Lainbo's Blog

In our learning and work process, the importance of notes is self-evident. However, not everyone needs to take notes. Many people can successfully complete their studies even without taking notes during their college years. They can improvise during exams or prepare for exams by reading and memorizing the teacher's notes. So, why do you still need to take notes if you can remember all the necessary information and don't need to deal with complex information from multiple sources or write long reports or content? It seems unnecessary, right?

For those who need to constantly update their knowledge, taking notes is essential. They need to continuously improve their abilities through learning and research, apply knowledge to solve problems, and convey their knowledge to others. Their "exams" can happen at any time in any form, and the amount of information is so large that we cannot expect a person to remember, understand, and generate new ideas based solely on their memory. Therefore, we need to take notes.

How to take effective notes? If you ask five people this question, you may get five different answers. The fact is: no one knows what effective notes should look like. This is mainly because there is not enough research on this topic (at least so far). But I still want to share my practice (and the reasons behind it), hoping that it will be helpful to others. In this article, I will emphasize common pitfalls in note-taking and how to overcome them.

Defining Effective Notes#

Effectiveness is defined as successfully achieving a given result. Therefore, to be effective, there needs to be a goal or intention, that is: goals determine effectiveness. Any goal of taking notes, even "no goal" (which is also a goal), will determine the effectiveness of your note-taking skills.

I want to discuss a practice of note-taking, this practice

1. Supports your way of thinking (customized for you).
2. Represents your knowledge (inspired and influenced by others' words, but not just a copy/paste of their words).
3. Allows easy retrieval of your knowledge.

So, when you try to create a system that truly belongs to you, what are the common pitfalls of note-taking?

First, why do I call them pitfalls instead of mistakes?

These practices can still help you move forward, so they are not mistakes. They can still support your thinking and give you a sense of accomplishment, but only to a certain extent. They cannot fully maximize their potential.

It becomes harder to get rid of these practices when you turn them into habits. Therefore, they are pitfalls.

So, what are these pitfalls? Let's take a look.

Pitfall 1: Note-taking Tools#

This question is like asking what is the best programming language. I have also left my mark in the comments section of many note-taking software review videos. When we realize that note-taking can be more than just "copying what the teacher writes on the blackboard," we become enthusiastic about the possibilities of our tools.

YUQUE? FEISHU? WOLAI? FLOWUS? NOTION? OBSIDIAN? Which one should I choose? Which tagging system should I use? Should I use outlines, long-form notes, or visual representations? How many links should I have in one note?

The fact is, each tool is the result of a series of design decisions made by its creators, and these decisions may have positive or negative effects on you. So, to choose the best tool to support your way of thinking, for example, I can't recommend Notion to someone who likes outlines because Marginnote may be more suitable for outlining notes. First, you need to decide: what kind of thinking should your tool support?

To simplify this process, we need the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) pyramid.

On top of the pyramid, we have thinking styles. This is what you want your tool to support. Only when the foundation is established can we start building the upper layers.

Here are three options for you to choose from:

Option 1 (not recommended). Understand all the thinking styles that suit you before choosing a tool. This means self-reflection, reading, self-reflection. You will think a lot before trying anything, but this sounds inefficient, right?

Option 2. Choose a tool you like and use it to explore things in the way you expect. You will learn through trial and error and discover points where your thinking style does not match what you want. This won't speed up the exploration process, but at least you can start.

Option 3. Collaborate with PKM professionals and supportive communities to quickly start your process. Start your exploration with a list of thinking styles and some initial methods. It's much easier than figuring it out on your own.

Climbing the PKM pyramid is a personal journey, but you don't have to do it alone. The community is here, you just need to reach out or be willing to ask questions.

So the solution to Pitfall 1: Climb your PKM pyramid.

Pitfall 2: Turning Notes into Fragments of Truth#

Pitfall 2 usually occurs when you are trying to build a PKM system.

Imagine a scenario where you are arguing with someone about a knowledge point, and you think of some "great quotes" from experts on that point in your notes. Would you throw your notes at the other person's face? And most importantly, what did you throw at the other person's face, your knowledge or fragments of what others said?

When we write notes, we can use two different ways of thinking.

The first way of thinking is "notes as fragments of truth."

It means that in our notes, there is only true, complete, and high-quality knowledge. In this case, there can be no errors, partial, or ambiguous information. This way of thinking leads to:

1. We avoid writing down our own thoughts because every note needs to be a final version that only contains correct information, triggering perfectionism.
2. When we finally write down our own thoughts, we treat them as temporary notes, considering them disposable with an expiration date, and we tend not to handle our own thoughts properly. Because we think, "Why bother putting effort into a note that will eventually be deleted?"
3. All long-term notes are quotes from "experts," and we are just trying to capture the author's thoughts accurately. We have quotes, facts, and conclusions, but where are our own perspectives? Where is our knowledge? This mindset can give you a lot of information, but if our goal is to express the knowledge we possess, it becomes a trap.

The second way of thinking is "notes as fragments of understanding."

This way of thinking makes us realize that ideas are inherently vague, incomplete, and messy. Only by spending time with these ideas can they grow into fragments of truth that we can consider as true.

If you see notes as fragments of understanding, then notes will also improve over time as understanding grows. With the growth of understanding, notes will also grow. (I think this is probably the main reason why Notion has the "Document History" feature, perhaps the product manager of Notion doesn't think this feature is to prevent document loss)

At any time, you can look at your notes and say, "This is my current understanding, my current understanding of these ideas." They are not just information you need while surfing the internet. Instead, they represent your personal knowledge.

So the solution to Pitfall 2: See your notes as fragments of understanding.

Pitfall 3: Turning Notes into Documents#

Taking notes is already a time-consuming task, and I don't want you to create 100 notes only to not be able to find what you're looking for when you need it.

Let's pause for a moment and think about when we need to search for notes.

1. When we need to review our knowledge or a specific idea.
2. When we want to improve our understanding or expression of a specific knowledge.
3. When we want to convey ideas.

Now let's take a look at how most people take notes.

1. You read an article about global warming and then create a note, with a title like "Summary of the article on global warming." In this note, you record various points from the article, such as the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, the rate of glacier melting, and predictions of rising sea levels. These are different ideas, but they are all recorded in the same note.
2. You listen to a podcast by someone for 1 hour and 30 minutes, and then create a note, with a title like "June 1st interview with [person's name] content," and write about how the person reads, learns, and thinks. These are different ideas, but they are all recorded in the same note.

This is what many people do, "document notes," which is the main manifestation of the third pitfall.

Document notes contain fragments of multiple ideas or a complete chain of arguments in a single note. Moreover, they have strange titles like "Summary of knowledge learned on May 1st," which have no relevance to the content of the notes.

When we try to find content in document notes, it is inefficient because:

1. You need to remember keywords for almost all ideas in order to search in the note-taking tool. (Most likely you won't remember or remember them all)
2. You need to read most of the notes to find the paragraph that mentions the idea (time-consuming).
3. Fragments of the same idea may appear in multiple notes (hope you can find them all). These fragments may even contradict each other.

Take a moment to reflect, if you are looking for a specific knowledge point, why write notes in the form of documents? I suggest writing "idea notes." For example, for the above two examples, if they were idea notes, they would be:

1. After reading an article about global warming, create multiple notes, each focusing on a major idea. For example, "The impact of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming," "The relationship between the rate of glacier melting and global warming," "Predictions of rising sea levels and global warming."
2. After listening to a 1 hour and 30-minute podcast by someone, create multiple notes, each focusing on a major idea. For example, "How to read books," "Choosing frontend development books," "Thinking like [person's name]"

Then, use the capabilities of the note-taking tool to aggregate them into a "Global Warming Related Records" / "Interview Records of [person's name]" document, which will only contain jump links and brief explanations of those small ideas. You don't need to search for a needle in a haystack in a long article.

The key to idea notes is that they only focus on one idea, not that there can only be one idea, and the existence of others is to make the main idea stand out. When another idea starts to dominate, it's time to create a separate note for it.

So the solution to Pitfall 3: Create idea notes.

Although there is no perfect formula for note-taking, if you focus on the best thinking style for you, everything will go smoothly. This is what we call "where there's a will, there's a way," whether it's a bad road or a good road depends on your way of thinking.