Book Notes - How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Book in One Sentence

One of the best ways to learn something is to write about it; any time that you highlight something, you should have a corresponding note.

The Five Big Ideas / What Stood Out

1 - Writing is undervalued

When you write something, you are more likely to understand it. Writing can help you to generate the ideas that are on the cusp of being created.

An easy way to start taking advantage of the power of writing is to journal.

2 - Deliberate Note-Taking

An overall theme from this book is to be more deliberate in what you do with the things that you read. Take. Notes.

Or don’t I guess, it’s really up to you what you do with your life. However, your memory will often betray you…

It is dangerous to rely on your brain for storing and retrieving information. Each time that we recall a memory, there is a high likelihood that we will remember it in a subjective way. Our brains make things up, they work with rules of thumb and make things seem as if they happened, when they have not actually happened.

Taking notes on what you read, helps you to recall what you were thinking at the time. After reading this book, I have become more deliberate in highlighting and taking notes. Obviously, I don’t do this for every book, but for a lot of them I do.

I’ve started writing my notes and highlights directly into any physical books that I’m reading. At first this felt so “unholy” but now I’m wishing I had done this years ago.

At this stage, I only take notes on non-fiction books. Taking notes when reading fiction, feels a bit to me like “work”.

Even though I love being productive, there are some days when it’s nice to just relax and escape by reading a great novel.

3 - Types of Notes

The below categorisation of notes is used in the context of the slip-box system which I won’t be covering. However, I think this is still useful to think about:

There are three types of note:

Fleeting Notes: These are used as a reminder of information, written quickly and often be binned later.

Permanent Notes: Never thrown away. These can be understood by themselves.

Project Notes: Notes relevant to a particular project, kept in the folder of that project.

This has made me think a lot about the types of notes that I take at work or at home when I’m reading books. How many permanent notes am I creating? Can my notes be understood on their own? By others?

4 - Parenting

My kids are only 6 and 9 at the moment, so it will be a while before this book will be suitable for them to read (if I can convince them to read it at all!). I hope I can. However, if I can’t, I think the below points will be helpful for them:

“When we try to answer a question before we know how to, we will later remember the answer better, even if our attempt failed (Arnold and McDermott 2013)”

I think this is a useful concept to reinforce with kids (and with adults too). Have a go at things! If you get it wrong, that helps you to remember it better for the future!

“Writing brief accounts on the main ideas of a text instead of collecting quotes… think hard about how they connect with other ideas from different contexts and could inform questions that are not already the questions of the author of the respective text.”

Things may have changed since I went through primary school, high school, an undergraduate degree and a Masters degree, but I don’t ever remember being taught how to take notes. The above quote provides some simple guidance that will help when my kids start proper school assignments.

5 - Motivation and Feedback

Slowly getting better at something, provides a powerful source of motivation. In order to get better at something, we need to get feedback.

As an example, in June of 2020 I decided to start a YouTube channel. As of today (9 April 2021) I have made a video every week for 40 weeks in a row.

Each time that I am about to click Publish, and share my video with my 1,390 subscribers (plus anyone who searches on YouTube) I have a moment where I question myself. Is this good enough? Have I made any mistakes?

If I was just making videos and never sharing them, I wouldn’t be getting any better. By sharing my work in public, I offer myself up to receive feedback. Writing a note provides feedback in a similar way.

When you have to write a note on something, it forces you to truly understand it. Writing it down provides you with true feedback as to whether you have understood it or not.

Key takeaway for me and my life

There is so much value to be had from writing.

Writing things down, and trying to make linkages to other things that you are consuming, helps you to learn and remember.

I’ve been writing a lot more since reading this book and it has made a huge difference.

In terms of my career, I am now putting more effort towards transferring notes that I take in a meeting, into actions or more permanent notes.

Historically I’ve taken lots of notes in meetings, but now I am more conscious of “Capture, then transfer”. By this, I mean that the notes that I take in a meeting should become something more than just notes. They should turn into a calendar invite, or a task in Notion or an email.