How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers §

Metadata §

• Author: Ahrens, Sönke
• Full Title: How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers
• Category:#books
• Summary: The book “How to Take Smart Notes” by Sönke Ahrens emphasizes the importance of effective note-taking for improving writing, learning, and thinking. By using a slip-box system, individuals can organize their ideas and connect them, enhancing their understanding and creativity. This method promotes active engagement with material and transforms notes into a valuable resource for future writing.

Описание §

Книга Сёнке Аренса «How to Take Smart Notes» переосмысляет процесс работы с информацией, превращая конспектирование в инструмент генерации идей. Автор раскрывает метод Zettelkasten, созданный социологом Никласом Луманном, где каждая заметка становится звеном в сети ассоциаций, а не изолированным фактом. Акцент смещён с механического запоминания на диалог с собственными мыслями: как связывать концепции, развивать инсайты через переформулирование и превращать хаотичные наброски в основу для глубоких текстов. Книга не просто учит «делать заметки» — она показывает, как выстроить экосистему мышления, где чтение, анализ и письмо взаимно усиливают друг друга, минимизируя сопротивление перед пустым листом. Подход универсален: от академических исследований до личных проектов, предлагая альтернативу линейному планированию в пользу органичного интеллектуального роста.

Сравнение подходов «How to Take Smart Notes» (Zettelkasten) и «Building a Second Brain» (BASB) §

Цель системы:

• Zettelkasten: Создание «сети идей» для углубления понимания, генерации новых инсайтов и написания текстов (например, научных работ). Акцент на мышлении через письмо и интеллектуальном развитии.
• BASB: Построение «внешнего мозга» для снижения когнитивной нагрузки, управления проектами и быстрого доступа к информации. Цель — практическое применение знаний в работе и жизни.

Структура заметок:

• Zettelkasten: Каждая заметка (Zettel) — атомарная идея, которая связывается с другими через гиперссылки и контекстные ассоциации. Сеть иерархична только органически.
• BASB: Информация организуется по принципу PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives), где структура определяется текущими задачами и целями.

Работа с информацией:

• Zettelkasten:
  • Переформулирование: Заметки пишутся своими словами, чтобы интегрировать идею в личный контекст.
  • Диалог с собой: Акцент на создании связей между старыми и новыми знаниями через вопросы: «Как это соотносится с тем, что я уже знаю?».
• BASB:
  • Дистилляция: Сокращение информации до ключевых выводов (например, «прогрессивное суммирование»).
  • Прагматизм: Сохранение информации в формате, готовом для повторного использования (чек-листы, шаблоны, цитаты под конкретные задачи).

Роль инструментов:

• Zettelkasten: Часто реализуется в простых текстовых редакторах или специализированных приложениях (Obsidian, Logseq), где ключевое — ручное связывание идей.
• BASB: Поощряет использование цифровых инструментов (Notion, Evernote, Readwise) для удобного захвата, тегирования и поиска информации, интегрированных в рабочие процессы.

Фокус на результате:

• Zettelkasten: Результат — написание текстов (статьи, книги) или углубление экспертизы через «медленное мышление».
• BASB: Результат — завершённые проекты, решения повседневных задач, сокращение времени на поиск информации.

Философская основа:

• Zettelkasten: Информация как «живой организм», где ценность возникает из взаимодействия идей.
• BASB: Информация как «ресурс», который нужно систематизировать для эффективного расходования.

Итог: Zettelkasten — для тех, кто хочет мыслить глубже, BASB — для тех, кто хочет действовать быстрее. Обе системы можно комбинировать: использовать Zettelkasten для генерации идей, а PARA — для их реализации.

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Нужно отличать подходы BASB и Zettelkasten: они преследуют разные цели. В реальной работе их следует комбинировать.

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    url: https://www.soenkeahrens.de/en/takesmartnotes
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    tags:
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Highlights §

• This book aims to fill this gap by showing you how to efficiently turn your thoughts and discoveries into convincing written pieces and build up a treasure of smart and interconnected notes along the way. You can use this pool of notes not only to make writing easier and more fun for yourself, but also to learn for the long run and generate new ideas. But most of all, you can write every day in a way that brings your projects forward. (View Highlight)

• By breaking down the amorphous task of “writing a paper” into small and clearly separated tasks, you can focus on one thing at a time, complete each in one go and move on to the next one (View Highlight)

• There are few serious knowledge workers left who haven’t heard of “GTD” and that is for a good reason: It works. The principle of GTD is to collect everything that needs to be taken care of in one place and process it in a standardised way. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we actually do everything we once intended to do, but it forces us to make clear choices and regularly check if our tasks still fit into the bigger picture. Only if we know that everything is taken care of, from the important to the trivial, can we let go and focus on what is right in front of us. Only if nothing else is lingering in our working memory and taking up valuable mental resources can we experience what Allen calls a “mind like water” - the state where we can focus on the work right in front of us without getting distracted by competing thoughts. The principle is simple but holistic. It is not a quick fix or a fancy tool. It doesn’t do the work for you. But it does provide a structure for our everyday work that deals with the fact that most distractions do not come so much from our environment, but our own minds. (View Highlight)

• And this is the other insight of David Allen: Only if you can trust your system, only if you really know that everything will be taken care of, will your brain let go and let you focus on the task at hand. (View Highlight)

• There are more than a few colleagues I know who would give a lot to be as productive in their whole lifetime as Luhmann was after his death. (View Highlight)

• Even hard work can be fun as long as it is aligned with our intrinsic goals and we feel in control. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Логично. Если ты любишь своё дело, то сложные задачи для тебя даже интереснее.

• Luhmann was able to focus on the important things right in front of him, pick up quickly where he left off and stay in control of the process because the structure of his work allowed him to do this. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Для этого нужно: иметь чёткие списки задач по GTD, чтобы не занимать голову ими; разбивать текущую задачу на небольшие подзадачи; фиксировать, что на данный момент выполнено, какой следующий шаг; готовить справочные материалы до начала непосредственной работы, чтобы не тратить на это время.

• Intuitively, most people do not expect much from simple ideas. They rather assume that impressive results must have equally impressively complicated means. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Перекликается с идеей из Atomic Habits. Небольшие, но регулярные и целенаправленные действия могут приводит к значительным результатам.

• We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains. (View Highlight)

• Thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas is the main work of everyone who studies, does research or writes. If you write to improve all of these activities, you have a strong tailwind going for you. If you take your notes in a smart way, it will propel you forward. (View Highlight)

• 2.Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be extra selective with quotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean. Keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place – your reference system. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Идея о заметках и их краткости перекликается с BASB.

• Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible. (View Highlight)

• 1.Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write with to capture every idea that pops into your mind. Don’t worry too much about how you write it down or what you write it on. These are fleeting notes, mere reminders of what is in your head. They should not cause any distraction. Put them into one place, which you define as your inbox, and process them later. (View Highlight)

• 3.Make permanent notes. Now turn to your slip-box. Go through the notes you made in step one or two (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how they relate to what is relevant for your own research, thinking or interests. (View Highlight)

New highlights added January 7, 2025 at 9:31 AM §

• 4.Now add your new permanent notes to the slip-box by: a)   Filing each one behind one or more related notes (with a program, you can put one note “behind” multiple notes; if you use pen and paper like Luhmann, you have to decidewhere it fits best and add manual links to the other notes). Look to which note the new one directly relates or, if it does not relate directly to any other note yet, just file it behind the last one. b)    Adding links to related notes. c)   Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to the index. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Установить связи между заметками, добавить темы.

• 5.Develop your topics, questions and research projects bottom up from within the system. See what is there, what is missing and what questions arise. Read more to challenge and strengthen your arguments and change and develop your arguments according to the new information you are learning about. Take more notes, develop ideas further and see where things will take you. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Прорабатывать темы, задавать вопросы, делать новые заметки и дорабатывать существующие.

• 6.After a while, you will have developed ideas far enough to decide on a topic to write about. Your topic is now based on what youhave, not based on an unfounded idea about what the literature you are about to read might provide. Look through the connections and collect all the relevant notes on this topic (View Highlight)

• As the only way to find out if something is worth reading is by reading it (even just bits of it), it makes sense to use the time spent in the best possible way. We constantly encounter interesting ideas along the way and only a fraction of them are useful for the particular paper we started reading it for. Why let them go to waste? (View Highlight)

  • Note: Интересные идеи, найденные или появившиеся во время чтения, нужно фиксировать - независимо от того, нужны ли они для текущей работы.

New highlights added January 20, 2025 at 11:31 AM §

• As the only way to find out if something is worth reading is by reading it (even just bits of it), it makes sense to use the time spent in the best possible way. We constantly encounter interesting ideas along the way and only a fraction of them are useful for the particular paper we started reading it for. Why let them go to waste? Make a note and add it to your slip-box. It improves it. Every idea adds to what can become a critical mass that turns a mere collection of ideas into an idea-generator. (View Highlight)

• How focused you want to read depends on your priorities. You don’t have to read anything you don’t consider an absolute necessity for finishing your most urgent paper, but you will still encounter a lot of other ideas and information along the way. Spending the little extra time to add them to your system will make all the difference, because the accidental encounters make up the majority of what we learn. (View Highlight)

• Good tools do not add features and more options to what we already have, but help to reduce distractions from the main work, which here isthinking. (View Highlight)

• To have an undistracted brain to think with and a reliable collection of notes to think in is pretty much all we need. Everything else is just clutter. (View Highlight)

• The slip-box is the shipping container of the academic world. Instead of having different storage for different ideas, everything goes into the same slip-box and is standardised into the same format. Instead of focusing on the in-between steps and trying to make a science out of underlining systems, reading techniques or excerpt writing, everything is streamlined towards one thing only: insight that can be published. The biggest advantage compared to a top-down storage system organised by topics is that the slip-box becomes more and more valuable the more it grows, instead of getting messy and confusing. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Интересное сравнение заметок с универсальными контейнерами. Действительно, когда все заметки находятся в одном месте и имеют стандартную структуру, становится не важно, откуда они и как будут использоваться. Их легко найти, дополнить, использовать.

• To achieve a critical mass, it is crucial to distinguish clearly between three types of notes: 1.  Fleeting notes, which are only reminders of information, can be written in any kind of way and will end up in the trash within a day or two. 2. Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way. They are always stored in the same way in the same place, either in the reference system or, written as if for print, in the slip-box. 3.   Project notes, which are only relevant to one particular project. They are kept within a project-specific folder and can be discarded or archived after the project is finished. Only if the notes of these three categories are kept separated it will be possible to build acriticalmass of ideas within the slip-box. One of the major reasons for not getting much writing or publishing done lies in the confusion of these categories. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Было в книге чуть ранее, но здесь более кратко сформулировано деление заметок на три вида. Поддерживаю такую структуру.

• In contrast to the fleeting notes, every permanent note for the slip-box is elaborated enough to have the potential to become part of or inspire a final written piece, but that can not be decided on up front as their relevance depends on future thinking and developments. The notes are no longer reminders of thoughts or ideas, but contain the actual thought or idea in written form. This is a crucial difference. (View Highlight)

New highlights added January 23, 2025 at 7:40 AM §

• By focusing on what is interesting and keeping written track of your own intellectual development, topics, questions and arguments will emerge from the material without force. Not only does it means that finding a topic or a research question will become easier, as we don’t have to squeeze it out of the few ideas that are on top of our head anymore, every question that emerges out of our slip-box will naturally and handily come with material to work with. (View Highlight)

• Having trouble finding the right topic is a symptom of the wrong attempt to rely heavily on the limitations of the brain, not the inevitable problematic starting point, as most study guides insinuate. If you on the other hand develop your thinking in writing, open questions will become clearly visible and give you an abundance of possible topics to elaborate further in writing. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Если прорабатывать материал письменно, темы и вопросы для дальнейшей разработки и публикаций придут сами.

• And the only chance to improve in something is getting timely and concrete feedback. 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, togrow. 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.” Those who fear and avoid feedback because it might damage their cherished positive self-image might feel better in the short term, but will quickly fall behind in actual performance (Dweck 2006; 2013). (View Highlight)

  • Note: Свовременная, честная обратная связь - обязательное условие для развития.

• Embracing a growth mindset means to get pleasure out of changing for the better (which is mostly inwardly rewarding) instead of getting pleasure in being praised (which is outwardly rewarding). The orientation towards the latter makes one stick to safe, proven areas. The orientation towards the first draws the attention to the areas most in need of improvement. To seek as many opportunities to learn as possible is the most reliable long-term growth strategy. (View Highlight)

• 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. If we try to fool ourselves here and write down incomprehensible words, we will detect it in the next step when we try to turn our literature notes into permanent notes and try to connect them with others. (View Highlight)

• The same goes for writing permanent notes, which have another feedback loop built-in: 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. (View Highlight)

• The slip-box is not a collection of notes. Working with it is less about retrieving specific notes and more about being pointed to relevant facts and generating insight by letting ideas mingle. Its usability grows with its size, not just linearly but exponentially. When we turn to the slip-box, its inner connectedness will not just provide us with isolated facts, but with lines of developed thoughts. Moreover, because of its inner complexity, a search thought the slip-box will confront us with related notes we did not look for. This is a very significant difference that becomes more and more relevant over time. (View Highlight)

• But we know today that the more connected information we already have, the easier it is to learn, because new information can dock to that information. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Где-то это уже было. Новая информация лучше усваивается, “стыкуюясь” в голове с уже существующими знаниями. Прежде, чем углубляться в тему, стоит прочитать обзорный материал - как раз для достижения этого эффекта.

• 9.2      Multitasking is not a good idea If more than one thing tries to catch your attention, the temptation is great to look at more than one thing at the same time – to multitask. Many people claim to be quite good at multitasking. For some, it is one of the most important skills to cope with today’s informational overload. It is a common belief that the younger generations are better at it, that it even comes naturally to them as they grew up among the attention-seeking new media. And studies show that those who claim to multitask a lot also claim to be very good at it. Those interviewed in these studies do not see their productivity impaired by it. On the contrary, they think it’s improved. But they usually don’t test themselves in comparison with a control group. Psychologists who interviewed the multitaskers did test them instead of just asking. They gave them different tasks to accomplish and compared their results with another group that was instructed to do only one thing at a time. The outcome is unambiguous: While those who multitaskedfeltmore productive, their productivity actually decreased – a lot (Wang and Tchernev 2012; Rosen 2008; Ophir, Nass, and Wagner 2009). Not only the quantity but also the quality of their accomplishments lagged significantly behind that of the control group. (View Highlight)

• When we think we multitask, what we really do is shift our attention quickly between two (or more) things. And every shift is a drain on our ability to shift and delays the moment we manage to get focused again. Trying to multitask fatigues us and decreases our ability to deal with more than one task. (View Highlight)

• Writing a paper involves much more than just typing on the keyboard. It also means reading, understanding, reflecting, getting ideas, making connections, distinguishing terms, finding the right words, structuring, organizing, editing, correcting and rewriting. All these are not just different tasks, but tasks requiring a different kind of attention. (View Highlight)

  • Note: Хорошо описано, что включает в себя написание текста.

• Reading in itself can require very different kinds of attention, depending on the text. Some texts need to be read slowly and carefully, while others are only worth skimming. It would be ridiculous to adhere to a general formula and read every text in the same way, even though that is what many study guides or speed-reading courses try to convince us of. (View Highlight)

  • Note: О разном подходе к чтению текстов писал Поварнин С.И. в “Как читать книги”.

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