Tags: [ learning reading notetaking writing ]
In the previous post, I shared about reading -> note-taking -> writing. Note-taking is a key step that converts what you read and learn into writing. This post expands on note-taking.
From personal experience, regular note-taking doesn’t work.
Okay, that’s a sweeping statement. To some extent, it does. Scribbling on the margins is helpful for quickly recording insights and ideas that come while reading. Making summaries of books, articles, and papers help distil the gist and review the knowledge in future. Highlighting is… nope, highlighting doesn’t work—it’s just too passive.
Why do I say regular note-taking doesn’t work then?
Because the notes stay as separate notes. Ideas and knowledge remains scattered as individual pieces. In regular note-taking, connections between ideas are not made by default. When reviewing a note, other relevant notes (i.e., ideas) don’t present themselves. If your notes are digital, you might do a free-text search. If not, you might flip through your notebooks, or worse, not bother.
Information vs. Knowledge (by @gapingvoid)
I didn’t realise this was an issue until I stumbled upon the Zettelkasten, which emphasizes building connections between notes.
Zettelkasten is German for “slip-box”. It originates from German sociologist Niklas Luhmann.
One thing you should know about Luhmann—he was extremely productive. In his 40 years of research, he published more than 70 books and 500 scholarly articles.
How did he do accomplish this? He credits it to his Zettelkasten which focuses on connections between notes. He realised early that a note is only useful in its context, specifically, the other notes it is related to.
Here’s how a Zettelkasten works:
This is oversimplifying it, but I hope you get the gist. The key is to make connections between ideas during note-taking, way before you need to review them for your work. This forces you to actively connect the dots (during note-taking) and lets you find relevant ideas with ease in future.
Luhmann built a massive Zettelkasten of 90,000 notes with handwritten index cards and a wooden cabinet. Thankfully, we have digital alternatives that make it easier to navigate (and read otherwise illegible handwriting).