Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

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Definitely agree here. After being told to take notes for years, I spent a lot of time trying to make the notes fit. Even still be busy jotting down older notes 10 seconds after the lecturer had moved on. Those 10 seconds of having two trains of thought - what was being written down, and what the lecturer had moved on to - are terrible. And it happens at least once or twice in a lecture, often more depending on how quickly the lecturer is moving.

After throwing away the idea of taking notes and concentrating on understanding exactly what was being said 100% of time, everything got easier and if I remember right, my marks even improved. And the best part: less stress.

I very much recommend never taking notes. If you concentrate and understand exactly what is going on, you don't need notes. You can look up whatever little facts you may need later in the textbook or online. If you understand the concepts, there really are no notes that need to be taken.

I have a strategy of only writing key words or phrases and noting things that are emphasized. For example, my notes on the previous sentence would simply be "notes-key words".

Yeah I've tried that too - but you're now spending half your time understanding, and half your time summarizing. The idea of summarizing as a method of learning is also pretty heavily pushed and does seem to work, but for my personally, understanding is more important than summarizing.

I split understanding and summarizing personally, because understanding is more about being able to replicate the methods used, while summarizing is about condensing the lesson into a key point that could aid understanding. I personally find that the summarizing technique does not aid understanding any more than simply following along with the logic and concentrating fully on why it's happening.

Obviously some people may require that extra summarized step to allow them to recall the lesson, but I've been able to do without it by concentrating on the flow and linking it to other knowledge that I've already internalized. That way you don't need those key points jotted down for later - you just need to reason about where you're trying to go and use the understanding to plot a course. Then look up the steps where you know you're unclear on the details in a textbook or web search.

I'm also a not-taker (as opposed to a note-taker) and my entire school career consists of binder paper covered with doodles while I listen, with half-hearted notes taken when the teacher required it for some reason. This got me into some trouble once or twice when the teacher lectured a fact that was nowhere to be found in the textbook, but for the most part it was just one of multiple things that made me a poor fit for academia.

I do make use of mind-mapping now, though. It's handy for dissecting a big linear text into branches and partitions and not overlooking parts when I try to review.

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