Head Space

Calm productivity for academics

Category: Note taking

  • Note-taking for better thinking

    Academics should focus on note-taking as a tool for understanding and intellectual growth, rather than amassing detailed notes. Well-crafted notes are not the goal but a means to delve deeper into topics, connect ideas, and foster insight. Using notes strategically can enhance one’s work and manage cognitive load in face of information overload.

  • Reduce the friction of writing

    The lower your barrier to getting started, the more writing you can fit into your day. We’ve all experienced that resistance to sitting down and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Even when you know you need to write, it can feel mentally draining to summon the willpower and concentration you need to…

  • Use a weekly review to close open loops

    As academics, we carry countless mental threads throughout our week — unfinished tasks, half-formed ideas, looming deadlines, and scattered notes. Left unattended, these “open loops” consume valuable mental bandwidth, even during times when we should be resting and recharging. Every Friday afternoon, I dedicate time to what might be my most valuable productivity ritual: the…

  • Sönke Ahrens: How to take smart notes

    How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens provides a practical overview of the Zettelkasten method, a structured approach to note-taking that streamlines the writing and learning process for academics. By capturing, refining, and interlinking ideas, this method enhances creativity, productivity, and critical thinking, transforming the way scholars engage with complex research.

  • Different notes have different purposes

    Different notes have different purposes and knowing what kind of note you’re creating will help you figure out what you need to do with it.

  • Reading as conversation, not consumption

    Transform your academic reading from passive consumption into active dialogue. Engaging with scholarly texts through questioning, challenging assumptions, and making connections can lead to deeper understanding and new insights.

  • Quickly capture the essence of a new idea

    In this video I walk you through an example showing how I quickly the essence of a new idea, so that I can come back to it later when I have more time.

  • Expanding a note stub into a permanent note

    In this video I walk through the process of taking a note stub (i.e. a “dump” of content) and expanding it into a more comprehensive and useful permanent note.

  • Capture literature notes from video with Zotero

    In this video I describe the workflow I use to capture literature notes from video with Zotero.

  • Note-taking with Hypothesis and Zotero

    In this short video I demonstrate a strategy for note-taking with Hypothesis and Zotero while reading on the web. I try to show the early stages of creating links between ideas that I’m interested in, and eventually where I add those ideas into my permanent notes. One of the challenges of being an academic is…