book - How to take Smart Notes
Start with simple notes, Then put them in your slip box
Having the Notes makes the vet and connections makes the right easy
Tools do not work absent process
Terel Kasten is brighter than the slip box
Unlike Cornell notes temporary is like she words but the slip box is not supposedSupposed to be telegraphic sentences sentences should contain context and be publishing ready
Up to page 8 the guy make the argument that existing box talk about how to write, but start with the process of the blank page, not the preparation process that should happen way before hand of getting really good notes to work from. He says that if you stare at a blank page, you have already missed the boat
Page 20: misleading to think of his slip-box as a personal Wikipedia or a database on paper. The similarities are obviously there, but the subtle differences are what makes this system unique.
Working as if nothing else counts but writing
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link not tracked ... in this case the goal is writing
The moment the author him be removed from the conversation
Container shipping pave the way for Asia to become an economic superpower
Getting containers to work took a ton of effort, and ultimately the benefits were only see him once all infrastructure was replaced
Optimize for finding connections, not classification
sr:: cpsgto5t9h: What are three types of notes? || fleeting, permanent, and project ::rs
Permanent notes, on the other hand, are written in a way that can still be understood even when you have forgotten the context they are taken from.
page 44 every permanent note for the slip-box is elaborated enough to have the potential to become part of or inspire a final written piece, but that can not be decided on up front as their relevance depends on future thinking and developments. ^elaborated-enough-to-be-material
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The final piece is the link not tracked
At 0:46 worry about watering down the slip-box
Uniform, enough context built-in to facilitate quick connections and supporting the final writing x supporting the final writing is basically the goal in link not tracked
Page 69 Every step is accompanied by questions like: How does this fact fit into my idea of …? How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory? Are these two ideas contradictory or do they complement each other? Isn't this argument similar to that one? Haven't I heard this before? And above all: What does x mean for y? X feels a bit like exploring link not tracked ? link not tracked^organize-and-draw-connections-to-learn
Writing things down gets them off your plate
Page 73: reduce decision fatigue by using a system. Do same thing every time ^reduce-decision-fatigue-same-each-time
Page 73: translate it into the different context of your own thinking, materialised in the slip-box,
Page 76: literature note are different from slip-box notes. They have bibliographic information and are closer to what was actually written... the slip-box notes are written in your own words
Page 77: Without a clear purpose for the notes, taking them will feel more like a chore than an important step within a bigger project. X link not tracked ^purpose-for-notes
On page 79 Charles Darwin looked for contradictory evidence that was published and very quickly took notes about it ensuring that he didn't forget, because he was concerned that his link not tracked would allow for those facts to quickly disappear from his memory ^confirmation-bias
Page 84: Rewriting what was already written almost automatically trains one to shift the attention towards frames, patterns and categories in the observations, or the conditions/assumptions, which enable certain, but not other descriptions. X link not tracked^rewriting-as-training-for-reading
Page 85: Feynman said that to ensure he understood something, he needed to give an introductory lecture on it. Reading with a pen in hand is similar to that. You are continually attempting to write permanent notes that function context-free, as if for a stranger... because you will be that stranger in 6 months. ^permanent-notes-are-like-small-lectures
Page 86: The attempt to rephrase an argument in our own words confronts us without mercy with all the gaps in our understanding.
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link not tracked
Page 87: Learning requires effort, because we have to think to understand and we need to actively retrieve old knowledge to convince our brains to connect it with new ideas as cues. X growing your link not tracked ^active-retrieval-connect-new-ideas
Page 88: When we try to answer a question before we know how to, we will later remember the answer better, even if our attempt failed (Arnold and McDermott 2013). ^protesting-makes-learning-more-effective
It is not surprising, therefore, that the best-researched and most successful learning method is link not tracked. It is very similar to what we do when we take smart notes and combine them with others, which is the opposite of mere re-viewing (Stein et al. 1984) Elaboration means nothing other than really thinking about the meaning of what we read, how it could inform different questions and topics and how it could be combined with other knowledge. In fact, "Writing for Learning" is the name of an "elaboration method" (Gunel, Hand, and Prain 2007). ^elaboration
sr:: u25qj564f5: What is the name for thinking about what you are reading and how it can inform other topics and the connections between topics? || Elaboration ::rs
Page 94: We need this distance to think about an argument – otherwise the argument itself would occupy the very mental resources we need for scrutinizing it.
Page 95: "No, no!" Feynman protested. "They aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process. I actually did the work on the paper." X link not tracked^feynman-writing-as-thinking
Page 100 Learning would be not so much about saving information, like on a hard disk, but about building connections and bridges between pieces of information to circumvent the inhibition mechanism in the right moment. It is about making sure that the right "cues" trigger the right memory, about how we can think strategically to remember the most useful information when we need it.
Page 105: If you focus your time and energy on understanding, you cannot help but learn. But if you focus your time and energy on learning without trying to understand, you will not only not understand, but also probably not learn. ^understanding-vs-learning
Perm
Maintain a list of open questions about the thing you are reading. That's my idea.
What is the difference between the temporary notes and bibliographic notes? I believe neither one is part of the main set of slip box notes. The reason I believe that is that it seems the intention of the switchbox notes is to be limited to nearly publish ready insights with lots of cross connections so that you can have a Conversation with the Slingbox notes.
Importantly, the work of writing is seen as a step-by-step process, where each step is independent from the other, necessarily. And reading and taking temporary notes, then the creation of the permanent notes for the slip box, considering those notes from afar, and arranging them into a rough draft, then creating a final draft.
The emphasis is on always writing, and doing what it takes to facilitate that. Basically he work backwards from the end product, which is a written thing of some kind blog post dissertation, whatever, and then figure out how you can most productively create that. Making something public, some written piece, means that he will be able to engage in further conversation about it more easily. ^emphasis-on-writing
Measure productivity by number of permanent notes made, because you can control that. Number of academic pages written is hard because it can take months to write one. ^notes-written-not-papers-written
Writing literature notes is something you can definitely practice and improve upon.
Keywords as index - not necessarily verbatim from text, and contextual
Page 112: Overview permanent pages... linked from index, step in the direction of a manuscript
Page 118: ultimately you should have mental models that help inform your permanent notes, or that you derive from your permanent notes. ^permanent-notes-mental-models
Page 118: "If we practice learning not as a pure accumulation of knowledge, but as an attempt to build up a latticework of theories and mental models to which information can stick, we enter a virtuous circle where learning facilitates learning." X link not tracked^learning-building-latticework-mental-models
Page 119: "By learning, retaining, and building on the retained basics, we are creating a rich web of associated information. The more we know, the more information (hooks) we have to connect new information to, the easier we can form long-term memories. […] Learning becomes fun. We have entered a virtuous circle of learning, and it seems as if our long-term memory capacity and speed are actually growing." X those hooks are like ^virtuous-cycle
Page 122: "As a precondition to make use of this intuition, he emphasises the importance of experimental spaces where ideas can freely mingle (Johnson 2011). A laboratory with open-minded colleagues can be such a space, much as intellectuals and artists freely discussed ideas in the cafés of old Paris. I would add the slip-box as such a space in which ideas can mingle freely, so they can give birth to new ones." ^experimental-spaces
Page 123: To be able to play with ideas, we first have to liberate them from their original context by means of abstraction and re-specification. We did this when we took literature notes and translated them into the different contexts within the slip-box. ^liberate-from-context
Translating from literature notes to the permanent slip-box notes allows you to free an idea from its original context. This happens because when you add the slip-box note, you try to think of abstract applicability to your emergent mental models. If there are adjacent ideas, you try to find them and link to them. If there are conflicting ideas, you try to characterize the distinctions. In either case, you have broadened the applicability of the idea. ^freeing-an-idea-from-its-context
Page 120: "We learn something not only when we connect it to prior knowledge and try to understand its broader implications (elaboration), but also when we try to retrieve it at different times (spacing) in different contexts (variation), ideally with the help of chance (contextual interference) and with a deliberate effort (retrieval)." ^spacing-in-the-slip-box
Page 126: Always be looking for what is missing, too.
Page 129: "We learn to focus on the gist of an idea by restricting ourselves in terms of space."
Is the size limitation in a note or a tweet actually a great benefit?
Page 129: "restrict ourselves to just one idea per note and force ourselves to be as precise and brief as possible." ^one-idea-per-note
Page 133: "I suggest to see it rather as an expression of an outdated fixation on the brain, which is mirrored in the fixation of our educational system to learn things by heart – which means to think without external tools. Testing students for memorised knowledge does not give much indication about their understanding" ^learning-by-heart
"What is interesting about this?" and everything we read with the question, "What is so relevant about this that it is worth noting down?"
Page 139: "what does not need to be written in a particular part of the manuscript. By looking at the (always preliminary) structure, you can see if information will be mentioned in another part."
Page 140: "it helps to see it as a structural guideline and not a prescription."
Note... the following is like link not tracked
Page 140: "By taking smart notes, we collect en passant the material for our future writings in one place." ^collecting-notes-en-passant
Page 142: the overconfidence bias
Page 144: small specific tasks are much more likely to be started... and have a closer finish line, which will propel you. "Add 3 notes" is a much clearer task than "finish overdue paper" ^smaller-more-likely-to-do
Page 144: for stuff you are not going to use, copy it off to another document, so you can tell yourself that you might use it. It's a trick that will make you feel better about killing your darlings
Related
The link not tracked appear to be similar to link not tracked