Now that this semester, the second of my long overdue return to college, is over I thought I would continue the practice that helped me get through it ok and perform a recap & restate. You see, when I came back to college, after ten or so years as a software developer, I realized that I had lost the power of note taking; of course I googled and found some excellent tips–many stuck with me; most did not. One of the things that stuck with me was the recap & restate phase of the Cornell Note taking method. Though the Cornell method seemed a little over complicated to me, the need to recapitulate and restate concepts in my own words was eminently logical–so I kept it; added it to my collection.
Over the course of this year I have evolved a workable note taking methodology, and in the lifehacker spirit I would like to share what I’ve learned. My requirements for a note taking method were simple: (almost) zero investment, (almost) zero memorization, fold-in current knowledge, the notes must remain useable, and the method must be like water.
Zero Investment; Zero Memorization–Almost
Beyond the things I would normally buy (e.g. pen, colored pencils, index cards, post-it notes, and notebook or paper) my method should require no monetary investment, but larger than that I didn’t want to invest much time either learning or memorizing a new system. I’m a student after all, and any time spent on learning how to take notes is time I can’t spend on memorizing which article goes with which German noun. So while some of the research I did stuck with me throughout, especially that from Easy Script, if it required me to learn a bunch of squiggly lines and their meanings, I tossed it out.
Fold-in Current Knowledge
Stephen King (among others) said: “Write what you know.” This simple logic follows in the area of note taking–if you got it, use it. So abbreviations such as e.g., i.e., q.v., cont., etc. are all allowed. So are ideas such as leaving out some vowels, as long as the resulting abbreviation at least resembles the word. Substituting numbers 4 letters is a great way 2 speed up note taking, so in it goes. Using keyboard symbols like @ to replace the word “at”, or # to replace the words “pound” or “number” is cool too. Since I am a former programmer, using pseudocode, logical operators (e.g. !, *, $, =, !=, >, <, <>) are all cool and continue to show up in my notes. The important thing is that this knowledge is already in my head, I am just applying it to solve a different problem.
Notes Must Remain Useable
This really simple idea didn’t hit me until my first test. Here I was with all these really space age looking notes, and, in some cases, I hadn’t a clue as to their meaning. I could fit and hour’s worth of lecture notes on a single page, but if I could use them to study for a test what the hell good were they? Luckily this realization came to me at an early enough stage that I could make adjustments.
I had spent a little time watching the demo of the Easy Script method (easyscript.com) and realized that by simply leaving out all the vowels (because I refuse to learn new symbols) I could reduce a text by almost 40%.
According to the Easy Script website, the following sentence:
“Lecture note-taking influences the academic success of all high school and college students and they will increasingly have to depend on their ability to take notes in order to be successful in the classroom.” (34 words, 177 characters)
Becomes:
“Lcu n/t ifs h ack su o al hi sc d cg stn* d ty wl icy hv t dpn on thr aby t tk nt n od t b scf n h c/r.” (34 words, 72 characters)
To me, utterly unreadable after the weekend, even with a recap and restate. I did eventually decipher the three-days-worth of lecture notes, but only after vowing never to do anything so stupid again. Here is my version of the same sentence:
“lctur not-tking Nflunces ackdemic sucks of HGHschl, coledge studn’s, thy ‘ll Ncreasly hav 2 depend on abilty 2 tak note >= 2B suckssfl N classrm.” (25 words, 173 characters)
You decide which you like best, and stick with it, but my version works best for me because it fits in my frame: zero investment, and retains usability. My version is easier for me to decipher because the resulting abbreviations resemble the word they represent.
“Be Like Water My Friend”
This concept, for me, came from an episode of the Dick Cavett Show. Lee said: ”Be like water. If you put water in a glass, it becomes the glass; put it in a bowl and it becomes the bowl. Water has no form, it adapts. Water can flow or it can crash. Be like Water, my friend.” Or something like that, he was talking about kicking ass I am sure, but for me it means that my note taking method should be fluid. I want to find meaning in my chicken scratching, not force my meaning into chicken scratches. I don’t want to have to learn someone else’s arbitrary rules for imparting meaning, I want my own meaning to evolve from what I already have at hand. That is why other methods have always failed me; they were other people’s best practices–not mine.
My note taking method is an ever evolving thing, for instance I learn a new Latin, or German word and it ends up in my notes. I learned the word über can mean over or about, so now it serves triple duty as a replacement for the words about, above, and over; it also shows up as an abbreviation (“ü” meaning important) beside some words, or concepts in my notes. I learned the words daß, and muß meaning that and must respectively. The German letter ß (sharp s, or s-tsset) also sub for double s, ts, st, zt, and tz in other abbreviations.
I don’t expect you to use these symbols, and even if you do I wouldn’t expect you to use them in a way I would necessarily understand–what matters is that you use your collected knowledge in a way that is meaningful to you. Forget memorizing thousands of squiggly lines; just use what you know.
My only real tips here are as follows:
1 Don’t find what works; work with what you find
2 Don’t learn; collect
3 Don’t use any symbols in written notes that aren’t found on your keyboard
