How to Take Notes While Reading

• Notes extend your memories: writing can be seen as an external enhancement of your brain, allowing you to think more complicated thoughts and solve harder problems.
• Notes enhance your focus: The act of taking notes ensures your mind isn’t wandering and facilitates deeper understanding of what you're reading.

Ask yourself why are you reading:

• What am I trying to remember?
• How am I going to use this information? (e.g. on a test, cited in an essay, etc.)
• What do I plan to do with the notes later? Will you be studying off of them extensively? Or maybe you’re just taking notes to stay focused, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll look through them after?

• Jot notes in the margin. These aren’t particularly searchable, but they allow you to reiterate the main idea.
• Keep a small notepad on the side, take breaks each section to jot down the main ideas.
• Create flashcards. In the rarer situations where memorization of details is important, then a simple strategy can be to just create flashcards while you take notes.

Decide whether to optimize for review or retrieval practice.

• For docs you don’t plan to extensively study, review is the obvious choice.
• For texts you need to master perfectly, the Question Book Method (for big idea) or flashcards (for details) saves time.

• Digital: systems like Evernote, make note-taking easier. Although, even the simple note-taking features on Kindle can work quite well.
• Paper: you can even put little sticky tags on the book to mark passages that refer to that.

1. Figure out your purpose.
2. Choose a technique that maximizes your focus on what is most relevant for your purpose.
3. Decide whether to optimize for review or retrieval practice.
4. If you do need to go back into the text again and again, create clues in your notes that can help you find what you’re looking for faster.