Head Space

Calm productivity for academics

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.

  • Intentional note-taking: Moving from capture to curation

    Discover why intentional note-taking is crucial for meaningful academic work. Learn how being selective about what you record can create space for deeper engagement with ideas that truly matter, and explore practical steps for moving beyond comprehensive capture to more purposeful documentation practices.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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…