much time do I have to cover this topic so it's not that the topic is innately divided into these 1 hour conceptual blocks the topic is actually all connected together that's why it's called topic and not like two or three different topics and there are
• 40:00 - 40:30 meaningful valuable connections between the different lectures the only issue is that there isn't enough time in a single lecture to go over all of them and so if you start writing your notes based on lectures rather than based on topics and so you've got a set of notes for lecture one and then a set of notes for lecture two and then a set of notes for lecture three then you're creating an artificial division between parts of the topic and the reason you don't want to do that that is because there could be something that you learn in lecture three that
• 40:30 - 41:00 allows you to understand something from lecture one in such a way that it makes more sense and it has more of a place to fit you don't want to forego that connection opportunity because the notes for lecture 3 existed on a separate page to lecture one so how do you bring it all together into a single set of notes when you are actually taught it segment by segment well that's advice number 15 create a template AKA do some pre-study
• 41:00 - 41:30 think back to the house analogy in what kind of situation do you think you would end up building a house room by room without really thinking about how it all connects together and then later being forced to just somehow make it work well one scenario is that you built the house and you started building it without a blueprint and pre-study or priming is one way that you can give yourself that blueprint so that even if you don't know exactly in detail everything that you're going
• 41:30 - 42:00 to learn and how it all connects together you at least have more of an idea about what types of things to expect in the entire topic and you can at least make guesses and hypothesis about how one concept might relate to something else that you haven't learned yet so what this looks like is before a week of lectures you just spend 20 minutes going through the most important things in all of the lectures at a very superficial level you just map out how you think the most important ideas might
• 42:00 - 42:30 be connected together and you give yourself this Frame a skeleton this is the template and now that you have this template you can go into that first lecture and elaborate on you can build on that same set of notes and because as you're filling information in you have an awareness of the other stuff that you haven't covered yet you can start thinking okay maybe this thing will fit into somewhere over here maybe it could connect over here and that's what makes it easier to create these topic wide
• 42:30 - 43:00 connections even if you're learning at one lecture at a time number 16 turn your weak points into flashcards if you follow all the pieces of advice that I've given you so far then you will be able to create a set of nonlinear connected notes and the beauty of doing this is that it becomes a visual representation of How It's organized in your mind which means you can look at your notes and look for areas that seem less connected there could be a stray piece of information over in the corner
• 43:00 - 43:30 somewhere that's only got one random sort of tenuous connection going to it that is going to become a weak point in your memory cuz there's less memory cues there's less areas that's relevant it doesn't fit into the big picture as strongly if your brain's going to prune something is it going to prune the central idea that six other things are connected to and it's a prerequisite for this other major concept or is it going to prune that random little detail that's just barely connected to this other concept way in the periphery those
• 43:30 - 44:00 pieces of information are more highrisk and if it's important enough for you to know put those into flash cards and this is also the way of using flash cards that helps you to be confident that you're not going to miss anything all the little details that you feel like oh I'm not sure if I'm going to remember that that's fine that's what goes into your flashcards but by doing all the other stuff and writing notes in a more targeted way with more of the time spent writing notes creates learning it means that you're not in that position where
• 44:00 - 44:30 everything you learn is something you think you're going to forget and as with any skill all of this stuff you will get better as you keep practicing more so that's it this has been your nobs note-taking advice and if you liked this longer style of video then you may also like this one where I share 13 years of even more studying and productivity advice check it out and thanks for watching