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The ultimate guide to note-taking

22 Sep 2022
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Are you a pen and paper person, do you love an online project management workspace, or do you have more phone notes than you can handle? However you like to do it, note-taking is part of most of our daily lives – the to-do lists, social media content ideas and life goals. And never is this jotting down more prevalent in our lives than when we’re revising.

But it’s a shame to spend all that time writing things down if you don’t have a process in place that makes them of most use to you. Don’t take your note-taking for granted; read these tips to supercharge your studies.

The 5 Rs of note-taking

Study and productivity expert Ali Abdaal managed to grow a six-figure business and create a YouTube channel with millions of followers, all while studying medicine at Cambridge University. He recommends these 5 Rs of note-taking:

  1. Record – there should be somewhere to take our notes (obviously).
  2. Reduce – there should be somewhere to summarise those notes.
  3. Recite – there needs to be an easy way to test ourselves using our notes.
  4. Reflect – our notes should be related to other notes we’ve already written.
  5. Review – we should regularly revisit our notes to ensure maximum retention.

The Cornell Method for recording and reducing your notes

Alongside these tips, you can use the Cornell Method for note-taking, which was invented in the 1950s by Professor Walter Pauk at Cornell University, USA. It has been proven again and again to still be not only one of the most efficient ways to make notes but also makes it a lot easier to read them back and digest them, which makes it an especially good method for exam notes.

To follow the Cornell Method, you simply divide your page into four sections:

  1. Draw a horizontal line to create a small title section across the top of the page.
  2. Draw a horizontal line to create a small summary section across the bottom of the page. This is where you’ll write a short outline of that page.
  3. The large middle section of the page that’s left should be divided into two with a vertical line that leaves about 30% of the space on the left which will be used to jot down keywords, comments and questions relating to your main notes on the right.
  4. The large (70%) space on the right is for your main notes and key thoughts.

You can see an example and download a free Cornell note-taking template here.

The Feynman Technique for remembering our notes

This four-step method was designed to enhance our understanding when self-teaching.

Step 1: Identify the topic you’re learning about

Choose the topic that you have the most weaknesses in (where the exam is coming soonest!) and keep it specific to this one area.

Step 2: Teach it to someone else (preferably a child)

Learning is often treated as a passive activity, but teaching is an active method and will be far more effective. Teaching to someone else (especially a child, but it could be a study partner) will allow you to really see if you understand the topic. It will force you to break it down into its simplest parts, and you’ll receive external feedback.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

 – Richard Feynman

Step 3: Identify any knowledge gaps you have

Teaching the topic to someone else will allow you to identify any knowledge gaps you have. Which bits did you find difficult to teach? Write these down.

Step 4: Simplify

Re-write your notes for any areas you identified in step three and break them down into their simplest terms.

Building your second brain

In his recently released book Building A Second Brain, Tiago Forte explains his methods for organising your digital notes to unlock your potential and increase productivity. An online workspace like Notion or Evernote is perfect for this. Tiago recommends splitting your notes into four sections (P.A.R.A.):

  1. Projects – tasks you are working on now with a specific goal and deadline. 
  2. Areas – areas that you are responsible for on an ongoing basis – they don’t have a specific deadline but are not simply interests.
  3. Resources – topics of ongoing interest.
  4. Archive – notes that are not relevant to you right now but there to be reinstated later if needed.

A summary of 6 top tips for tip-top note-taking

  1. Use bold and headers throughout your notes to break them up.
  2. Leave as much white space as you can to make them easier to read back.
  3. Use abbreviations – create your own.
  4. Keep your notes as simple as possible.
  5. Use active teaching instead of passive learning if possible.
  6. Have a method in place for organising your notes.

Further reading

Sophie Cross is the Editor of Freelancer Magazine and a freelance writer and marketer at Thoughtfully.

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