# Upgrade Your Note-Taking the Easy Way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uDROfnx2TE

[00:00] I wanted to ask you a little bit more about productivity in relation to notes.
[00:06] Do you teach any way for students to organize their notes?
[00:11] Like if you're in college you have multiple classes studying for a midterm or final there's multiple chapters go through going to class you take notes and then you have to eventually review for an exam so is there some kind of organizational system that you recommend your students for notes?
[00:24] Uh it depends completely on their level of skill and how comfortable they are with it.
[00:28] The ultimate goal you want to end up at is that you have sort of like a single canvas that all of your notes for that particular topic are on.
[00:37] So when I say topic for a university that might be like you know four or five lectures of that week you know so it's not like one canvas for every paper so like all of biology or chemistry.
[00:48] But for within within that like for example uh redox or organics or for um you know I don't know like cellular transport whatever that topic is you want to have sort of one canvas and you want to be building on it and then
[01:00] constructing on top of that continuously
[01:02] but that's quite difficult to do if someone doesn't have like a really good method of non-linear note taking that allows them to build on effectively so
[01:10] in that case you sort of just try to phase your way into it so for example if you're mostly typed at the moment and we're trying to go into more freehand then one great way of doing that would be like in your pre-study in the weekend before the week's worth of lectures coming up write some notes on all four or five lectures coming up that week and for those lectures all you want to do is just get the main ideas and just create some big groups and some major relationships like for four or five lectures you might have like literally 15 words on the page 15 keywords that you have like Okay so this the next five lectures like basically talking about this topic where this kind of goes to this and then there's this and then we learn about this process and then how that can be used in these kind of applications just that very very very basic frame let me start there and then from there if we're feeling confident enough with it and we want to give it a go we can take that into lecture and then we can annotate on top of that during the lecture and then afterwards we can look through that clean it up
[02:02] simplify it re-jigs the structure.
[02:05] reorganize it and you realize I put this arrow going this way.
[02:07] that's actually wrong.
[02:08] it has to be this way and we can reorganize it after that and that's a little overwhelming.
[02:10] then we can just start with that frame in the pre-study.
[02:14] we can type up the notes while we're in the lecture and then afterwards we can try to take our type notes and then consolidate them onto this map or even if that's too much then we can just have that scribble pad idea that I talked about before where we just you know have those things next to us as we're going through and then after you've got that scribble pad you can look at it and just take some of the key ideas you got from that and try to add that to your map.
[02:37] but the idea is that over time we want to be less and less dependent on all these other things and more and more using just kind of like a single canvas.
[02:43] I really went through like very long kind of uh not very straightforward journey in terms of how I used to write notes because I use like every single app there was like I was the person that really Min maxed every single app like I like five six different apps probably even more because I have like scanning apps and then like software like text recognition that allows me to
[03:03] then like and then moving on to my Evernote and then going for my Evernote
[03:06] and then like syncing up with like Rome or like notion and then creating like a relationship
[03:09] and then like create you know processing that and something else
[03:12] so I used to have multiple steps to do this over time and as the amount I've needed to learn has gone up and the knowledge requirements I've needed to have gone up and as I've had less and less time to just sit and study
[03:24] I've realized that it's really pretty unnecessary all I need is a method of note taking that allows me to offload cognitive resources to allow me to do higher order thinking and to represent that schema in the single format that's easy to use and easy to navigate
[03:39] so for me now I virtually use just one Infinite Canvas and that's basically it
[03:45] the only exception would be if there are things that are seemingly unrelated seemingly meaningless but you still need to know it for your test or exam and that's the stuff that you need to wrote memorize
[03:54] so you'd use a flashcard app something with algorithmic space repetition to make sure that you're able to hold on to that content or audio you some other type of memorization tool my go-to is a
[04:03] combination of method of loci and Link method or story method I think I might even have a video on YouTube teaching my kind of version of that because it's a little bit different and I put that in my Infinite Canvas directly or very very very very very rarely and I haven't used this for years now I'll use like a power system Pao but that's it's just so time consuming to set up a pal table that I just I haven't used that and haven't needed that for years and now I I don't really need to rope memorize anything anymore like ever so I don't use that at all but if I was going back to like if I would have studied medicine again I would probably do something like that okay so on this topic a student comes and asks you what do your what do your mathematic notes look like and what do your notes look like for a class where you have to write like three essays technical versus non-technical nodes yeah so let's let's do the maths one first so if you talk to well I guess not talk to you about it if you listen to uh like some of the top professors of mathematics in the world and I can't name names because I'm just
[05:05] not that familiar but I've I've seen these videos and I've seen these interviews with you know like World leading you know mathematicians like prodigies.
[05:10] One of the things that they often say is that when you learn math and this is a big problem with how math is often taught is that you want to learn maths without the numbers first.
[05:21] You want to have a conceptual understanding of mass because just like how you would understand it and biology or physics or chemistry or any other like political science or economics.
[05:30] Just like how you'd understand concepts for those subjects understanding concepts for math is equally important.
[05:36] In fact it's even arguably more important because when you see a problem and it's not just like differentiate this you know or like find the area under the curve where it's just like simple plug and play.
[05:45] When it's bringing it together in different contexts and now it's not just like numbers but it's like the velocity of this particular thing and like the you know force of gravity acting you know when there's multiple variables stacked on top of it.
[05:58] What allows you to actually solve it is to conceptually understand how you can approach that in the first place and then what follows from that is knowing
[06:06] what the equations are but what a lot of people do is they look at Mass purely procedurally and they look at an isolation and so when they look at a problem what they're trying to do is just pattern recognition.
[06:15] they're trying to say can I get the variables represented in here to fit into any of the equations that I know about and therefore people will use equations incorrectly.
[06:23] people will say oh this is the letter e and here's the letter e and it's like oh it must be the same thing and they'll use it that way.
[06:30] you know very common for physics the equation will be used out of context like it's not really meant to be used in that way but they'll sort of jankly fit it in there or they'll just constantly be like seeing okay can I make this a simultaneous equation blah blah or they'll just mindlessly work through it until they feel like it looks like something a bit more familiar and they're like oh yes I've stumbled upon it.
[06:51] there's it's a very inconsistent way of doing maths and I'll be the first person to say that's the entirety of how I learn Mass actually like personally.
[06:59] but for for whatever reason like I started getting into this YouTube channel called number file which talks about like theoretical mathematics and I was like man math is really interesting.
[07:07] and then so I started learning math again but like purely conceptually first
[07:10] and I've got to tell you like it just completely changed the view on how I think about paths
[07:15] so with mass there's not that many Concepts not as much as something like biology or physics or chemistry or the Sciences or even something like politics or economics or things like that
[07:25] it's actually very easy to do this entire process we've been talking about
[07:29] you just look at what you're being taught and you say well what's the purpose of it
[07:32] what's the big picture how can I apply it why is that actually important and how is that similar to these other things that I've learned
[07:39] how are they all related together and then you can group those things in a very similar way and now you've got okay so we've got these equations that generally allow me to do this
[07:47] there's these things that allow me to do this and they're related because you know this is the previous step or you know I need to do this to create this kind of variable so that I can actually use it in this kind of process
[07:58] and we get a really good conceptual understanding of it and then the rest is just procedural
[08:01] then you practice doing the equations you practice your questions you you make sure that you're able to carry the three and you can
[08:08] apply the chain rule effectively and all those things.
[08:10] but the good thing is that with assessments these days a lot of schools are varying towards allowing people to bring like formula sheets or cheat sheets.
[08:19] they're allowing you to actually have the equation or in some cases they literally they give you like a table of equations like in the actual exam book itself so you don't have to actually have memorized all these things going into it.
[08:29] so a lot of places will now do that because they're trying to get people to focus a little bit more on the conceptual aspects of it.
[08:35] so my notes for saying like maths would look very very similar.
[08:38] I don't know if I've got a public YouTube video where I have an example of something like that but it basically looks exactly the same.
[08:45] we've got those relationships.
[08:47] we've got the you know still looks like a map.
[08:49] what what wouldn't be on that is all the practice that I'm doing so procedural practice.
[08:54] Yeah the procedural practice I wouldn't have that on that canvas you know I'm doing that on this is a normal way that people are doing it.
[09:00] but the difference is I'm still being led by my certainty and confidence about it like we talked about before.
[09:03] so basically understanding math in words.
[09:08] gotcha that's very interesting um and then for something like essays uh that kind of depends I guess on the type of essay that you're doing a very like literate literature science heavy uh kind of like research essay is going to be very very different from like a creative writing essay or um a text response like a book study or a movie study or something like that that's going to be very different I'll focus a little bit more on the sort of book review movie review that type of essay instead rather than the sort of I guess in a way fact-based more scientific essays because it's kind of a different process there's quite a long thing to talk about um so you can apply the same thing it's actually exactly the same principle but just the way it's answered is a little bit different so if I look at for example I often give the example of 1984 by George Orwell number one because it's still a common book that's used in a lot of curriculums um and also because it's one of my favorite books so 1984 uh by George Orwell that that might be a book that you're required to write an essay about first of all just read the book and you know like just literally read the book but then afterwards when you're
[10:10] trying to really create like good essays out of it.
[10:13] you're not really going to know how what questions they're gonna ask.
[10:16] they're going to ask you a lot of people will just try to predict the answers and then write like the perfect.
[10:19] they're saying just memorize the essay and then just like regurgitate it in the assessment which is very time consuming.
[10:24] it's not very safe.
[10:27] well I don't know how important people think this is but I personally think it's quite important is that it's not enjoyable at all.
[10:32] like if I'm gonna be spending my time doing something I'd rather do something that's enjoyable as well as being effective.
[10:37] so when we're dissecting the book we can think about well what are the main themes and how are those themes similar or different to each other and an interesting thing here is that those books or those movies were written by people.
[10:51] and those people made decisions about inserting that theme they wanted to portray a certain thing in a certain way.
[10:59] and they made a decision about that but why did they make that decision so what you'll find is that if you spin like literally I know 15 minutes reading on Wikipedia about that author or director's history and background you
[11:11] would just start seeing like now this movie actually makes sense.
[11:13] like I can see the perspective and the mindset that this person had in their creative process that made them insert this character.
[11:15] like this character is a representation of their Kenya spent as a police officer.
[11:23] this person is the representation of like the manager that they struggled with.
[11:30] like this person it represents the thoughts that they had while they were serving in the military.
[11:34] you start seeing the origin stories of all of these and then when you see how they're relating together you're able to draw more authentic connections.
[11:37] so I always say if you were the director or the author going into the assessment and you have to write about your own work you would crush it.
[11:47] so that's the goal you want to think like the author or the director.
[11:52] and so all these decisions that you made in theme games and characters and examples and motifs and you know literary techniques and things.
[12:03] these are things that are like natural and obvious to you.
[12:08] you know why you did it that way and why you didn't do it.
[12:11] another way so that's the kind of way that you should be thinking about it.
[12:15] you don't often have to remember like exact specific wordings of sentences and things.
[12:21] and even if you do need to remember quotes you're unlikely to need to remember more than just like a couple.
[12:26] and even when you do remember the way you integrate it is usually only just like a few words like boom you know the author described it as like blob like three words.
[12:31] this is the way they described it and usually you don't even have to remember that because when you think about it conceptually it's like yes this makes sense why they chose to use these words because it was creating this type of impact so.
[12:45] um my notes for that would reflect that process.
[12:48] I'd have sort of that author's background or whatever way that I'm linking it together.
[12:55] I talk about sort of their main rationales and drivers and then sort of what themes have led from that and therefore the relationships and the characters and the examples that were there.
[13:03] and then there's a procedural component.
[13:06] I'm going to create a list of possible exam questions and past papers and I'm going to use that knowledge and answer those because the best of my ability and there's going to be an
[13:12] aspect of just good writing and being elegant and your wording and phrasing and things like that and that's that's really just a completely separate skill set and you just have to do good writing and get good feedback to just get better at that but in terms of actually constructing the flow and being able to perform in an exam effectively that's where it's going to be at.
[13:32] what can teachers or professors do to to make it easier for students?
[13:38] [Music]