Beginner's Guide to the Flow Notes Method

These kinds of notes never worked for me, but I've found the Feynman technique (inspired by Feynman) to be a very effective strategy for me that similarly derives its benefits from forcing me to synthesize and distill information.

For those interested, it's basically just teaching concept (writing an article, talking to someone, etc.), usually after having studied it/taken notes. The idea is that teaching a concept, even to an imaginary audience, forces you to learn it on a fundamental level:

https://blog.doist.com/feynman-technique/

This just appears to be a new buzzwordy name for mindmaps?

This reads as if you bring your preconceptions to the table and are encouraged to make linkages which confirm them, rather than start with a blank sheet and try to note what you learn.

Basically Org-roam https://www.orgroam.com/

It would be great to see a running example here. A five minute video where notes are made in real time and then a brief overview of why at the end would really help me to understand how this is supposed to work.

Maybe I'm wrong and if this helps people thats great, but this seems like its making a system out of something that doesn't need to be a system.

When I take notes, I'll write something out, then if I think of something that expands upon it, or a potential problem, I'll draw an arrow to the next line (or if the page is becoming full, to somewhere else) and write my new thing there. Sometimes it'll work like a strange Q&A where I write something, ask a question about it, answer it, and so on, with lines displaying the flow, but not always. All that sounds somewhat similar to these "Flow Notes", though a lot less organised.

The important thing is that I never decided to do this. I just did. And sometimes I don't and I just write normally, or sometimes a combination of the two. I can't say how much it helps me to reread my notes, I moreso take notes to think things through or get them out of my head than to keep a constant memory of them. But it works for me.

This presupposes you _are_ making sense of the material as it is being taught, and that your understanding progresses steadily. I think I would feel some distress if I was listening to a live lecture (for example) during whihch linkage suddenly "clicked" for me, causing my mental model to re-orient. I'd either have to find a way to continue adding notes to a diagramme which no-longer represented my understanding of the material, or stop attending to lecture in order to re-organise my notes.

Methods like this require a good degree of design sense.

For people without that (me), analog mind mapping quickly falls apart and I’m left with a mess and feeling bewildered. (pepesilva.jpg). The focus then becomes redoing the shit I have on the page.

Could argue that this is a form of progressive summerization, but I’m often just wondering why I didn’t use something like Smart Notes with Roam.

Any folks who are shit at drawing get methods like this to work?

It’s rubbish. Here’s the important sentence that is hand-waved away:

> When you find connections between something earlier to what is being said now, use arrows or lines to connect them.

Relations across context and meaning are not trivial.

Where is the scientific evidence that it is one of the best methods?

> Flow-based note-taking is one of the best ways to consume content meant for learning.

What about PQ4R, Cornell, … ?