How to start note-taking

As you can imagine, without a fixed schedule and being available all the time for work and personal issues puts a high toll on our bodies and stress levels. Memory and stress don't go well together. Some people realize sooner than other that writing will help in the future and invest time into learning and practicing how to do it.

There are some studies that show that simply writing about things, even if you never come back to them, helps with stress and memorization. Writing is important and a part of our lives.

Since 1994 I've been improving my note-taking abilities and how I deal with information. Some of that learning came via training courses, but most of it is self learned with books or through trial and error. This doesn't make me any better than anyone else, but it allows me to share what worked for me and try to help reduce mistakes for others.

Based on that experience of mine, my recommendation is to invest time learning how your brain works, how you learn better and understanding your body signs. Learn to identify when you're hungry or thirsty, how you feel when hungry or tired, what works to calm your mind and so on. Note-taking can help to identify these things if you take time to think and then write about them.

I'm a firm believer of the quantified self theory, where we measure as much as we can about ourselves and correlate that with how we feel, how we behave, what is good or bad for us. Sleep time and quality, heart rate, stress levels, etc. This impacts your performance and learning ability.

Take notes on the above topics. Meditate. Write a journal. Here (Reddit) (Template - full journaling questions) I've shared some questions to help with that.

Be honest to yourself and write in the second person. Using the second person allows you to be more direct to yourself, while distancing yourself from what you are ashamed of or what you consider wrong: you know the author (you!), intimately, but it is as if the author isn't yourself. Try it for Journaling. I don't like using third person because it moves things from a dialog to story telling, and in a journal you want to think about things, not only tell them, it should be intimate and writing as a story will make it more likely that you won't write everything.

Once you create a habit of writing every day (see Why taking notes is important (Reddit) / Why taking notes is important), you'll find it easier to take notes. Don't worry if they have only a few words. The thing is creating a habit, setting some time apart for that.

Take some prompts, answer them. Repeat it. Sometimes, skip all the prompts. Don't worry: what matters is writing. My daily note template is what I use for a while. It is simple and allows me to choose directed notes with prompts, open notes with the annotation section or even both. Start with something like that and use what you feel like.

I've already mentioned that there's also no concern about using what you wrote. Many times, just writing about something will start micro changes that will compound and transform you. You don't need to go back to a note — even though you might go back to a note if you want to — to perceive those changes.

In regard to your learning, write about it a little every day. Some definition, some concept. And improve it during the weekend. Don't try to create an encyclopedia in one day. Small notes are really a great start. (Taking class notes, Taking notes about books.)

The sooner you start to understand yourself, the more benefits you're getting from note-taking.

Write. Write what comes to your mind. Create a new note and put some contents into it. You don't need to file, category, tag, etc. anything. It is all raw information. You can organize things later, in a review. But write.

Everything starts with a first step, and you have to crawl before running a marathon. Start with the kindergarten of note-taking before trying to get a PhD on it.

Start small without pressure. You can rewrite, delete, keep, improve, classify, move, tag, and everything else later. Just start.

extra References

• GitHub - kepano/40-questions: Questions that I ask myself at the end of each year and each decade.
• Quick start to taking notes — a view on the process of taking notes