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For the last 20 years I\u2019ve been on a quest to find the perfect academic note taking system.<\/p>\n
I abandoned paper in 2005 when I realised my notebooks were the place my ideas went to die. Although writing into a notebook felt useful at the time it was hard to find stuff later. Flipping fruitlessly through hundreds of pages of bad hand writing was frustrating. When I did find the notes, they didn\u2019t make much sense without the source material. Scribbling notes on printouts solved this problem and created another: filing. I\u2019d either remember the author or the title \u2013 maybe sometimes just the topic or idea. You can\u2019t file a piece of paper under four categories at once.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit, over the last fifteen years, I\u2019ve wondered at people who cling stubbornly to their paper ways. Digital notes have all sorts of obvious advantages. The search function replaces filing and you virtually eliminate the\u00a0\u2018transaction cost\u2019<\/a>\u00a0of transcribing notes from paper to screen. It all\u00a0sounds<\/em>\u00a0great \u2013 but there\u2019s a reason there\u2019s heaps of database products on the market and none have dominated. They don\u2019t really solve the note taking problem.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a relentless digital note taking booster, but I have a confession to make. All the time I was telling people that digital notes were better, I had the nagging suspicion something was not working. I frequently found myself overwhelmed when I sat down to write. I had everything I needed, but the annotations and slabs of text I\u2019d accumulated just didn\u2019t seem that useful.<\/p>\n This is not a tool problem. I say this after trying and discarding almost every digital tool on the market.<\/p>\n In an attempt to replicate the success I had with writing on printouts, I\u2019ve taken notes in a bunch of conventional citation managers: Endnote, Zotero, Mendeley and Papers2. I felt even more scattered taking notes this way than I did writing in a notebook. By splintering my notes, I splintered my thinking.<\/p>\n The next step was to try digital databases. Theoretically, a database can help you find relationships and connections. By running a search, you can see related things together and spark ideas. I\u2019ve used many databases \u2013 Evernote, DevonThink, OneNote, Readwise, Pocket and Notion just to name a few. To be honest with you, even though I have briefly evangelised some of these products, I\u2019m unconvinced any are worth the effort.<\/p>\n Some databases have great features \u2013 like the machine learning assisted searching in Devon Think \u2013 but maintaining a notes database properly is a lot of work. The best thing about digital databases is also the biggest problem: they\u00a0 are frictionless. By enabling you to store, and move data around, effortlessly, it\u2019s oh so easy to put a lot of stuff in there without an organising principle.<\/p>\n The end result? Information Indigestion.<\/p>\n Unless you are very careful about naming conventions, tagging and pruning, your notes quickly become a hot mess of digital clutter. I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that a notes database you spend a lot of time managing is worse than a notebook you never read.<\/p>\n Note taking is basically a way of squeezing insights out of information:\u00a0the process is often more important than the product itself<\/em>.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t mean notes are pointless, but it\u2019s important to remember they are a means, not an end. The \u2018meat computer\u2019 on top of our necks is pretty good at making connections and ideas. Notes are there to help.<\/p>\n My best advice is to let go of the need to have a perfect \u2018system\u2019 and develop a \u2018good enough\u2019 set of solutions that work for you. Below is a set of notes on how I take notes. It\u2019s not pretty, but it works.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t suggest you adopt \u2018my system\u2019 \u2013 because it\u2019s not a system. It\u2019s a bunch of hacks and work arounds. Maybe some of them will be useful to you. Or maybe, by sharing how messy I am behind the scenes, you will feel better about your own ad hoc solutions!<\/p>\n Notes for writing One of the key things we teach at\u00a0our world famous thesis bootcamp program<\/a>\u00a0is how to write without constantly rummaging around for notes. People reach for their notes in an attempt to make\u00a0 sentences perfectly correct the first time. But all this rummaging derails the creative process. People can write four or five times faster by free writing first, and using their notes to check information later.<\/p>\n The notes you need for writing are more than just what you\u2019ve read: you need to process ideas, facts, findings and insights from data. I find the best way to take notes for writing is to write them straight into a file: one that has a name and a specific purpose. The file acts as a grounding tool to focus the note taking. I write the actual notes either as a comment, or in a different font. These notes are really premade \u2018chunks\u2019 of text for the final paper. Think whole sentences with\u00a0subjects, objects and verbs<\/a>. I weave these notes into the writing as I generate text and edit.<\/p>\n If you want to try this \u2018just in time\u2019 approach, it\u2019s best to use a fit for purpose tool like Scrivener. Scrivener has a built in notes pane next to your main text. It also has the capacity to store PDF files with the text so a curated list of relevant source material is always available as you write. In this way, Scrivener helps you digitally replicate the \u2018scribble on the side of a print out\u2019 type of note taking.<\/p>\n Scrivener helps a lot, but you will still end up with a splintered note problem. Every piece of writing becomes a digital version of a bulging manila folder, full of newspaper clippings. Some of those clippings are potentially useful in other projects, but they are now locked in a file. You can\u2019t search the notes in multiple Scrivener files at once\u2026 but hey, good enough, right?<\/p>\n Notes for your literature review Literature reviews require a special kind of note taking. These days, the literature on anything, even a tiny field like mine, is vast and anxiety provoking. You must read and synthesise vast amounts of information. You won\u2019t use everything you read, at least directly, and part of the job is to decide what is relevant to include in the text and what will remain in the background. Sometimes people produce an extended bibliography that includes things they read, but didn\u2019t cite, so keeping track of what you decided not to use can be important.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll need a couple of specialised literature wrangling tools in your belt.<\/p>\n While some people like\u00a0the Cornell template to turn notes into writing<\/a>, I prefer\u00a0the literature review matrix method: an idea I picked up originally from the \u2018My Studious life\u2019 blog<\/a>. A literature review matrix is simply a table with the individual paper names as the columns and questions you are trying to answer as rows (if you are having trouble imagining what I\u2019m talking about,\u00a0there\u2019s a live example here<\/a>). The advantage of a matrix is it\u2019s cumulative \u2013 you can add columns as you read and synthesize the insights by simply reading along the rows to compare what different authors said about the same thing. This method is excellent for spotting areas where the literature is sparse, because some rows simply get more fleshed out than others.<\/p>\n Katherine Firth, Shaun Lehmann and I subsequently documented this idea and some variations more fully in two books:\u00a0How to fix your academic writing trouble<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Level up your essays<\/a>. I have a\u00a0free cheat sheet for the method here<\/a>. I use google sheets to make them as I find Excel and MS Word have too many formatting issues. But lately I\u2019ve been experimenting with using Google forms for long term projects. The form helps me capture the ideas sequentially:<\/p>\n And then auto-generates a matrix you can review to see where ideas intersect:<\/p>\n This is kind of a nifty cross between the cornell note taking method, which helps you structure your thinking, and the matrix method, which highlights relationships between things.<\/p>\n I\u2019m excited by new tools that work on a social graph principle, like the amazing\u00a0Connected Papers<\/a>. I think this is the future of literature reviewing in an age of endless information and I am here for it!<\/p>\n Notes for teaching and presentations Presentation notes are extremely valuable. This kind of hybrid writing\/note taking practice is very audience focussed. Teaching forces you to think about sequencing and comprehension. Presentations force you to think about how to make your ideas into stories. If you are really stuck on a piece of writing, a good trick can be to make a powerpoint presentation and write notes under it.<\/p>\n My principle here is to take the path of least resistence. I simply write everything on the slide, then transfer most of it to the notes pane so I don\u2019t end up with a wall of text. Invariably, I end up recycling those notes back into papers and articles. For high stakes\u00a0 talks, or when I am not as across the material as I would like to be, I make a written script in plain language \u2013 these are even more useful.\u00a0Here\u2019s the script I used for my PhD confirmation,\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>which I immediately turned into my introduction chapter.<\/p>\n Notes not bound to a task or project<\/strong><\/p>\n Like all academics, I\u2019m a curious person and like to read stuff in my areas of interest for no particular purpose \u2013 other than idle nerdery. I want to record some of this reading, but I don\u2019t want to invest too much effort in the note taking process. Notes with no obvious purpose are the most difficult to manage. They are why a database still has a place in your arsenal of organising tools. In fact, you\u2019ll probably need more than one database tool to manage academic work.<\/p>\n I use\u00a0Pocket<\/a>\u00a0to clip things from the web and I don\u2019t even bother tagging or filing this information. I indiscriminately grab everything interesting, then run a search in there if I have a specific problem to solve. I am still using\u00a0OmniFocus<\/a>\u00a0to organise my email and projects, and I use the notes pane there to take notes of meetings.<\/p>\n I use\u00a0Notion<\/a>\u00a0to keep my professional contact list organised. I think this is the best of the structured databases I\u2019ve tried because it\u2019s essentially a personal wikipedia. I don\u2019t use Notion for my own notes as I have gone back to hand writing (see below), but if you hate hand writing, like my son, it\u2019s worth a try. I introduced Thesiswhisperer Jnr to Notion when he started Uni and he happily uses it for all his lecture notes. I have observed him turning these notes into writing and it seems to work well for that purpose.<\/p>\n For a long time I used\u00a0Endnote<\/a>\u00a0for random thoughts and ideas, but lately retired it because paper works just as well \u2013\u00a0 maybe even better (gasp!). My friend and \u2018On the Reg\u2019 Podcast<\/a>\u00a0colleague, Dr Jason Downs started using the Bullet Journal method or #bujo. I always copy Jason, so I bought myself a notebook, sharpened a pencil and got to work.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found the #bujo extremely useful for jotting notes, drawing diagrams and maintaining daily to do lists. I often write notes in there that I end up transfering into presentations and papers. It\u2019s not the purpose of this post to tell you exactly how to implement the #bujo method for yourself. There are vast amounts written about it and some helpful videos on the Bullet Journal Youtube channel, like this one:
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