How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be

Taking literature notes this way is very different from the way literature notes are taken by most students, which is either not systematic enough or overly systematic. Most often, it is just systematic in the wrong way: By employing often-recommended reading techniques like SQ3R or SQ4R, they treat every text the same, regardless of the content.

Creating Main Notes from Your Own Writing

started taking notes on everything I was learning using a notetaking app on my computer. I took notes during meetings, on phone calls, and while doing research online. I wrote down facts gleaned from research papers that could be used in the slides we presented to clients. I wrote down tidbits of insight I came across on social media, to share on o