Tag: academic note-taking
Types of notes
Knowing about the different types of notes you’re taking helps inform your approach to note-taking in general.
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.
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…
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.
Take fewer notes: Why less is more for academic note-taking
Transform your academic note-taking from mindless collection to meaningful comprehension. Move beyond simply gathering information to developing deeper understanding through intentional note-taking practices, resulting in fewer but more valuable notes that enhance your thinking and support your scholarly work.
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.
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…