## How to Take Smart Notes Author: *Sönke Ahrens* Published Year: 2017 Read: 2021 Tags: #Systems #Writing #### Notes ##### Chapter 1 > Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work. > Getting something that is already written into another written piece is incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrieve it from there. Reusable atomic components in whatever form or medium, allow complex knowledge work to accumulate from simple origins. > We know today that self-control and self-discipline have much more to do with our environment than with ourselves (cf. Thaler, 2015, ch. 2) – and the environment can be changed. Nobody needs willpower not to eat a chocolate bar when there isn’t one around. And nobody needs willpower to do something they wanted to do anyway. > A good structure enables flow, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as the work becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). > In fact, poor students often feel more successful (until they are tested), because they don’t experience much self-doubt. In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger and Dunning, 1999) > I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f.) Do the simple work now for your future self, so that future complex work is itself made simple by your groundwork. > Intuitively, most people do not expect much from simple ideas. They rather assume that impressive results must have equally impressively complicated means. People misunderstand what is simple and accumulated adds up to look like complexity. Aiming for complexity from the start, without accumulating simplicity is anti natural. ##### Chapter 2 > Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have. Notes build up while you think, read, understand and generate ideas, because you have to have a pen in your hand if you want to think, read, understand and generate ideas properly anyway. If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words I often translate insights from different disciplines such as science, politics into insights for design because the crossover feels familiar. These insights may not be original, but they connect Design to a wider world with unexpected meanings. > If there is one thing the experts agree on, then it is this: You have to externalise your ideas, you have to write. > If we write, it is more likely that we understand what we read, remember what we learn and that our thoughts make sense. And if we have to write anyway, why not use our writing to build up the resources for our future publications? I think the same about when people see effort put into visual design quality, they think it must have taken time, perhaps frivolous time that could have been used for higher capacity or wider scope. Instead I think if I have designed something well, its aesthetic quality will follow. 1. Make fleeting notes. 2. Make literature notes. 3. Make permanent notes. > Don’t cling to an idea if another, more promising one gains momentum. The more you become interested in something, the more you will read and think about it, the more notes you will collect and the more likely it is that you will generate questions from it. It might be exactly what you were interested in from the beginning, but it is more likely that your interests will have changed – that is what insight does. > Translate them into something coherent and embed them into the context of your argument while you build your argument out of the notes at the same time. Detect holes in your argument, fill them or change your argument. > accidental encounters make up the majority of what we learn. ##### 4 A Few Things to Keep in Mind > Everybody knows how to handle a flute (you blow into one end and press your fingers on the holes according to the notes you are playing), but nobody would try it out once and then judge the instrument on what they hear. ##### 5 Writing Is the Only Thing That Matters > There is no such thing as private knowledge in academia. An idea kept private is as good as one you never had. And a fact no one can reproduce is no fact at all. Making something public always means to write it down so it can be read. There is no such thing as a history of unwritten ideas. > If writing is the medium of research and studying nothing else than research, then there is no reason not to work as if nothing else counts than writing. Does this correlate with Design? If visuals are the medium of design, and designing nothing else than visualising, then there is no reason not work as if nothing else counts than visualising. I’m not sure this works, design is a synthesis of all communication. ##### 6 Simplicity Is Paramount > We tend to think that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But more often than not, it is the simplicity of an idea that makes it so powerful > When McLean converted the tanker Ideal X to be able to carry 58 containers and set it to sail on 26 April 1956, it was just because it made more sense to ship parts of a lorry than the whole lorry itself, which in itself made more sense than to have them stand in traffic for days Obvious when you think about it. This makes me think of meetings and why we must all witness live the back and forth. Why do we not consume the headlines, and then if we were not there, why do our asynchronous comments not count as much as being in the room. > Most ship owners had in fact considered the idea of putting different kinds of products into the same sized boxes as fairly abstruse Variable scope, fixed time projects > In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to. > Only after aligning every single part of the delivery chain, from packaging to delivery, from the design of the ships to the design of the harbours, was the full potential of the container unleashed. [[second-order effects]] Write about this Also true of street design, it’s obvious I should park right outside where I need to go. But if the places we needed to go were designed for the human not the car, we would take pleasure from better streets and the second order effects of improved neighbourhoods. > It is not surprising that my friend has a bookshelf filled with notebooks full of wonderful ideas, but not a single publication to show. > It is important to understand, though, that underlining sentences or writing comments in the margins are also just fleeting notes and do nothing to elaborate on a text. Ironic > Some notes might disappear into the background and never catch his attention again, while others might become connection points to various lines of reasoning and reappear on a regular basis in various contexts. As it is not possible to foresee the development of the slip-box, the fate of the notes is nothing to worry about ##### 7 Nobody Ever Starts From Scratch [[Hermeneutic Circle]] similar to [[Dialectic]] > Every intellectual endeavour starts from an already existing preconception, which then can be transformed during further inquires and can serve as a starting point for following endeavours. Basically, that is what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the hermeneutic circle (Gadamer 2004). > We will not be guided by a blindly made-up plan picked from our unreliable brains, but by our interest, curiosity and intuition, which is formed and informed by the actual work of reading, thinking, discussing, writing and developing ideas – and is something that continuously grows and reflects our knowledge and understanding externally. > How can you not feel threatened by an empty page if you have literally nothing at hand to fill it with? Who can blame you for procrastinating if you find yourself stuck with a topic you decided on blindly and now have to stick with it as the deadline is approaching? ##### 8 Let the Work Carry You Forward > You may remember from school the difference between an exergonic and an endergonic reaction. In the first case, you constantly need to add energy to keep the process going. In the second case, the reaction, once triggered, continues by itself and even releases energy. The dynamics of work are not so different. Tune workflows to produce [[endergonic]] process > A good workflow can easily turn into a virtuous circle, where the positive experience motivates us to take on the next task with ease, which helps us to get better at what we are doing, which in return makes it more likely for us to enjoy the work, and so on. But > Only if the work itself becomes rewarding can the dynamic of motivation and reward become self-sustainable and propel the whole process forward (DePasque and Tricomi, 2015). > Creating satisfying, repeatable experiences with sports. It doesn’t matter what her clients are doing – running, walking, team sports, gym workouts or bicycling to work. The only thing that matters is that they discover something that gives them a good experience that they would like to have again. Once her clients find something, they are encouraged enough to try something else as well. > Seeking feedback, not avoiding it, is the first virtue of anyone who wants to learn, or in the more general terms of psychologist Carol Dweck, to grow. Dweck shows convincingly that the most reliable predictor for long-term success is having a “growth mindset.” To actively seek and welcome feedback, be it positive or negative, is one of the most important factors for success (and happiness) in the long run. Conversely, nothing is a bigger hindrance to personal growth than having a “fixed mindset.” > We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words. By doing this, we not only get a better sense of our ability to understand, but also increase our ability to clearly and concisely express our understanding – which in return helps to grasp ideas more quickly. > Expressing our own thoughts in writing makes us realise if we really thought them through. The moment we try to combine them with previously written notes, the system will unambiguously show us contradictions, inconsistencies and repetitions ##### 9 Writing a Paper Step by Step > Every idea adds to what can become a critical mass that turns a mere collection of ideas into an idea-generator > Translate them into something coherent and embed them into the context of your argument while you build your argument out of the notes at the same time. Detect holes in your argument, fill them or change your argument. ##### 9.3 Give Each Task the Right Kind of Attention > We try to block out the knowledge of what we meant to say to be able to see what we wrote. > If we proofread a manuscript and don’t manage to get enough distance from ourselves as authors, we will only see our thoughts, not the actual text ##### 9.4 Become an Expert Instead of a Planner > Experts rely on embodied experience, which enables them to reach the state of virtuosity. An expert in academic writing has a feel for the process, an acquired intuition for which task will bring one closer to the finished manuscript and what is only a distraction. > In an experiment, beginner and expert paramedics and their teachers were shown scenes of CPR performed by either experienced paramedics or those who had just finished their training (Flyvbjerg 2001)… As you might expect, the experienced paramedics were able to spot their kind correctly in almost all cases (~90%), while the beginners were more or less just guessing (~50%). So far, so good. But when the teachers watched the videos, they systematically mistook the beginners for experts and the experts for beginners. They were wrong in most of the cases (and only right in about a third of all the cases). > Experts, on the other hand, have internalised the necessary knowledge so they don’t have to actively remember rules or think consciously about their choices. They have acquired enough experience in various situations to be able to rely on their intuition to know what to do in which kind of situation > Here, gut feeling is not a mysterious force, but an incorporated history of experience. It is the sedimentation of deeply learned practice through numerous feedback loops on success or failure. You become so intuitive about an area, that you have hyperawareness of the subtleties of the context you encounter. In design, you can just tune out details to see the spacing, or zero in on a typographical area like a kestrel hovering 50 metres above a hedgerow. In project work, you have muscle memory for an idealised scope. ##### 9.5 Get Closure > Real experts, Flyvbjerg writes unambiguously, don’t make plans (Flyvbjerg 2001, 19). > Every step is accompanied by questions like: How does this fact fit into my idea of …? How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory? Are these two ideas contradictory or do they complement each other? Isn’t this argument similar to that one? Haven’t I heard this before? And above all: What does x mean for y? > The first step is to break down the amorphous task of “writing” into smaller pieces of different tasks that can be finished in one go. The second step is to make sure we always write down the outcome of our thinking, including possible connections to further inquiries. As the outcome of each task is written down and possible connections become visible, it is easy to pick up the work any time where we left it without having to keep it in mind all the time. ##### 9.6 Reduce the Number of Decisions > That is one of the main advantages of thinking in writing – everything is externalised anyway. ##### 11 Take Smart Notes Recollection of text is stronger when rewriting the key findings in your own words. Reading a text and asking questions beyound the frame of the book makes connnections between subjects stronger. ##### 11.2