The first step in nearly “every intellectual endeavour” is to take a note.
Note: Love this.
Writing notes is critical for how we learn, develop ideas and ultimately, create, and if you want to become a better writer or creative of any type, you need a better system and process for your notes.
Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998), a well-known German social scientist and his method for managing his research and writing, Ahren explores how to be more productive, creative and organized using a system of deliberate note taking.
the lessons go well-beyond academia
I’d even argue that this provides one of the missing pieces to David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” method of productivity (Allen, 2001).
Smart notes are a form of “learning through elaboration”, meaning we learn by putting complex ideas in our own words and by connecting them to other ideas. Smart notes are not just another way to collect stuff; their aim and goal is to foster and support creative and innovative output.
Based on these permanent, insight notes, we assemble a “knowledge management system” (my term) that he calls in German the Zettlekarten or in English the slip-box.
Actionable Lessons on Learning and Creativity from “How To Take Smart Notes”
1: Read with a Pen
reading a book of nonfiction and never doing anything with it is largely a waste of time and energy. Books, articles, and podcasts should help us learn and think. This is especially true in the complex world we live in. If you don’t do anything with a book, you probably won’t learn anything. We should strive to transform reading material into knowledge and insights.
The call to action is to “read with a pen” and take up the habit of taking notes. The main motivation behind reading with a pen is to capture what interests you, provide a useful memory, and have a starting point for later, more permanent insight notes (and eventually whatever you write or create).
As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand and enter in a little book short hints of what you feel that is common or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such portcullis in your memory.”
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Note: Quote by BenFrank. Vocab: portcullis
2: Don’t Just Collect, Elaborate YOUR Notes
The collector’s fallacy is the belief that having the book or article is the same as having the knowledge that is in that book. We think that since we have the book or saved an article that we actual “know” something. Unfortunately, like other ineffective learning techniques like re-reading and highlighting, this is an example of the illusion of competence. Having a book is not the same as having learned something from it.
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Note: Collectors Fallacy
Learning takes effort.
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One of the most well-established and best ways to learn is elaboration.
The physicist Richard Feymann was famous for his own learning method of elaboration. He believed that if you couldn’t deliver a lecture on a topic, then you hadn’t learned it. Whether or not you actually do present it, the Feynman Technique takes you through a series of study steps until you remove gaps in your understanding and explanation and are able to confidently teach a concept. If you can’t teach it, you haven’t learned it.
Thinking through writing and learning through elaboration are two core assets of why we should take notes rather than just collect quotes.
3: Take Smart Notes
So, what is a smart notes? A smart note is a distilled, atomic idea in writing.
Ask yourself:
“Does the new information contradict, correct, support or add to what you already have (in the slip-box or on your mind)? Can you combine ideas to generate something new? What questions are triggered by them?”
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Once you’ve thought about it some (remember the goal is to spur divergent thinking, not more passive collecting), create your note.
Aim to make your smart notes should “atomic” or limited to a core insight. To quote again:
“Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible. Throw away the fleeting notes from step one and put the literature notes from step two into your reference system. You can forget about them now. All that matters is going into the slip-box.”
A “smart note” or as I like to call it, an “Insight Note,” is a hard effort to take information and translate it into a precise and meaningful expression. It is a form of learning. They externalize a memory into an elaboration, provide a way to write out our thinking, and act like a first draft in our eventual creation. Smart notes are learning, thinking, and creating rolled into one.
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4: The Slip-box: Assemble Your Own Network of Smart, Interconnected Notes
The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Because these are not your typical class notes or collected quotes, but rather processed, argued out, clear expressions of thought, smart notes have a dynamic quality.
You might think about the slip-box as the missing piece from David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” productivity methodology (Allen, 2001). Also known as GTD, this approach focuses on ensuring tasks and information have a place in an external system, rather than in our mind’s limited capacity. GTD’s main tools are a calendar for events, a planner or todo-list for task management, and a file cabinet for storing important reference information for later. I’ve largely used Evernote as my digital, GTD file cabinet, but never been quite satisfied with how I organize and manage information and ideas. This is where a the slip-box can help.
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The slip-box provides an inspiring way to be more more systematic in how we take and manage our notes. We strive to create smarts notes and assemble the notes into a network of connected ideas. Like GTD, the book is rather agnostic on the specific tools, but the author does recommend a framework of three tools:
a notebook for capturing fleeting notes
software for your permanent notes and for building your archive or slip box, and
a reference management system for citations to articles, books and other things “out in the world”
The end goal is to create something. These are the support tools for your organized creativity.
5: A Bottoms-Up Creative Process from Notes to Creation:
To quote:
“To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft; to get a good draft written, you only have to turn a series of notes into a continuous text. And as a series of notes is just the rearrangement of notes you already have in your slip-box, all you really have to do is have a pen in your hand when you read.” (p. 75)
Conclusion: To be creative, follow your interests, take notes, and trust in a process