How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

My notes

Writing paper step by step

1. Fleeting notes. These are the place to dump your ideas out of your head, once they are on paper, you release cache of your brain, letting it find new ideas. Don't worry how your write them. You will amend them later.
2. Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Everything you found interesting, insightful. Use your own words, don't skip the understanding process--dont blindly quote.
3. Make permanent notes. Go through the notes you did in step 1 and 2 and review how they relate to each other, to the research you are doing. You can look at your slip-box, there is stuff that interest you already. The goal is not to collect, but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions. Does this new information contradict, correct or support or add to what you already have in your slip-box ? Can you combine ideas and generate something new? What questions are triggered by them? Write one note for one idea, and write as if you would write for someone else. Use full sentences disclose your sources, make references, and try to be succinct, clear and accurate. Throw away your fleeting notes from step 1, and add your references from step 2 into your reference system from step 2. They were just the sandbox, everything that matter is in slip-box
4. Add permanent note to slip-box. a) Put it behind the related notes. Look for which note it directly relate to. If it doesn't relate to anything, just put it behind other notes. b) link to it from other notes or just index.
5. Develop your topics, questions, and research project bottom up from within the system. Reflect in what is there, what is missing, what questions arise. Read more to challenge and strengthen your arguments and change and develop your arguments according to the new information your are learning about. Take more notes, develop ideas, and see where things will take you. Follow your interest and go for places that offers the more insights. Build upon what you have. Empty slip-box doesn't mean you are starting from scratch--your head is full of ideas to be tested, opinions to be challenged, and questions to be answered. Look into the chain of notes to see where they are heading at, what cluster have they build up. Don't cling to an idea of other is more interesting, offer more momentum. The more you are interested in something the better you will make it. The more notes you will collect and the more questions you will generate. It may turn out that you have drifted to something else than you thought at the beginning, that is how insight works.
6. At this point should have an idea on the topic you want to write about. Your topic is now based on what you have, not what literature provides you. Look through the connections and collect all the relevant notes you may need. Gather them in one place, order them. Look for what is missing and what is redundant. Don't wait until you have everything all together. Improve notes, arguments and structure.
7. Turn your notes into draft. Don't simply copy them into manuscript. Rearrange, modify, them into one coherent whole. Build arguments out of them, while also filling gaps in your arguments while you encounter them.
8. Edit and proofread your manuscript. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder.

Don't work merely on one manuscript at a time. Jump between ideas. Build them granularly, finish when you are certain, or you haven't added nothing more for a long time.

Production and presentation are one coin

Good studying is research and presentation. Research is always insightful and can not be anticipated. Presentation because in academia there is no such thing as secret knowledge. An idea you keep secret is as good as one you never had. If you are learning and not publishing or presenting you are merely an consumer, not producer. You don't give any value to the world, therefore you are likely to be poor.

Presentation and production of knowledge can not be separated, but are rather two sides of the same coin.

The knowledge is a knowledge when the author can be removed, and the knowledge stays there.

Truth does not belong to anyone, it is the outcome of the scientific exchange of written ideas.

Writing is the most vital part of your work. Everything else is important but secondary.

Attending conferences and lectures windener your perspective, it expose you to open questions and stimulate discussion.

Reading is like eating, you need it to produce your own ideas.

Presenting your research is required because otherwise you won't get feedback if what you are doing makes sense.

Do everything with the intent to write insight.

Seek open questions and breakthroughs.

Don't quote, rephrase.

We tend to think we understand what we read—until we try to write in our words. By describing what we read in our words we increase our ability to express things in clear way. Expressing things in a clear way helps grasping ideas more quickly. Fooling ourself won’t work as we will review our words while making permanent notes, and try to connect them with others.

The ability to express our understanding in our own words is fundamental skill for everyone who writes. By writing what we understand we are in permanent feedback loop, immediately receive feedback if we understand it not.

By doing notes we also learn how to extract the most important parts of the text. What we can skip, where we have to focus. We learn to notice “golden nuggets”. Our reading become more efficient.

Whenever you rephrase some arguments you will think them through, and distinguish the merely good-sound arguments from the good ones.

By forcing yourself to rephrase, you are forcing yourself to understand, because you can't rephrase something you don't understand.

You will create new ideas all the time merely by writing it in your own way.

The more the better

The biggest advantage of slip-box is that it's getting more and more valuable the more it grows, instead of getting messy and confusing.

The only separation you have to make is the three types of notes.

1. Fleeting notes, which are just remainders of information, drafts of insights, and ultimately will end up in trash.
2. Permament notes, which will never end up in a trash.
3. Project notes, which are kept within a scope of a particular project only, can be discarded when project is finished.

You must not keep the fleeting notes for too long, as they will lose their insight. Fleeting notes are useful for day or two, then you start to lose the context, you don’t understand what you meant or they become banal. So review them quickly and turn into self-contained thoughts.

Don't plan, trust your intuition

Writing paper is not a linear process, you can’t make a decision on what to write, plan research, do your research, and then write. In order to develop good question, you must already have put some thought into a topic.

By focusing on is interesting and keeping written track of your own intellectual development, topics, questions and arguments will emerge from the material without force. Not only does it mean that research topics will show up easily, but you will also already have materials to start with. Looking at clusters in slip-box will will see possible topics and topics we were working on. When you stop thinking linear at the process of taking notes, the problem of finding topic will be replaced by problem of having to many topics.

The slip-box and our brain work in similar interconnected way. We learn by connecting the ideas into latticework of mental models. That makes it more natural, more efficient, to retrieve information from it.

The successful scientist is not the one that can deeply focus on one task, but the one who can flexibly switch between deep level of focus and playful exploration of ideas.

The problem often lays in organisation we are in. We can not be flexible in rigid organisation, "as the car can not avoid traffic if it's stuck on rails."

Experts don't make plan, experts don't follow the rules, or at least don't think about them. They follow their intuition, their intuition knows better than they can explain by words. The intuition can be accessed effortlessly and instantly.

Our mental resources are limited, so instead of remembering, understand. We understand what we can connect to existing knowledge, either thorough rules, theories, narratives, pure logic, mental models, or explanations. Slip-box is created exactly for that.

What if we have nothing in our slip-box to connect to? Something have to be the root. Should we create roots also? Like love, hate, good, bad, all these philosophical concepts. Should we create ontology?

Build your ideas bottom-up not from plan

If insight becomes a threat to your academic or writing success, you are doing it wrong.

We should start building our ideas bottom-up not top-down. We should start with no hypothesis, no topic. They will show up naturally as we start putting together what we have found on the bottom.

Postpone the decision on what to write about, and instead focus on building the critical mass within slip-box.

Instead of having hypothesis in mind we want to focus on understanding the text we read the where the new knowledge can connect to.

Then take one step back and look what developed, then make a decision on what conclusions are to be drawn from that.

If we could set only one criterion to adding something to slip-box it works be whether it adds to a discussion, whether it connects or is open to connection. It may be addition as well as contradiction. It may be questioning of a seemingly obvious idea as well as the differentiation of an argument.

We need long term memory to develop reference points for distinguishing important things from the less important things, the new information from mere repeated.

The ability to use one's own understanding is a challenge, not given. We're need to develop a skill of selective reading, skipping what is repeated, and focusing on what is new. The naive way would be to learn as much as we remember everything. The smart way is to take notes. When we write the same thing twice, we immediately recognise patterns and categories, or conditions and assumptions.

We should always ask "What is not meant?", "What is excluded if a certain claim is made?". If someone speaks of human rights. Ask what distinction is made? A distinction to "non-human rights", "animal rights", "rights in general" or "human duties?". Does he compare different cultures or times when people didn't have human rights but lived okay anyway.

It's virtue to express your idea in simple but not simplified way, using the most accurate words possible.

tye best way to spot patterns, preconditions and distinctions made by others, is to write notes, because writing notes force to to think criticality all the time you listen and read.

The skill of critical thinking is even more important than extensive knowledge because without this ability we wouldn't be able to put this knowledge to use.

Richard Feynman once told that he consider understanding something once he can give a introductory lecture about it.

Permanent notes should be written in ignorant readers in mind. They should no assume the awarenes of the context, only the general knowledge. We write them to our future selves that will soon reach the same level of ignorance.

We shouldn't underestimate the advantages of writing. In oral presentations we easily get fooled, and fall into understanding gaps of "you know what I mean". No, you don't know but you pretend to be.

"The principle is that you must not fool yourself and you the easiest person to fool"

Familiarity is not understanding, we have no chance of knowing whether we understand something or just believe we understand something until we test ourselves in some form.

We face a problem: do we want to feel smarter or become smarter. Taking notes feels like detour, like doing something extra, like wasting time, but actually this is really when we are understanding more.

We are lazy we like the feeling of understanding even if we are fooling ourselves. That's we prefer rereading over testing. Therefore having external system that forces us to understand is smart choice.

Writing, and connecting ideas together, is exactly what learning and understanding is about. And slip-box forces us to do it.

Slip-box, taking notes, and writing in general is something that let us move the head up, focus on gits rather than details. They are there if we need to dig deeper. But our brain is free to focus on gits. This is what I'be been working on in [[Formalization complement creativity]].

Taking smart notes

What distinguishes successful and not so successful students is the ability to think beyond the given frames of the text.

[[Good readers can spot the limitations of some approach]]

The inexperienced students take the arguments of the text as a given. They collect the decontextualised quotes. Which makes it almost impossible to understand the meaning of information.

Without understanding what the information mean within a given context is impossible to extrapolate the information into different contexts. Reframe it to answer different questions. [[Knowledge extrapolation]].

Instead of taking brainless contextless notes, you should summarise the text with a logline or main ideas of the text.

Scientific work is about taking the knowledge from one paper and going with it beyond the domain of the paper. [[Knowledge extrapolation]]. Combining it with different papers and finding patterns, and asking questions that haven’t been stated by the authors of one paper but have by the others.

You should not collect brainless and contextless notes from a papers, you should tackle the main idea from the paper, and summarise it with your own words.

The first permanent note should answer “why does it matter” and how does it contribute do my knowledge.

Slip-box forces us to understand, to add new idea in relation to other ideas, by comparisons, differences, similarities, not categories, or structures, or not in modules.

We as a scientist should make a habit of creating a few notes every day, Luhmann did six notes per day. The more notes, the more possible connections, more ideas, more synergy and therefore a much higher degree of productivity.

Taking permanent notes is a writing dialogue with our existing ideas, questions and answers. We discuss with our opinions and ideas something new, we test our existing ideas and the new one.

Only the arguments outside the brain can be treated seriously. Our brain is designed to make a conclusions not to judge based on limited resources, if an idea or argument in our brain makes sense. We need to dump them into notes to free up the resources to evaluate them using whole computing power. [[Formalization complement creativity]].

[[Brain doesn't care about truth, brain cares about us]] that's [[Why I'm so slow on giving opinions]].

Only the connected ideas can work as a models or theories to give rise to further development of ideas. [[Formalization complement creativity]]. We need to formalise our ideas, to further develop upon them. Slip-box is a way of formalizing ideas.

I used to write notes in a note keeping app in linear way, catching them together by labels. It worked but slip-box and obsidian was the formalisation that really enabled the creativity. It is more scalable. It works so much better.

When you read a book or paper you should write literature notes asking critical questions like Is it convincing?, what are the other options" what did they ignore, what methods did they use, what are the familiar references.

But the first permanent note you are going to add should answer the question "What does this all mean for my own research and the questions I think about in my slip-box?" In other words "Why did the aspects I wrote down catch my interest?". There are some questions in my head and therefore in my slip-box and this book is going to contribute to them. The next notes should be the answers the book triggered in my head. Then the notes could trigger another ideas and so on.

Everyone is reading a book for different purpose, everyine is looking for a different answers, because everyone has different questions. You have to make your notes yours.

Learning right means understanding. Once you understand something you cannot unlearn it. If you learn electricity and understand that it works similllar to water pressure(voltage), resistance(sand in pipe) and flow (current). Then you cannot unlearn it. The same with vines and arteries, arteries are thicker and more elastic because higher pressure, vines are thinner and so less elastic, have valves to prevent blood flowing back.

This understanding makes new knowledge internalise more easily as new connection can be represented in similar metaphors.

Slip-box forces us to understand, to add new idea in relation to other ideas, by comparisons, differences, similarities, not categories, or structures, or not in modules.

There is nothing wrong with connecting heterogeneous notes as long as they connect to each other.

Slip-box is an antidote to what learning institutions have thought us. It forces us to elaborate, to undertake, to connect and therefore learn seriously.

It has been proven that too much order can impede learning. We (students) must be the ones to change chaos into order. It's our task, it forces us to understand.

[[We learn by changing chaos into order]].

Slip-box is not intended to be an encyclopaedia, but a tool to think with, we don’t worry about completeness. We write only if it helps us with our own thinking.

Slip-box is a medium we are thinking in.

Links between notes can help us find connections and similarities between seemingly unrelated topics.

[[What is the pattern of my thoughts]]

Patterns may not be visible right away, but they will emerge after multiple note-to-note links between two topics have been established.

[[Creativity workbench#Example]]

Note-to-note links between notes of different topics can indicate interesting discoveries.

How to create topics in my notes. The basis of slip-box are note-to-note links. But we should also use tags and indexes.

Tags should be created according to the perspective you are looking from. Never from isolation. The note about blockchain can be seen as distirbuted system, cryptocurrency, but for me it's a decentralized trust, hence the proper tag.

This also means that it can not be delegated to machine — it requires subjective thinking.

The tag should not be "the most frequent word in the notes", it is much more than the bureaucratic act—it is a crutial act of thinking process, which often leads to more elaboration on the notes.

We should not focus on creating indexes as soon as possible, as they may mislead our further process of thinking. We should focus on note-to-note connections. And create indexes as late as possible. Liberating our brain from the task of organising the notes.

We should not focus on the organisation of our notes. We should get as quickly to the fact-rich nodes.

Thinking in Slip-box is having a dialogue with our knowledge.

Keywords should be created according to the perspective you are looking from. Never from isolation. The note about blockchain can be seen as a distributed system, cryptocurrency, but for me it's a decentralized trust, hence the proper keyword.

Good keywords are the one/two words summaries of what the text is about. And the short summaries usually require more abstract words not mentioned in the text. It requires thinking therefore keywords are also part of thinking.

Links between notes can help us find connections and similarities between seemingly unrelated topics.

Patterns may not be visible right away, but they will emerge after multiple note-to-note links between two topics have been established. Note-to-note links between notes of different topics can indicate interesting discoveries.

Making connections between notes is not a chore, it’s not a maintenance. It is a part of your thinking.

Slip-box makes the process more structured. Less error-prone, less abstract-prone. You can literally see if it makes sense or not.

Writing with slip-box shape our thinking in a more structured way. The ideas are stronger. We are more confident knowing that they are rooted in verified and well-thought network of ideas.

The slip-box is like a well-informed but down-to-earth communication partner who keeps us grounded. It is like taking with my father. I give him lofty ideas, he forces me to ground them down to facts

We often get and thought, idea, we get excited, and decide to put it into a slip-box and often it turns out that the idea is already there. Interestingly, we get excited about this idea as if we approached it for the first time.

Comparing our ideas with old notes that are slightly different is valuable as we can create new knowledge out of it.

Our brain is great at spotting commonalities and differences. But the object of comparison has to be externalised. It can not be merely in our thoughts. That’s why having them in notes is so crucial.

Comparing notes leads to spotting contradictions and paradoxes. When we realise that we have accepted two contradicting ideas, we realise our blind spots, and we come up with something new to these two ideas.

The construction of opposites is the most reliable way of generating new ideas

Examining old notes also serves as an outgoing examination of old notes in new light. Often one new note lead to correction, improvement, complementation of old ideas. Sometimes we discover that two interpretations of one study can be used as proof for two contradicting arguments, meaning that the study is very vague.

Slip-box has one more advantage. It prevent the feature-positive effect which is a phenomenon in which we overstate the importance of information that is mentally easily available to us and tilts our thinking towards the most recently acquired facts, not necessarily the most relevant ones.

Slip-box works simillar to flashcards, yet, it's better since flashcards are isolated notes.

Charlie Munger suggest everyone to develop a broad theoretical toolbox to understand markets (world) and human behaviour.

We should learn the most powerful concept in every discipline and to try to understand them so well that they become part of our thinking.

We gained "wordly wisdom" once we can attach our experiences to our mental models.

It is important however to have many mental models in our heads. Otherwise we risk becoming too attached to one or two and see only what fits them. We become hammers who sees nails everywhere.

Adding notes to slip-box and making connections between them is exactly what Charlie Munger calls 'building up a latticework of mental models' instead of just 'remembering isolated facts and try and bang 'em back

Slip-box is not only for accumulating knowledge but for building a latticework of theories and mental models. Using a slip-box lead to a virtuous circle where learning facilitates learning.

Slip-box includes all activities necessary for effective learning: elaboration, spacing, variation, contextual interference, and retrieval.

Asking creative people about their creations makes them feel guilty as they don't really know how they come to it. They just saw it. Is he basically describing Ni?

Stories tell that the most breakthrough ideas came to their mind from nowhere. They just showed in their mind. In fact they were preparing for years to those ideas to show up. Those "Aha!" moments need a lot of information from different contexts to show up. We need a lot of experience until we can feel the unanswered questions.

When we are learning it is always more than what we can put into words, we learn the conceptual, symbolic, intuitive meanings which can not be verbalised.

Intuition is something we know but don't know why. Intuition comes from the knowledge of a practice that can lead us to new insights.

We prefer one idea over the other but we don't know why. We make up reasons, to convince others about them. But they start from a feeling, from insight that come from nowhere.

Intuition is not the opposition to rationality.

Intuition is the practical side of our intellectual endeavours.

Intuition is the result of our (superficially useless) endeavours into different topics.

New ideas come up from "slow hunches". Most of the ideas have to stay in a long process of incubation. They need to collide with different hunch, which together make a good idea.

Hunches come from intuition.

Good intuition can emerge in experimental spaces where ideas can freely mingle. Such spaces are laboratories with open-minded colleagues, like intellectuals and artists freely discussing ideas. Slip-box is another of such spaces.

Groundbreaking paradigm shifts are most often consequences of many small moves, not quantum leaps. The key is therefore to find those small differences.

The crucial skill is to see differences between similar concepts, and similarities in different ideas.

Taking paper notes is much better than digital ones.

Creativity is about recognising relationships, seeing connections, seeing things that others can not see.

Good academic can compare, differentiate, and connect notes. Exceptional academic can play and tinker with ideas, he can release ideas from their original contexts.

Meaning, releasing them from their initial context by means of abstraction and respecification.

Abstraction is less valuable than concrete in our world. It is possibly reasonable as abstraction is vague and ambiguous.

Abstractions should not be the final goal of thinking, but a step in-between two distinct ideas. That would otherwise would not be possible to connect without abstraction.

Abstraction is what allowed Darwin to oversee sparrows and formulate general principles of evolution across different species.

Abstraction is not that esoteric, intellectual function of mind, we abstract ask the time in day to day basis by adapting to new situations which are always new. We live is stochastic world, abstraction is what allows us to understand it in different contexts

Engineering and technical problems are solved by the ability to abstract them away from the concrete problem

Abstraction allows to compare concepts and apply them interdisciplinary.

The enemy of independent thinkers is an old habit of thinking.

People who consider themselves open-minded are more prone to prejudices and biases because they don't feel the need to counterbalance their beliefs.

We can not hold the bank from interpretation and conclusion. They are immediate. We can only lower the confidence in them and question them.

Sometimes the best way to prove something is by negation. Imagine a world without it and try to solve the problem, often you ends up with the improved version.

The note should fit into A6 paper, or just a screen without strolling. That limitation actually catalyse creativity.

Every bite should be the same. No matter what kind of note it is. Ways use the same format.

Restrictions are liberating. Because often the amount of possibilities is what overwhelms and slows us down. Less options leads to grrater creativity. So we should limit the amount of choices we have to make.

Thinking and creativity flourish under restricted conditions.

A clear structure allows for breaking with conventions.

The binary code is more limited than 26-characters alphabet yet it allows for much more complex expression.

The biggest threat to science is lack of structure and restitutions. Without structure we can not compare. Without restrictions we world not be forced to make decisions what is worth pursuing.

Indifference is the worst environment for insight.

The common idea that we should liberate from restrictions to open up to creativity is counterintuitive and misleading.

The best way to spot your gaps of understanding is by writing down.

Slip-box make it easy to find a topic to write about. Just see where the notes cluster, and pull them out. They already have the sequence of references.

The hardest part of writing manuscript is to narrow down to one argument, and cut off everything that does not contribute.

An idea or fact is not worth more merely because it’s easily available to you.

Brainstorming is outdated method of coming up with ideas that are easily recalled to you.

The brain priorities ideas that are easily available. Have emotional attachment, is lively and concrete. However we should pursue topic that is interesting, valuable, and we have materials on it.

We tend to neglect ideas that are vague and we don’t have emotional attachment to.

Even worst is that we rent to favour our first ideas, and we are reluctant letting them go.

More people in brainstorming leads to worst and more narrowed down ideas.

Struggling with finding a topic to write about is a problem of those who use writing separate from learning. Those who take smart notes already have sense what is the longest sequence of notes, and where do they cluster.

Everytime we write down a word, or make a permamant note we make a connection of what is important topic.

Slip box removes the problem of finding a good, relevant questions we want to andwer in our manuscripts. It is because notes are both questions and answers. And if there are notes without further links they are less interesting and not worth researching/answering.

The more familiar we are with our current ideas the more open to new ideas we become. It is because the more time we spend elaborating on same old stuff the more limits we see, the less likely that we will reinvent them “looking for something new”.

While the believe in our own ingenuity decreases with expertise, we become actually more able to make new contributions.

We cannot escape routine thinking without knowing it’s routine thinking.

The most motivating is identifying with a project that goes forward. The most demotivating is being stuck with a project that doesn’t seem to be worth doing.

We can mitigate the problem of getting stuck with boring project by attending organisations that are flexible.

It would be quite sad if we would not change our interest during the research. It’s normal that we change our interest on the course of research.

The researches who found DNA structure started with grant for cure for cancer, but they changed their research and followed interest and intuition. They discovered DNA structure. Interest and intuition are the ways for great research discoveries.

Slip-box leads to many by-products which can be used to write other manuscripts.

But it also produces a lot of material that won’t be used in the manuscript.

Writing notes makes you slowly write manuscripts, and you may not be even aware of it.

The secret to productiveness is to not force oneself to work on something but work on what is interesting at the time. And work on many projects at the same time.

What helps with motivation is imagination of the work needed to be done. Not only the end result but also the work in between.

We should instead set a goal of writing three notes per day and review one paragraph the day before.

We sitios specify goals like “Write notes from that paper” or “write one paragraph” not “keep working on that paper”.

The first draft is only first draft, you write it to yourself. Someday it may be published or may be not.

Cutting off evertyhing that does not support your argument is hard, it's like killing your darlings.

Civilisation proceeds with the number of important things we can do without thinking.

The goal is to establish a habit of taking own and writing down the mist important things we can learn.