So I shared my ObsidianMD structure the week before last and talked a little bit about the LYT method, and last week looked at a Notion dashboard for university, but this week I wanted to do a bit more of a deep dive into the differences between taking notes and making notes.
To start when you google “note making vs note taking” you get links to a lot of university websites. From the get-go this means (to me at least) that this skill is part of a higher level of thinking and understanding. The previews of the websites are saying how note taking is just writing things down but note making is the part you do. It’s not just copying something down but creating.
The University of Southhampton has a guide on note taking and note making from the dyslexia support team that says producing useful notes is an important skill that will set you up for university and life itself.
They’ve stated something here that didn’t even really occur to me until I was looking at that document but if you’re note taking then you’re more likely to plagiarise, even accidentally. But if you’re note making then you’re constantly writing in your own words, making connections and producing fresh content with sources to back it up. This is what you need to be doing at university — plagiarism is one of the worst things you can do when it comes to writing your assignments.
Why Note Taking is good
So if I’m in class I don’t want to be sitting there trying to restructure things as I’m learning it — that’ll take far too much time and effort and leaves you with the potential to miss information. Instead I want to just take notes.
This is putting information down on paper to organise, restructure, edit and link after. I can make a quick point here and there about “link to xyz” or “like ABC” but the main idea at this point is just to record information.
This is efficient, not creative.
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Note Making on the other hand…
Is more creative.
This is the creating notes, typing it all in your own words. This is how you won’t become a victim of plagiarism because you won’t have copied something straight down, but if for whatever reason you did then it would be properly cited and referenced.
You’re rewording, restructuring and then making connections with other ideas or notes that you already have.
This is the thing you’d do after class — sat down with your frantically written notes that you took while listening to the lecturer talk a mile a minute, ready to turn them into something useful. I would set aside half an hour after class to do this while the ideas were still fresh in my mind and write out the ideas again by hand. Now that I’m using ObsidianMD this process is so much smoother and I can just go from one digitally taken note to another digitally taken note, linking back to others I’ve taken and have the option to shuffle about blocks as and when needed.
The framework that Nick Milo suggested was:
- Notice when you say things like “that’s interesting”
- Instead of just “clipping” or saving a thing for later, say “that reminds me”.
- It’s similar because
- it’s different because
- It’s important because
I’ve adapted this to fit how I think a little bit more and I use:
- Noticing when you have that “oh!” moment (similar to Nick Milo’s but for how I think)
- What does it remind you of? Have something from real life or fiction that you can think of this thing by.
- What wider picture does this fit into? Talk about that.
- Can this be broken into smaller ideas?
- Are there things I want to explore but don’t have the brainpower to at this moment that relate to the topic?
- Why is this thing important?
This way of thinking was inspired by those balls that collapse and expand. I saw someone using it on a TV show and immediately ran to my notes to go “hey that reminds me”. The object is still a ball whether it’s expanded or collapsed — but what we see of it changes. Our ideas develop differently when we’re looking at the big picture or focused down into the smaller details and I wanted a space to explore both of those.
I’m also a big, big fan of relating new concepts to things you already know. This is through things like Nick Milo’s LYT is like Zettelkasten but more adapted for the digital age, and Zettelkasten is like taking book notes but for everything. And it continues on.
Hey! Tara here and thanks for checking out my blog. I update every Tuesday with posts about studying tips, advice and talk about productivity and organisation too. If you want to keep up to date with my latest blog posts I’d love it if you subscribed to this blog.
