Guide to Taking Better Notes
Taking notes is an essential skill for any serious student. But most students end up frantically trying to copy down everything they see and hear in class as they try to record everything. Note-taking becomes more about record-keeping and less about learning. Unfortunately, these notes are often not very useful when it comes time for the exam because
But what if you could create notes that make studying for exams much easier? And what if the very process of note-taking could help you learn the material better and faster? This guide is built to help you do just that and is organized into two sections: the foundational principles for taking notes in general and different methods and frameworks for taking notes.
Principles
These are the foundational ideas to guide your note-taking journey. These can be applied no matter what kind of note-taking method or technique you decide to use.
Before: Prepare Ahead of Time
Just as you wouldn’t run a race without resting and eating well the night before, you can’t expect to take great notes without some preparation ahead of time.
Prepare your note-taking tools. This may seem obvious, but make sure your note-taking tools are ready. This means enough pages in your notebook if you take notes by hand or enough charge on your battery if you’re typing.
Pre-study the class content. In most classes, you should know what each class or lecture will cover so you can pre-view the content beforehand. Even a brief skim will help you take better notes because you will already have a sense of the structure and flow of the lesson.
Print or download class materials. Many teachers use lecture slides or something similar to support their lessons. If these materials are available, you should definitely print them (if you take notes on paper) or download them (if you take notes digitally).
If you want to go the extra mile, you can even start your notes beforehand. This can come in the form of preparing the general outline if you’re using the Outline method (more on this later) or writing down some starting questions if you’re using the Cornell method (more on this later).
During: Take active notes
Good note-taking should actively engage your brain in thinking about the content of the class. The more you think about what you’re learning, the deeper and more efficient your learning will be. Frantically copying everything you see and hear is often a passive experience as your brain switches over to transcription mode. You end up thinking very little about what you’re writing.
Decide what is important and write more about the important stuff.
Ask yourself questions as you go. If they are answered later in the same lecture, connect the concepts. If they are not answered before the end of class, you now have a starting place for studying later.
Connect the new concepts with the old ones. Think about your memory like a spider web: the more connections there are, the more “stuck” the new memory is.
Pro Tip: Develop a shorthand system. Note-taking is often done under very tight time constraints, so you don’t always have time to write down complete sentences or even full words. The good news is that your notes are only for yourself, so everything is okay as long as you can understand what you wrote. However, many students cannot understand their own notes afterward because they use abbreviations or sentence fragments that don’t make any sense by the time they read them later. To avoid this, create a consistent system of shorthands and abbreviations that you use all the time and can easily understand. Start by shortening a few things here and there, use the same shorthands consistently, and before long you will be taking fast yet easily understandable notes.
After: Process your notes immediately after class
Good notes are continuously refined works-in-process. Think of your notes as tools to help you on your journey to success in the class. These tools start off rough (quick, messy notes taken during a lecture) but are refined and sharpened each time you engage with them. The more time you spend creating good notes, the better your learning will become.
Immediately after class, while the memories are still fresh, review your notes and “process” them.
Clean up: Your notes from class are probably pretty messy. Even typed notes might lack organization or structure (i.e., just a straight bulleted list). Cleaning means organizing your notes into something more easily read.
Expand: Many of your ideas will be written in shorthand or fragments. To make the notes more useful to you in the future, flesh out all of these shortenings into full ideas that you can more easily understand later.
Assess: To continue actively engaging with your notes, think and evaluate how good the notes are and how well you understand the concepts they cover. This will give you a sense of where you need to further self-study or ask during your next class.
Methods
Now that you have a sense of some of the underlying principles for good note-taking, here are some popular methods to try out. Keep in mind that these are not set in stone. Feel free to adapt and remix these however, you want to make them more useful. Also, keep in mind that many of these methods can be combined and used at different phases of your study. Try them out and experiment to see what works for you!
Method 1: Outline
This is the most classic note-taking style, where ideas are arranged in a hierarchy of main points and sub-points. Most students learn this method at some point in their education because almost everything you learn in school can be organized in this way.
Pros: It is easy to visually understand the structure of the information and see the key points quickly.
Cons: This is not very visual and is less well suited for subjects that require diagrams.
Tip: Maintain consistency with your indentations (i.e., I. A. 1. a. i.) and maintain the same level of information that appears at each indentation. (ie. All section headings are Roman numerals: I. Heading One, II. Heading Two, III. Heading Three, etc)
Method 2: Cornell
This method was popularized at Cornell University, where it got its name. Split your page into three sections: Main notes in the center, commentary on the side, and summary at the bottom. As you take your notes, you’ll be
Pros: Writing your own commentary and summarizing each page will help you learn the material more deeply.
Cons: Generally, it takes more effort to do as this requires more time to set up ahead of time, more mental effort during class, and more time to process afterward.
Tip: If you’re typing your notes and there are no obvious page endings to make you summarize your notes, you can insert your own summaries based on sections of the content.
Method 3: Boxing
This is a visual method commonly used to help you group and organize concepts into easily recognizable boxes. By arranging your material visually, you encode the information in different formats, which makes your learning deeper and more durable.
Pros: Particularly useful for summarizing your notes from a lecture or whole unit.
Cons: Less useful for in-class or in-meeting notes
Tip: This is great for summarizing your notes so you can more quickly search through them later (i.e., each lecture has this as a quick 1-page summary at the beginning) and for studying because it helps you draw connections and organize your concepts.
Method 4: Charting
This visual note-taking method helps organize your class content based on some commonly shared properties. By arranging the information into a chart, you can easily draw comparisons and clearly differentiate between concepts.
Pros: It helps you avoid blending concepts together because of the clear distinctions and comparisons.
Cons: Not suitable for all subjects, especially ones that are linear or follow a story progression.
Tip: This method can expose gaps in your understanding when you notice that some of the spaces on your chart are empty.
Method 5: Mapping
This is a visual note-taking method where you start in the middle of the page with the central concept and branch out from there. The information is organized based on their relationship, and you can quickly see how concepts are interconnected.
Pros: Great for demonstrating relationships between information
Cons: It can become cluttered unless you use a digital tool that can expand automatically.
Tip: This can also be used as a brainstorming tool. Simply start in the middle with your starting idea or question and branch out from there.