This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Eluda
Our notes usually never see the light of day again. We write them down, and then stuff them away somewhere obscure!
This article will teach you the art of writing better notes. Mastering this art can make the difference between passing a course and mastering it!
Here is a list of tips to write better notes.
🌟️ The Golden Rules
1. Repetition, repetition, repetition. 🤸♂️️
Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, the architect of accomplishment.
Practice makes perfect. The more we repeat a piece of information, the easier it is for our brains to remember it.
For that reason, repetition of information is absolutely essential for learning and development! The more we write something, the thicker the neurons of our brain get, and the longer the retention of information becomes!
Studies have shown that after just a month of learning something, the probability of retaining it is a small 20%, which further goes down to 5% after 2 months!
In short, you should come back to your course content and do more practice regularly.
2. Draw images. 🖌️
It's long been a known fact that drawing something helps a person remember.
An interesting study has been conducted to better understand how activities such as learning can affect a student's ability to retain information.
They asked university students to remember lists of common terms—words like car and apple—and either write down or illustrate those words.
The results have shown that students who wrote the list recalled 20% of the information, but the ones who drew them remembered more than twice as many—45 percent—of the list!
They also concluded that when we draw, we encode the memory in a very rich way! When a student draws a concept, the hand movements needed for drawing create stronger connections in the brain, leading to a much longer retention rate!
In short, you should draw the concepts that you will need in the long term.
3. Write short sentences. ☝️
Write short, succinct sentences. They are easier to remember!
Shorter sentences are better for conveying complex information; they break the information up into smaller, easier-to-remember pieces.
You must resist the urge to put everything in one sentence, because a long sentence means that you aren't sure about what you want to say, and you won't be able to read that sentence in the future.
In short, long sentences can lead to unreadable notes; always keep your sentences short!
4. Use your own words. 😁️
If you can't explain it in your own words, you don't understand it well enough.
Do you find technical jargon confusing? If so, use your own words that you understand well. After all, who are you writing these notes for anyways?
Writing notes from courses, tutorials, and books in your own words is an excellent way to remember and even understand information!
Using your own thoughts and ideas reinforces the connections in your brain. By doing it, you are making sure that you really understand the concept in all of its angles, because you explained it!
In short, use your own words instead of technical jargon.
5. Write questions. ❓️
Write questions to yourself if there’s something you don’t understand. Don’t gloss over it and hope you’ll understand later.
Questions are essential for problem-solving. One can continue to ask questions and follow-up questions, until they fully understand the topic.
For example, if your course is presenting to you the "CSS Box Model", and it gets confusing ('the box model is composed of 4 parts'), try to write questions: 'what is the box model made of?'.
This small technique actually turns out to have an amazing improvement in your understanding of the topic. I advice you to try it out!
In short, always write relevant questions, and more follow-up questions.
6. Don’t try to write everything down. 🏃♂️️
Don’t try to write everything down. You’ll just get information overload.
There's often a lot of seemingly important information in a course or a tutorial, and we tend to get the urge to just copy everything down!
But you just end up with a huge document that you will probably never read again... The solution is simple: Think of your notes like if you were going to explain the topic to someone else.
What is the information you would give to them? That's what you should write down; only the most important details!
In short, you should resist the urge to copy everything down, and only keep the most important information.
These tips may not be rocket science, but by spending a little time considering and implementing these pointers, you could find yourself making the best use of the time you spend listening in presentations, classes, workshops, meetings and lectures.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Eluda
Eluda | Sciencx (2022-03-25T18:07:50+00:00) The Note-taking Guide I Wish I Had 30 Years Ago. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2022/03/25/the-note-taking-guide-i-wish-i-had-30-years-ago/
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