Before my final year of high school, I rarely took any notes at school; just listening to the teacher during class and reading the textbook enabled me to get by. University was, however, a different beast altogether; suddenly I had to take in 100x more knowledge than my brain could remember. For those familiar with the University of Oxford, I had to write weekly 2000-word essays on a terrifying range of topics, digesting dozens of books for each piece. Note-taking quickly became essential.
The problem was, I had no idea how to take notes. In my first year, my ‘notes’ consisted of jotting down random bits and pieces of what I read or heard from books and lectures. I had no systematic way whatsoever of recording important ideas. After performing poorly in my first-year exams, I invested my entire second and third years into developing a better structure for my notes.
In this post, I will share with you three principles for note-taking that have allowed me to get through two degrees at Oxford. Notice I said “principles”, not “method”. This is because everyone’s note-taking styles necessarily differ. Some like to highlight (not me), others like to use nice fonts (me). The specifics differ. But I truly believe that regardless of the specific style you use, the principles below will hold true.
Principle #1: Notes should replace the original source material.
A set of notes should itself be sufficient for understanding a topic without the need to refer back to the original material that those notes cover. If I take notes on “party cartelisation”, for example, but come revision time I find myself needing to go back to the articles or books which discussed party cartelisation at length, then my notes have failed. The goal here is to make sure that just looking at your notes are enough to gain an understanding of concepts which you learnt.
Now, there are some exceptions. For instance, if you need to grab a quote or a specific page number reference from a book, then of course you have to return to the original text. Similarly, if you want to revisit a lecturer’s exact phrasing, then it’s perfectly fine to go back to that lecture video. But if you find yourself struggling to understand a concept even though it is ‘written’ in your notes, then you have a problem.
So how do we make sure that our notes are effective enough to replace the original source material? That’s why principle 2 is here.
Principle #2: Notes should be written entirely in our own words.
Many people simply copy and paste segments of books into their notes (I was one of them). But this is a terrible idea — it feels quick and easy, but it does nothing to help you internalise a certain concept or idea. Notes should be written entirely in your own words — this means you read a chunk of a book, or listen to a chunk of a lecture, then summarise what you read/heard in your notes using your own language. That process of summarising will help you internalise concepts. By explaining new knowledge in your own words, your brain will understanding that knowledge for itself, and what you write in your notes will simply remind you of those understandings, stored in your mind.
Principle #3: You should hand-write your notes.
Yes, hand writing notes is a huge pain in the butt. But it is also the most effective way of writing notes. Research shows that taking notes by hand helps conceptual understanding and recall, because it makes it more likely for us to process and reframe information rather than transcribing it “verbatim” (principle #2!!). So I would encourage you to always write the first draft of your notes by hand, even if it takes longer.
But my notes are so heavy!! I don’t want to lug them around! Well, you can do what I did — after you write your first draft by hand, transfer your notes to your computer. I did this by typing out what I wrote by hand (I found this was useful as an extra layer of processing). But you can also use a scanner or a scanning app to store your handwritten notes onto your computer.
Case Study: SRC
SRC stands for “Summary, Readings, Connections”. This is what I called my topical note packets back in Oxford, because they included exactly those things — summaries of key concepts, notes on books and articles (readings) I read on a certain topic, and any connections I could think of with other topics. SRCs were incredibly effective because they combine all three principles I mentioned above: the “readings” section summarised key points from literature in such a way that I almost never needed to return to the original source materials, and the “summary” of key concepts allowed me to quickly scope a certain topic (“connections” helped me see how one topic related to all others). Every SRC was written entirely in my own words, and the first draft was always written by hand.
Conclusion
Note-taking is a skill that needs to be developed over time. Regardless of your specific note-taking style, I hope the three principles that I set out above can help you write better notes immediately, allowing you to internalise concepts much more quickly.