How to Take Smart Notes

We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copybooks and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” (Whitehead)[43

My project: theory of society. Duration: 30 years. Costs: zero” (Luhmann, 1997, 11). In sociology, a “theory of society” is the mother of all projects.

The ability to change the direction of our work opportunistically is a form of control that is completely different from the attempt to control the circumstances by clinging to a plan. The beginning of the research project that led to the discovery of DNA’s structure was the application for a grant. The grant was not to discover DNA’s structure, but find a treatment for cancer.

What is interesting about this?” and everything we read with the question, “What is so relevant about this that it is worth noting down?

The more time an artist devotes to learning about an aesthetic “problem,” the more unexpected and creative his solution will be regarded later by art experts

The biggest threat to creativity and scientific progress is therefore the opposite: a lack of structure and restrictions. Without structure, we cannot differentiate, compare or experiment with ideas.

Thinking and creativity can flourish under restricted conditions and there are plenty of studies to back that claim

This kind of self-imposed restriction is counterintuitive in a culture where more choice is usually regarded as a good thing and more tools to choose from seen as better

Abstraction should indeed not be the final goal of thinking, but it is a necessary in-between step to make heterogeneous ideas compatible. If Darwin had never abstracted from his concrete observations of sparrows, he would never have found an abstract, a general principle of evolution

To be able to play with ideas, we first have to liberate them from their original context by means of abstraction and re-specification.

These links can help us to find surprising connections and similarities between seemingly unrelated topics. Patterns might not become visible right away, but they might emerge after multiple note-to-note links between two topics have been established.

Assigning keywords is much more than just a bureaucratic act. It is a crucial part of the thinking process, which often leads to a deeper elaboration of the note itself and the connection to other notes.

Keywords should always be assigned with an eye towards the topics you are working on or interested in, never by looking at the note in isolation.

writers, we approach the question of keywords differently. We look at our slip-box for already existing lines of thought and think about the questions and problems already on our minds to which a new note might contribute.

The first step of elaboration is to think enough about a piece of information so we are able to write about it. The second step is to think about what it means for other contexts as well.

What does help for true, useful learning is to connect a piece of information to as many meaningful contexts as possible, which is what we do when we connect our notes in the slip-box with other notes.

Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest?

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much” (2013) by Mullainathan and Shafir.

Writing brief accounts on the main ideas of a text instead of collecting quotes.

but the only criterion is the question of whether something adds to a discussion in the slip-box. The only thing that matters is that it connects or is open to connections.

The only thing that matters is that these notes provide the best possible support for the next step, the writing of the actual slip-box notes.

we should seek out dis-confirming arguments and facts that challenge our way of thinking,

is well known that decision-making is one of the most tiring and wearying tasks, which is why people like Barack Obama or Bill Gates only wear two suit colours: dark blue or dark grey. This means they have one less decision to make in the morning, leaving more resources for the decisions that really matter. In

Reading with a pen in the hand, for example, forces, us to think about what we read and check upon our understanding. It is the simplest test: We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words.

Having a learning system in place that enables feedback loops in a practical way is equally important.

The dynamics of work are not so different. Sometimes we feel like our work is draining our energy and we can only move forward if we put more and more energy into it.

You may remember from school the difference between an exergonic and an endergonic reaction. In the first case, you constantly need to add energy to keep the process going.

We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts.