Why we should take notes?
Note taking the thing which we have been following since our childhood. What values these things provide we know as we use it to score good percentage or grades in our school. But what if we keep on taking notes from whatever things we learn or go through our life. How much difference note taking can make in our life?
Note taking is just like making maps.
The one who makes map is a cartographer. Maps are made so that people would get to their destination without getting lost. Now we don't use maps thanks to GPS. But in ancient times if we didn't had any maps or stuff like that we would not reach to our desired destination without knowing the proper destination. In the same way notes are the tracker of the long way or the the short version of the extended way, written in a meaningful and more efficiently. Notes are the stuffs which you probably refer instead of going through the whole curriculum. But you need to know the right way to jot them down. The more we organize our writing or the stuff we need to understand the better and easier it becomes to learn or initialize in our life.
Why we need notes Now let's talk about why we actually need notes? Well human mind is really developed among all the living beings and it's made to think about creative stuffs or the things which we need to make work. Our minds are not made to stagnate the ideas. So whenever we need to remember something important we should probably note it down because we have the ability to forget it after certain period of time it's the NHT [Natural Human Tendency]. Also if you are the one who are reading some great stuffs like books and blogs or listening to podcasts then you should definitely take notes in order to remember the things more abundantly and to apply them in your life. When you take a note of the things which are happening around you, you eventually start absorbing the most of your life experiences. Even if you take some book notes you would rather come to it afterwards and think about your state of mind during that particular time of reading the book. This will probably help you creating the knowledge loop or what you can say the serendipity of your thoughts you are coming through the process of note taking.
What difference does note taking make? Let's take an example that you are reading the book 'Think like a monk' by 'Jay Shetty' now this book has all the information creating or shaping the best life and finding the actual purpose in your life. But instead you just keep enjoying the book and getting mesmerized by the experience what Jay is having throughout his monastery life and not noting the most valuable life lessons which he is talking about will be unworthy. Because books are made to engage you and how you can be fully focused on the scenario. The author is trying to create the scenario in your mind and instead you forget to take the key points of what you really want to apply in your life. Now again if you want to get through some important part of the book you would keep on searching for that particular page to re-read and understand it. But instead if you would have taken proper notes of the books, time to time you would have saved the efforts. Now this can be a point of disagreement for some people because some of them remember what they read or some might like to go through the whole book once again. But if you want to save some time and also if you want to reflect through the ideology of what the author was saying about, then take some notes. Here's a amazing trick which Ali Abdaal explains in this video. He has this key point which I personally liked which is "summarizing the book in three sentences from your viewpoint" and also noting the important quotes from the book. Just noting the quotes down can make a huge difference because quotes contain deep lessons in just couple of words. Also you can impress someone by quoting something between the conversation 😆. Reading the stuff is really easy but applying in your daily life is the toughest part and for that you need to reflect on the stuff what you read at least things like what you think about the author's points. Also watch this short video from Ali's twitter on why you should document the things you go through.
Technique that I use to take notes The way I take notes from podcasts, books some YouTube videos are in the digital form you can take handwritten notes also like on your iPad or even a notebook. Now I use Notion to take notes. Notion provides templates which suites your work lifestyle. I have a template called "Understanding through what I watch, hear and read". Here I note the things which I learn from the books, podcasts or videos which might be useful in my growth or even related to this blogging stuff.
Each of these column's contain notes like these 👇
Now this technique really organizes every single topic you want to take a note about. So whenever I want to return to any book or video I watched earlier I would just go through these notes which I have taken during consuming that stuff. Also I take tag the video or blogpost link which I went through so that if I have to go through it again I would just click on the link. First I use to write the notes on a blank Notion page which didn't used to that efficient and tangible every time so the templat4e thing is the best way to make notes. Remember to take the notes within 30mins of reading, listening or watching anything because the concepts are fresh in your mind and it eventually doesn't fade off. Always remember as organized your notes will be the more you will remember them and understand them in a better way.
Also enjoy the process of note taking because if you enjoy it you will feel it meaningful to apply in your life and most importantly this will organize your life.
If you want to read another blogpost about note taking and stuff like that read this blogpost from Nesslabs. Also subscribe to our mailing list below✌
Cheers!
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