# How to Take Smart Notes ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41iVa0x-P-L._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Sönke Ahrens]] - Full Title: How to Take Smart Notes - Category: #books ## Highlights - This book aims to fill this gap by showing you how to efficiently turn your thoughts and discoveries into convincing written pieces and build up a treasure of smart and interconnected notes along the way. ([Location 130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=130)) - That is why good, productive writing is based on good note-taking. Getting something that is already written into another written piece is incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrieve it from there. ([Location 155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=155)) - To sum it up: The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic. ([Location 158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=158)) - What does make a significant difference along the whole intelligence spectrum is something else: how much self-discipline or self-control one uses to approach the tasks at hand (Duckworth and Seligman, 2005; Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone, 2004). ([Location 166](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=166)) - Luckily, this is not the whole story. We know today that self-control and self-discipline have much more to do with our environment than with ourselves (cf. Thaler, 2015, ch. 2) – and the environment can be changed. ([Location 176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=176)) - good structure is something you can trust. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=191)) - A good structure enables flow, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as the work becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). ([Location 195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=195)) - Planners are also unlikely to continue with their studies after they finish their examinations. They are rather glad it is over. Experts, on the other hand, would not even consider voluntarily giving up what has already proved to be rewarding and fun: learning in a way that generates real insight, is accumulative and sparks new ideas. ([Location 212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=212)) - Having read more does not automatically mean having more ideas. Especially in the beginning, it means having fewer ideas to work with, because you know that others have already thought of most of them. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=220)) - In fact, poor students often feel more successful (until they are tested), because they don’t experience much self-doubt. In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). Poor students lack insight into their own limitations – as they would have to know about the vast amount of knowledge out there to be able to see how little they know in comparison. That means that those who are not very good at something tend to be overly confident, while those who have made an effort tend to underestimate their abilities. ([Location 228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=228)) - Good students, on the other hand, constantly raise the bar for themselves as they focus on what they haven’t learned and mastered yet. This is why high achievers who have had a taste of the vast amount of knowledge out there are likely to suffer from what psychologists call imposter syndrome, the feeling that you are not really up to the job, even though, of all people, they are (Clance and Imes 1978; Brems et al. 1994). ([Location 235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=235)) - Most people try to reduce complexity by separating what they have into smaller stacks, piles or separate folders. They sort their notes by topics and sub-topics, which makes it look less complex, but quickly becomes very complicated. Plus, it reduces the likelihood of building and finding surprising connections between the notes themselves, which means a trade-off between its usability and usefulness. ([Location 247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=247)) - Routines require simple, repeatable tasks that can become automatic and fit together seamlessly (cf. Mata, Todd, and Lippke, 2010). ([Location 268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=268)) - Only if we know that everything is taken care of, from the important to the trivial, can we let go and focus on what is right in front of us. Only if nothing else is lingering in our working memory and taking up valuable mental resources can we experience what Allen calls a “mind like water” - the state where we can focus on the work right in front of us without getting distracted by competing thoughts. ([Location 276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=276)) - And this is the other insight of David Allen: Only if you can trust your system, only if you really know that everything will be taken care of, will your brain let go and let you focus on the task at hand. ([Location 301](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=301)) - He realised that one idea, one note was only as valuable as its context, which was not necessarily the context it was taken from. So he started to think about how one idea could relate and contribute to different contexts. Just amassing notes in one place would not lead to anything other than a mass of notes. But he collected his notes in his slip-box in such a way that the collection became much more than the sum of its parts. His slip-box became his dialogue partner, main idea generator and productivity engine. It helped him to structure and develop his thoughts. And it was fun to work with – because it worked. ([Location 319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=319)) - In Germany, a professor traditionally starts with a public lecture presenting his or her projects, and Luhmann, too, was asked what his main research project will be. His answer would become famous. He laconically stated: “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. ([Location 334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=334)) - From as early as 1985, his standard answer to the question of how anyone could be so productive was: “I, of course, do not think everything by myself. It happens mainly within the slip-box” (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek 1987, 142). ([Location 359](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=359)) - Even hard work can be fun as long as it is aligned with our intrinsic goals and we feel in control. The problems arise when we set up our work in such an inflexible way that we can’t adjust it when things change and become arrested in a process that seems to develop a life of its own. ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=371)) - Studies on highly successful people have proven again and again that success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place (cf. Neal et al. 2012; Painter et al. 2002; Hearn et al. 1998). ([Location 381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=381)) - Whenever he read something, he would write the bibliographic information on one side of a card and make brief notes about the content on the other side (Schmidt 2013, 170). These notes would end up in the bibliographic slip-box. ([Location 419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=419)) - He did not just copy ideas or quotes from the texts he read, but made a transition from one context to another. It was very much like a translation where you use different words that fit a different context, but strive to keep the original meaning as truthfully as possible. ([Location 431](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=431)) - The trick is that he did not organise his notes by topic, but in the rather abstract way of giving them fixed numbers. The numbers bore no meaning and were only there to identify each note permanently. ([Location 435](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=435)) - Whenever he added a note, he checked his slip-box for other relevant notes to make possible connections between them. Adding a note directly behind another note is only one way of doing this. Another way is by adding a link on this and/or the other note, which could be anywhere in the system. ([Location 441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=441)) - And if I were forced to boil it down to a single bullet point, it would be this: We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains. ([Location 456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=456)) - Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have. Notes build up while you think, read, understand and generate ideas, because you have to have a pen in your hand if you want to think, read, understand and generate ideas properly anyway. If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words. ([Location 494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06WVYW33Y&location=494))