I suck at making notes I would just read over a textbook in order rewrite everything by hand and I just have a massive wool of words staring at me and the only thing that happens was my hand hurt it would take me ages to write these notes but it would take me even longer to review them because I had to re through the whole thing again and again thinking that I was learning something when in fact I wasn't and it was only marginally increasing my knowledge each time I reviewed it so it was vastly inefficient
I'd always lose these notes and I didn't even want to read them because they were so ugly and I couldn't even read my handwriting half the time and anyway surely there's a way to make a notes so that the first time you write them you already remember a large chunk of what you wrote and you don't have to constantly reread them but actually yes there is 96% of students are said to make notes so it's something that you must know how to do well but a lot of people like me and maybe you don't know
how to make notes properly so here's how to make notes that you will remember and how to use them to Ace that [Music] test number one make them memorable when making notes make them funny easily rememberable and explicit you can do this by explaining things in your own words in terms that you will understand because for example anyone can write down in their notes Lyndon B Johnson was assassinated by Al in 1296 but that's just so boring right so instead of copying this sound you can just write LBJ took the L in 1296 and this
is funny and memorable you form a visual image in your mind of LBJ taking the L or just in any other way you find funny and memorable and as we talk about later notes are actually only an extension of your thinking and so by making notes and in that moment describing Linda me Johnson getting assassinated as taking the out when you come to review that you're going to instantly remember that in the test of him that visual image you had in your mind because as we already talked about in how to memorize anything your brain
remembers best when they're funny and visual you can mix in symbols emojis abbreviations and slang you understand because your notes are going to be what you look at here are two pages of notes which of these two notes was more easy to understand this one right obviously because it's Visual and your brain processes images seven times faster than words and to my bilingual chingus out there you can even make loads into languages this might sound crazy but for example some Concepts and just words to you make sense in one language more than another and so
in English where whereas you have to write four or five words out for a single concept sometimes it's just one word or it's just more memorable for example whether it's writing America as Mig or using a word that's just more memorable for you the point of all this is that we're condensing the info in a way that's more understandable and manageable for us in our own way whether that's through symbols drawings flowcharts visualizations or in a different language we're taking the info that our teachers giving us that text's giving us and it's going through a
different set of filter it's going from a brain before onto the paper whereas for a lot of the time and what I used to do for a long time is that as soon as the say something I'll instantly J down without even processing it through my brain even once you need to be associating chunking and visualizing all of this in your brain before it goes onto your paper because you know too well you take notes after a lecture but then you have to to reread your entire notes after the lecture because you didn't actually take
in the notes or concepts in the lecture rather you just copied down the words word for word you should never just copy down words and make sure to utilize visualization and chunking in some way and linking it to images and symbols and the second thing is to understand the difference between linear and nonlinear notes linear is in a sequential form of order it's chronological it's what most of your textbooks are written is the header chapter one plant reproduction chapter 2 human reproduction chapter three inheritance whereas nonlinear is more free form and it allows ideas to
in interconnect and you see how everything links together that's why for most notes you should be doing it by hand or drawing it because inherently by typing you can only do it in that chronological linear type form of notes and I like taking notes on the iPad with my stylus because you can interconnect ideas and see how they all link together instead of just having a block of information on the Page by seeing how everything links together it actually strengthens how long you remember it for because if you think about it if one thing's interconnected
to the whole thing you're going to remember it because it's connected to more than one different type of pathway if you remember for example plant reproduction and you link it to gamet but you also link that to reproduction DNA you're going to have two separate pieces of strand that you're already linking it to so it doubles the strength of your neural connections and that's why the box method for note taking is just as efficient even if you don't have an iPad just by making notes in separate boxes based on their Concepts and then linking it
together at the end can make it so you see the bigger picture and you just understand and memorize notes for longer this is a visual form and it's easy to review because instead of having to read through that entire chunk of notes that we wrote ineffectively before you can just go to specific boxes that you're struggling on and just review those instead third thing is cognitive load you need to think of notes as an extension to your thinking not a replacement when you're in a lecture hall and the person is talking your brain starts to
get new knowledge new Concepts Etc and it's all adding to that cognitive load and your bre and your brain's job is to process all that information think of questions and just think about that topic right and when that gets too much you should be writing notes on a piece of paper offloading that information so that when you come back later it's meant to be like a respawn Point anchor type of thing to think back to that lecture hall and what concept you learning then to recall that moment right and this can't happen if you just
write down or copy everything that the person is saying immediately because your brain hasn't have the time to make the connection and doesn't have a point to think back to or record you want the cognitive load to actually be heavy enough for you to learn because that's how you learn when you're learning something hard and you have questions and things you don't understand the learning comes from trying to figure out the answer from that question from your brain asking those type of things like at the gym you only make progress when it's nearly too much
for you and you work towards failure you have to struggle with learning don't offload everything immediately you're scared of missing out on the information and you're bypassing your brain and just writing it down on a piece of paper but in fact you're not learning anything then and then you have to learn it after the lecture which is just inefficient because you're spending double the time learn it there and don't have to read it again afterwards and a bonus tip is to make these notes with a thought and awareness that you're going to revisit these notes
at some time so while making notes think of different questions that examiners might ask I like writing my notes and having a question or I'm writing them in notion I use the toggle feature and write the answer below like for example in my Latin notes so that when I come to review it I can immediately actively recall that and it's already a formal for vision but to summarize remember that notes are just for you so make them memorable and visual in your own way and know the difference between linear and nonlinear notes and understand that
cognitive load is needed to make progress as well as writing down questions and if you want this notion template with all my notes all these different databases and tables that I use to boost my cognitive learning remembering and others you can check out the link in the description but as always I'll see you next time
