How to Take Smart Notes
书的前面部分介绍了记笔记的方法，其中比较关键的是 Elaboration 和 Connection。 后面部分则介绍了较多认知科学和方法论的东西，例如关于记忆、决策、直觉等的思考，以及对解决问题、如何创新、如何阅读等的讨论。印象比较深刻的有
- 笔记中努力简介明了地复述内容，不要欺骗自己，构建关联
- 留意书籍复读的风险，熟悉不等于理解，且效率较低
- 至下而上的笔记组织方式，让主题自己涌现而非一开始就局限住
- 创新、直觉等都依赖于前期持续积累的经验、思考、关联和准备
笔记系统可以考虑使用Obsidian
Book Info
Title : How to Take Smart Notes
Subtitle : One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking
Author : Sönke Ahrens
Tags : #写作 , #学习 , #笔记/slip-box
Type : #type/book
Purchased : No
Elaboration & Excerpt
[写作/重述] 写作可以协助思考和理解，对于需要长期学习的东西，记笔记是不错的主意，同时用自己的话复述一遍也很关键，我们需要外化我们的想法，我们需要写作
Writing is , without dispute , the best facilitator for thinking , reading , learning , understanding and generating ideas we have ... if you want to learn something for the run , you have to write in down. if you want to really understand something , you have to translate it into your own words ... you have to externalize your ideas , you have to write. Writing itself makes you realize where there are holes in things. I’m never sure what I think until I see what I write. And so I believe that, even though you’re an optimist, the analysis part of you kicks in when you sit down to construct a story or a paragraph or a sentence. You think, ‘Oh, that can’t be right.’ And you have to go back, and you have to rethink it all.” (Carol Loomis)
[==笔记流程==] 收集(1,2)-> 消化(3) -> 精简(3) -> 连接(4) -> 探查(5) ->主题(6)->草稿(7)->完善(8)
Step by Step
- Make fleeting notes > - capture every idea that pops into your head
- Make literature notes > - keep it very short , be extremely selective , user your own words
- Make permanent notes > - develop ideas not collect ideas , one note for each idea , precise and clear > - throw away the fleeting notes > - put the literature notes into reference system
- Build new link to your notes > - add links to relate notes > - link to index or entry point
- develop your topics , questions bottom up from within the system > - read more , take more notes > - develop ideas further and see where things will take you > - follow your interest
- decide a topic to write about > - look through the connections > - collect all the relevant notes on this topic
- turn your notes into a rough draft > - don't simply copy your note into a manuscript > - translate them into something coherent
- edit and proofread your manuscript
[副产品] 不要忽视完成任务过程中的副产品，主线任务以外的阅读资料和观点也可以被我们收集，以后说不定就会用到
We constantly encounter interesting ideas along the way and only fraction of them are useful for the particular paper we started reading for it. Why let them go to waste? Make a note and add it to you slip-box.
[好工具的定义] 好的工具不是一味提供更多的选项，而是帮助用户关注任务，减少分心 ^dede87
Focus on the essentials, don’t complicate things unnecessarily ... 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 is thinking.
[笔记工具箱]
The Tool Box
- “Something to write with and something to write on”
- “A reference management system”
- The slip-box
- An editor
[简约至上] 很多时候简单的想法能有很大的效能
Simplicity Is Paramount “We tend to think that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But more often than not, it is the simplicity of an idea that makes it so powerful (and often overlooked in the beginning). ” Sometimes the breakthrough in a scientific process is the discovery of a simple principle behind a seemingly very complicated process
[工作站] 在一套系统中记录笔记的优势，上文中提到的是很多人的痛点，一个好的工具应当是既简单又能解决用户痛点
“They handle their ideas and findings in the way it makes immediate sense: If they read an interesting sentence, they underline it. If they have a comment to make, they write it into the margins. If they have an idea, they write it into their notebook, and if an article seems important enough, they make the effort and write an excerpt. Working like this will leave you with a lot of different notes in many different places. Writing, then, means to rely heavily on your brain to remember where and when these notes were written down.” “Instead of having different storage for different ideas, everything goes into the same slip-box and is standardized into the same format. ”
[项目笔记] 可以考虑加一种项目笔记，放在特定的文件夹下，项目结束后归档即可，不影响其他笔记
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
[工作流]优质的工作流应当帮我们进入最好的状态
“Sometimes we feel like our work is draining our energy and we can only move forward if we put more and more energy into it. But sometimes it is the opposite. Once we get into the workflow, it is as if the work itself gains momentum, pulling us along and sometimes even energizing us. ”
[论工作的激励反馈] 让工作本身带给我们正向的反馈，构建自身的反馈循环
Any attempts to trick ourselves into work with external rewards (like doing something nice after finishing a chapter) are only short-term solutions with no prospect of establishing a positive feedback loop.” ... Only if the work itself becomes rewarding can the dynamic of motivation and reward become self-sustainable and propel the whole process forward”
[论称赞反馈]不是称赞他们如何，而是称赞做的事情如何，避免他们陷入自我陶醉
Ironically, it is therefore often the highly gifted and talented students, who receive a lot of praise, who are more in danger of developing a fixed mindset and getting stuck. Having been praised for what they are (talented and gifted) rather than for what they do, they tend to focus on keeping this impression intact, rather than exposing themselves to new challenges and the possibility of learning from failure. 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
[写作、复述] 复述我们阅读的书能让我们去思考我们是否确实理解了书的内容,也帮组我们更好的组织和表达思想，同时通过这个过程我们能更好地了解到自己的阅读理解能力，以此有意识的去提高，这样我们能更快得阅读，能学习更多，进一步又自我提升，以此构成一个能力提到循环
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....The ability to express understanding in one’s own words is a fundamental competency for everyone who writes – and only by doing it with the chance of realizing our lack of understanding can we become better at it.
[详尽阐述✨] 总结概述依赖于真正的理解，试着对想要理解的主题做简介并尝试做关联，不要欺骗自己懂了，与未来的自己对话(以后看到这些笔记) 参见 [[202106201988 详尽阐述|Elaboration]]
If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself...The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool It is not surprising, therefore, that the best-researched and most successful learning method is elaboration. Elaboration means nothing other than really thinking about the meaning of what we read, how it could inform different questions and topics and how it could be combined with other knowledge. Writing, taking notes and thinking about how ideas connect is exactly the kind of elaboration that is needed to learn. Not learning from what we read because we don’t take the time to elaborate on it is the real waste of time. The first step of elaboration is to think enough about a piece of information so we are able to write about it. The second step is to think about what it means for other contexts as well. “The results of several recent studies support the hypothesis that retention is facilitated by acquisition conditions that prompt people to elaborate information in a way that increases the distinctiveness of their memory representations.” (Stein et al. 1984, 522)
[关联而非集合] 笔记之间构建关联，涌现创新，同时也帮助我们更好得记忆和抽取信息，孤立的信息往往容易被遗忘，笔记的关联使我们思考结构外化
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...Our ability to learn isolated facts is indeed limited and probably decreases with age. But if facts are not kept isolated nor learned in an isolated fashion, but hang together in a network of ideas, or “latticework of mental models” (Munger, 1994), it becomes easier to make sense of new information. That makes it easier not only to learn and remember, but also to retrieve the information later in the moment and context it is needed. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something As we are making these connections, we build up an internal structure of the slip-box, which is shaped by our thinking. While this structure builds up externally and independently of our limited memory, it will, in return, shape our thinking as well and help us to think in a more structured way. Creative people are better at recognizing relationships, making associations and connections and seeing things in an original way—seeing things that others cannot see
[不同材料的阅读方式不同] 有的需要细读，有的简单概览即可，可以进一步参考 [[《如何阅读一本书》]]
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.
[灵活的工作流] 搭配灵活的工作结构以适应在不同场景无缝切换，例如阅读特定主题的过程中，看到和当前主题无关的信息，但是也许以后有用因此也需要做一些记录的时候
To be flexible, we need an equally flexible work structure that doesn’t break down every time we depart from a preconceived plan.
[写作模式] 有点[[202106192332 强化学习|强化学习]]的味道了，自由度高，反应及时，基于环境反馈做调整 , 实践出真知
The moment we stop making plans is the moment we start to learn. It is a matter of practice to become good at generating insight and write good texts by choosing and moving flexibly between the most important and promising tasks, judged by nothing else than the circumstances of the given situation.
[直觉] 经验与[[202106192211 直觉|直觉]], 许多复杂或紧急情况下的决定都是由直觉来做出，直觉像是对以往经验的总结与抽象
Experts, on the other hand, have internalized the necessary knowledge so they don’t have to actively remember rules or think consciously about their choices. They have acquired enough experience in various situations to be able to rely on their intuition to know what to do in which kind of situation. Their decisions in complex situations are explicitly not made by long rational-analytical considerations, but rather come from the gut....gut feeling is not a mysterious force, but an incorporated history of experience. It is the sedimentation of deeply learned practice through numerous feedback loops on success or failure...The more experience you gain, the more you will be able to rely on your intuition to tell you what to do next.
[释放短期记忆] 短期记忆的容量有限，我们需要把一些能够外化的想法从短期记忆中腾出,放入外部系统 例如写下来, 可以参考 [[202106192243 GTD|GTD]]
Attention is not our only limited resource. Our short-term memory is also limited. We need strategies not to waste its capacity with thoughts we can better delegate to an external system...Open tasks tend to occupy our short-term memory – until they are done. That is why we get so easily distracted by thoughts of unfinished tasks, regardless of their importance...we don’t actually have to finish tasks to convince our brains to stop thinking about them. All we have to do is to write them down in a way that convinces us that it will be taken care of.
[关于记忆] 寻找模式、划分区块 等方式来有效[[202106191999 记忆|记忆]]
Have a look at the following number sequence only once and try to remember it right away: 11 95 82 19 62 31 96 64 19 70 51 97 4. That’s difficult, as it has clearly more than seven digits. But it is quite easy when you realise that these are just five years of the World Cup numbered consecutively
[理解->记忆] 理解后的东西更容易记忆，这过程中我们发现模式、构建关联、抽象结构等等
This is why it is so much easier to remember things we understand than things we don’t. It is not that we have to choose to focus either on learning or understanding. It is always about understanding – and if it is only for the sake of learning. Things we understand are connected, either through rules, theories, narratives, pure logic, mental models or explanations. And deliberately building these kinds of meaningful connections is what the slip-box is all about.
[决策/选择] 做[[202106192321 决策|决策]]通常会消耗较多精力，尽量减少一些不必要的决策
It is well known that decision-making is one of the most tiring and wearying tasks, which is why people like Barack Obama or Bill Gates only wear two suit colors Not having to make decisions can be quite liberating ... Not having to make choices can unleash a lot of potential, which would otherwise be wasted on making these choices.
[手写VS打字] 手写更有利于理解，但是不太利于维护和检索(虽然也有方式[[202106091453 Zettelkasten Method|Zettelkasten Method]])
Handwriting makes pure copying impossible, but instead facilitates the translation of what is said (or written) into one’s own words. The students who typed into their laptops were much quicker, which enabled them to copy the lecture more closely but circumvented actual understanding.
[确认偏误] 需要保持开放性，需留意不要总是阅读和接受有认同感的信息 ,参见[[202106193455 确认偏误|确认偏误 (Confirmation Bias)]]
we should seek out dis-confirming arguments and facts that challenge our way of thinking, we are naturally drawn to everything that makes us feel good, which is everything that confirms what we already believe we know....Somehow, we just seem to happen to be surrounded by people who all think alike...We just seem to happen to read the publications that tend to confirm what we already know.
[至下而上] 不要预先定义范围，从底层的笔记出发，让观点和主题从中涌现 也是一种不错的方式
Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead of top-down is the first and most important step to opening ourselves up for insight. We should be able to focus on the most insightful ideas we encounter and welcome the most surprising turns of events without jeopardizing our progress or, even better, because it brings our project forward. We postpone the decision on what to write about specifically and focus on building a critical mass within the slip-box.
[自我判断] 自我判断力的重要性，不要别人说什么就是什么，批判性思考
Nonage(immaturity) is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.
[熟悉不等于理解] 如果第一次阅读没有理解，试图多次重读来掌握内容需要留意以下陷阱，对于我们有点熟悉的东西我们会误以为我们理解了,需要做一些针对性的动作例如复述来验证自己是否真的理解了，不然会一直自我感觉良好其实什么也不懂
Rereading is especially dangerous because of the mere-exposure effect: The moment we become familiar with something, we start believing we also understand it. On top of that, we also tend to like it more ... If we don’t try to verify our understanding during our studies, we will happily enjoy the feeling of getting smarter and more knowledgeable while in reality staying as dumb as we were...rereading and underlining sentences for later rereading. And most of them choose that method, even if they are taught that they don’t work.
[带着问题阅读] 这个观点和带着问题阅读更有效是一样的
When we try to answer a question before we know how to, we will later remember the answer better, even if our attempt failed
[文本之外] 不要局限于当下的文本，阅读中寻找关联
What good readers can do is spot the limitations of a particular approach and see what is not mentioned in the text.
[笔记习惯] 每日记录几个笔记，积少成多
If you, by any chance, don’t have the ambition to compete with Luhmann in terms of books per year, you could settle for three notes a day and still build up a significant critical mass of ideas in a very reasonable time.
[遗忘] 遗忘在我们的意识和长期记忆之间构建了一堵墙，帮助我们能有思考和创新的空间，而非淹没在一堆信息中 / [[202106191999 记忆|记忆]]与遗忘总可以一起讨论
Forgetting, then, would not be the loss of a memory, but the erection of a mental barrier between the conscious mind and our long-term memory.Psychologists call this mechanism active inhibition (cf. MacLeod, 2007). It is easy to understand what it is good for: Without a very thorough filter, our brains would constantly be flooded by memories, making it impossible to focus on anything in our surroundings. Remembering is the very mechanism to bring a memory back into our conscious mind.
[记忆] 考虑[[202106191999 记忆 | 记忆]]时我们不能只关注信息存储更需要关注信息提取，而信息的关联能极大助力于信息的提取，是发散也是抑制，发散出更多相关的观点，同时抑制那些无关紧要的信息的涌现 。目前的教育体系下更多人还是只关注了如何去提升记忆存储，而忽略了有利于记忆提取的关联的构建
we should distinguishing between two different measurements when it comes to memory: Storage strength and retrieval strength(Bjork 2011) Learning would be not so much about saving information, like on a hard disk, but about building connections and bridges between pieces of information to circumvent the inhibition mechanism in the right moment. It is about making sure that the right “cues” trigger the right memory, about how we can think strategically to remember the most useful information when we need it. If we look at the current state of education, especially the learning strategies most students employ, we see that the vast majority of all learning still aims to improve “storage strength,” even though it cannot be improved. It is still mostly about remembering isolated facts and not so much about building connections.
[有序中的无序] 完全的有序会引向无趣和无意义 无论是生活还是学习需要一些chaos
The fact that too much order can impede learning has become more and more known (Carey 2014). Conversely, we know that the deliberate creation of variations and contrasts can facilitate learning.
[网络成长] 循序渐进得，会获得一个越来越完备的网络，就像遇见越来越好的自己一样
Ideally, new notes are written with explicit reference to already existing notes. Obviously, this is not always possible, especially in the beginning when the slip-box is still in its infancy, but it will very soon become the first option most of the time. Then you can put the new note “behind” an existing, related note straight away. An initial subsequence that attracts more and more follow-up notes can easily become a main topic with many subtopics over time
[使用工具]重点在于使用工具，而不是为了工具而工具
Because the slip-box is not intended to be an encyclopaedia, but a tool to think with, we don’t need to worry about completeness. We don’t need to write anything down just to bridge a gap in a note sequence. We only write if it helps us with our own thinking.
[关键词] 给文档加标签的过程也是帮我们思考和重述内容的过程
Assigning keywords is much more than just a bureaucratic act. It is a crucial part of the thinking process, which often leads to a deeper elaboration of the note itself and the connection to other notes.
[冲突] 思想上的冲突是机遇，是梳理问题和涌现新想法的好时机
When we realize that we used to accept two contradicting ideas as equally true, we know that we have a problem – and problems are good because we now have something to solve. A paradox can be a sign that we haven’t thought thoroughly enough about a problem or, conversely, that we exhausted the possibilities of a certain paradigm. Finally, oppositions help to shape ideas by providing contrast. Albert Rothenberg suggests that the construction of oppositions is the most reliable way of generating new ideas”
[feature-positive effect] 我们往往会过分关注那些相对容易获取或者近期获取的信息上，而不是更相关的信息（借助外部系统可方便我们获取更相关的信息）
This is the phenomenon in which we tend to overstate the importance of information that is (mentally) easily available to us and tilts our thinking towards the most recently acquired facts, not necessarily the most relevant ones. Without external help, we would not only take exclusively into account what we know, but what is on top of our heads.
[flashcard的局限性] 卡片的信息相互独立也难成体系，不过适合记忆那些不需要理解和关联的事实信息
Even though flashcards are much more effective than cramming or reviewing information within the context of a textbook, they also have a downside: The information on flashcards is neither elaborated on nor embedded in some form of context. Each flashcard stays isolated instead of being connected with the network of theoretical frames, our experiences or our latticework of mental models
[心智模型的多样性] 我们需要丰富我们的[[202106202112 心智模型|心智模型]]，不然我们理解世界的方式将会有很大的局限性
The importance is to have not just a few, but a broad range of mental models in your head.Otherwise, you risk becoming too attached to one or two and see only what fits them. You would become the man with a hammer who sees nails everywhere If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience, both vicarious and direct, on this latticework of models. A truly wise person is not someone who knows everything, but someone who is able to make sense of things by drawing from an extended resource of interpretation schemes.
[快乐的学习循环] 获取信息关联信息更快地获取信息，这个过程充满快乐，反之则很危险
By learning, retaining, and building on the retained basics, we are creating a rich web of associated information. The more we know, the more information (hooks) we have to connect new information to, the easier we can form long-term memories. […] Learning becomes fun. We have entered a virtuous circle of learning, and it seems as if our long-term memory capacity and speed are actually growing. On the other hand, if we fail to retain what we have learned, for example, by not using effective strategies, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn information that builds on earlier learning. More and more knowledge gaps become apparent. Since we can’t really connect new information to gaps, learning becomes an uphill battle that exhausts us and takes the fun out of learning. It seems as if we have reached the capacity limit of our brain and memory. Welcome to a vicious circle. Certainly, you would much rather be in a virtuous learning circle, so to remember what you have learned, you need to build effective long-term memory structures.” (Sachs 2013, 26)
[创新] 创新和灵感不是真的突发奇想，而是与前期的思考和准备密切相关，这和[[202106192211 直觉|直觉]]有很大的相似性，需要基于前期的经验
Our fascination with these stories clouds the fact that all good ideas need time. Even sudden breakthroughs are usually preceded by a long, intense process of preparation” Intuition is not the opposition to rationality and knowledge, it is rather the incorporated, practical side of our intellectual endeavours, the sedimented experience on which we build our conscious, explicit knowledge Most often, innovation is not the result of a sudden moment of realization, anyway, but incremental steps toward improvement. Even groundbreaking paradigm shifts are most often the consequence of many small moves in the right direction instead of one big idea.
[反事实提问] 通过假设提问，我们能更清晰得看清一些问题
Ask counterfactual questions, like “what if?” (Markman, Lindberg, Kray and Galinsky, 2007). It is easier to learn about the function of money in a society if we wonder how strangers would exchange goods without using money than if we just focus on the obvious problems we have in a society based on money exchange. Sometimes, it is more important to rediscover the problems for which we already have a solution than to think solely about the problems that are present to us.
[重新定义问题] 解决困难问题的一种方式是重新定义问题，这也需要我们关联的能力
Problems rarely get solved directly, anyway. Most often, the crucial step forward is to redefine the problem in such a way that an already existing solution can be employed
[精简] 笔记系统尽量精简，笔记内容也要精简
I highly recommend treating a digital note as if the space were limited. By restricting ourselves to one format, we also restrict ourselves to just one idea per note and force ourselves to be as precise and brief as possible.
[Bottom Up模式] 至下而上的笔记组织方式，让主题自己涌现而非一开始就局限住
Developing topics and questions from what we have has a huge advantage. The ideas we decide on are not taken out of thin air, but are already embedded in a content-rich context and come with material that we can use. Starting with what we have also comes with another, unexpected advantage: We become more open to new ideas.
[兴趣扩展] 兴趣指引我们阅读学习，兴趣带给我们动力，但是不能忘记我们需要不断地扩充我们的兴趣，不能固步自封
“If we accompany every step of our work with the question, “What is interesting about this?” and everything we read with the question, “What is so relevant about this that it is worth noting down?” we do not just choose information according to our interest. By elaborating on what we encounter, we also discover aspects we didn’t know anything about before and therefore develop our interests along the way. It would be quite sad if we did not change our interests during research.
[Take Smart Notes]
The slip-box is as simple as it gets. Read with a pen in your hand, take smart notes and make connections between them. Ideas will come by themselves and your writing will develop from there. There is no need to start from scratch. Keep doing what you would do anyway: Read, think, write. Just take smart notes along the way.
The Six Steps to Successful Writing
- Separate and Interlocking Tasks
- Give Each Task Your Undivided Attention
- Multitasking is not a good idea
- Give Each Task the Right Kind of Attention
- Become an Expert Instead of a Planner
- Get Closure
- Reduce the Number of Decisions
- Read for Understanding
- Read With a Pen in Hand
- Keep an Open Mind
- Get the Gist
- Learn to Read
- Learn by Reading
- Take Smart Notes
- Make a Career One Note at a Time
- Think Outside the Brain
- Learn by not Trying
- Adding Permanent Notes to the Slip-Box
- Develop Ideas
- Develop Topics
- Make Smart Connections
- Compare, Correct and Differentiate
- Assemble a Toolbox for Thinking
- Use the Slip-Box as a Creativity Machine
- Think Inside the Box
- Facilitate Creativity through Restrictions
- Share Your Insight
- From Brainstorming to Slip-box-Storming
- From Top Down to Bottom Up
- Getting Things Done by Following Your Interests
- Finishing and Review
- Becoming an Expert by Giving up Planning
- The Actual Writing
- Make It a Habit
Question
What remains for you to consider?
Relate Books
[[(B) On Writing Well]]