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Types of notes
Knowing about the different types of notes you’re taking helps inform your approach to note-taking in general.
Notes help you remember
Creating good notes that you come back to regularly is a useful way to commit important information to long-term memory. Note-taking course Build an academic note-taking system to get ideas out of your mind, providing a framework for working more effectively with them.
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…
Weekly review: Using Obsidian to close open loops
In this video, I do a walk-through of the weekly review that I do every Friday afternoon. The weekly review is a sweep through my entire personal and professional life, where I try to wrap up everything that might cause me any worry after I leave work. I call this a process of closing all…
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.
Creative thinking with Obsidian
In this video I’m talking to Ben Gordon about an experiment in creative thinking with Obsidian, which we tried in the early stages of a writing project. We were frustrated with the limitations of working in Google Docs. Even though Docs is great for many purposes – including collaborating with someone on the other side…
Note-taking intent
Note-taking is an important part of knowledge work and, while it’s important to think about where and how you take notes, it’s much more important to think about what you’re going to do with them.
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.