How to Take Smart Notes – Sönke Ahrens

Author: Sönke Ahrens Type: #book

Reference: Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking — for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers.

Introduction

Writing starts much earlier than "the blank screen". Note-taking is actually the biggest part of the writing process.

This book is about creating an external system for thinking in that serves the purpose of writing in more volume and quality.

This system is basically Niklas Luhmann's "Zettelkasten" (slip-box). The idea of Zettelkasten is to Write about what you read by Make small notes with one idea per note and Connect new notes to existing ones.

In Zettelkasten, it's best to Separate reading notes from permanent notes.

Process of writing using the Zettelkasten system

1. Make fleeting notes – whatever interesting idea pops up during your day. Always be ready to write it down (digitally, on a paper, whatever).
2. Make literature notes – Write about what you read
3. Make permanent notes – one idea per note. Use your own words. Only developed thoughts go here. Only what you really thought about goes here.
4. Look into the system for topics, ideas and discussions on what to write.
5. String ideas together.
6. Write your draft based on the notes you gathered.
7. Edit your draft into the finished piece of writing.
8. Repeat. Profit.

The 4 underlying principles of note-taking in Zettelkasten system

Writing as if it's the most important thing

Writing is part of a broad intellectual process. It shouldn't be an isolated task. It's tightly related to reading, note-taking, learning and understanding. When you Write about what you read, you enable better learning and understanding. That mostly happens through note-taking which is just one type of writing. And writing creates reading for others. All of this means that Writing is a compounding process. It compounds learning and understanding. Not just for you but for others as well when they get to read what you write. Parts of the process build on top of each other. It compounds on a personal-level as well as on peer- and society-level.

Simplicity is essential

It's important to distinguish between three types of notes:

• fleeting
• permanent
• project-related

(Unsure where literature notes fall into here. Same level as fleeting?)

Nobody ever starts from scratch

Writing is not a linear process. Deciding on a topic, then doing research and then writing, doesn't really work.

Ideas for what to write about should emerge from clusters of notes that you made while you were reading and thinking.

A good sign of embracing a circular process to writing instead of the linear one, is that you will have too many ideas for topics instead of too little.

That's because you reached a critical mass of notes where topics, questions and arguments arise. You can just follow whatever is the most interesting for you at the moment.

The process of writing (in a sense of producing an article/paper/book) becomes much easier because you already have a lot of material to work with and you just pick a topic that is the most interesting.

The system propels itself forward

Zettelkasten is about creating positive feedback loops in the system. By embracing the Circular process of writing (making notes, coming back to them and writing on top of them), you create more opportunities for feedback.

Writing permanent notes forces you to check you understanding – otherwise you aren't able to write down notes in your own words.

Better understanding enables to learn more quickly and read more efficiently. Reading more = making more notes, growing your zettelkasten.

The bigger the system, the more connections it has and the more ideas can emerge from it. The easier it becomes to add new ideas to it – there are more options to connect new ideas to.

These positive feedback loops are crucial for creating motivation to do all of that work.

• Exergonic vs endergonic reactions: Exergonic requires adding more energy to keep going. Endergonic create energy inside to keep going.
  • Working with Zettelkasten is inherently an endergonic process.

In this way, Taking smart notes creates a positive feedback loop in the writing process.

Learning by reading

a.k.a how to take notes

• Actively working with information enables learning
• The ability to think of the information you read is very important. You should be able to think about it in broader context and how it relates to other contexts as well. That's why making connections between notes in ZK is important.
• Writing is necessary to think systematically -> Thinking shouldn't be an internal mental process only because of the limitations of the brain (e.g. active inhibition (MacLeod, 2007))
• Every time we try to retrieve a memory, it is reconstructed ( Is this true for facts as well, though? (needs further exploration)) -> In the context of Ahren's argument for external structure for thinking, this implies that we cannot rely on our mind to accurately remember things. Therefore, we need that external structure for serious thinking. Without it, we wouldn't be able to make all the meaningful connections with our existing knowledge. And making those connections is vital to understand and, by extension, learn.
• One theory about memory proposes two distinct strenghts or abilities:
  • Ability to store
  • Ability to retrieve
  • The real limitaiton of our brain is the ability to retrieve. Having an external structure then supports this ability because it allows us to make more connections.
• The main idea is that External structures support thinking.

Develop ideas

• Sequences of notes make up the real support for later writing.

• Because the slip-box is a thinking tool, it doesn't need to be complete (in a sense like encyclopedeas need to be). Gaps should only be filled when they emerge in the later stage of writing a bigger text.

• Indices in ZK should serve as entry points, rather than collecting all notes that belong to a keyword/tag/topic – that would defeat the purpose of it. They should enable us to dive quickly to a specific note and then discover more notes through the connections.

• Assign keywords to notes based on the context you're working in or your interests. Assigning keywords based on the note alone doesn't create good future opportunities to stumble upon it in the context you need.

  • The best keywords usually don't appear explicitly in the note. They require further thinking to define – it's part of elaborating on the text, therefore very important to do!

• Two most important types of connections in ZK:

  • 1) "Overview" notes of specific topics that serve as an entry point. Usually needed when a topic develops enough. Take great care for what you include in this – it defines the topic based on your current understanding. But as the understanding develops, so should such note, too.
  • 2) Regular note-to-note connections. These can be to seemingly unrelated notes as well (that's when the most surprising ideas can emerge from, eventually!)

• When making connections, actually go through the slip-box, not just your memory! In that way, you avoid imagined connections and have only meaningful ones.

• Intuition isn't opposed to rationality. It's the result of a lot of experience that we can unconsciously draw on. It allows us to have a hunch on what's the best decision or next step without consciously thinking about it. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily irrational, it actually builds on a lot of previous experience. (Ahrens references himself from 2014 here).

  • How might this relate to designing intuitive UIs?

• Innovation is typically the result of taking an extra small step on top of lots of previous work. It's rarelly a big breakthrough. In this context, comparing notes in the slip-box helps us to spot differences between similar things and find connections between seemingly different things. That enables to find novel ideas and innovate.

• Bottom-up (or content-first) generation of topics is superior to brainstorming ideas (the top-down approach). When topics emerge from connections we made while writing permanent notes, the work's already been done. And we avoid the trap of availability heuristic – placing more value on ideas that we retrieve easily from memory. With bottom-up approach, all good ideas are considered because the silp-box is neutral in this way.