5 Bad Note Taking Habits to Fix for Smarter Study Sessions

all right welcome back to class everyone wait could you repeat that repeat what what you just said welcome back to class

welcome back to thank you class no problem no

problem okay what are you doing what are you doing stop that please please stop I mean I know the

feeling I know how it feels to strain your wrist and your neck as you're trying to copy down everything your

teacher says but in these instances not taking is often a comfort mechanism and not necessarily a learning mechanism

scribbling everything down as fast as possible gives us a false sense of progress Although our hands are active

our mind usually isn't in this video I'm going to talk about five common note-taking mistakes and how to fix them

all right mistake number one transcribing instead of translating so as we covered at the start of this video

you should never transcribe your lecture if you are trying to copy down every single word you're teach teacher says

you're probably doing yourself a disservice why because you can most likely find the lecture recordings and

the lecture slides online we often rush to take notes because it excuses us from the harder and more important task

thinking in fact I argue that many students would be better off taking zero notes during lecture and forcing

themselves to pay attention instead but chances are you don't want to do that and fair you probably should write

something down during lecture so let me tell you a better way to to take notes instead of transcribing which is writing

everything down verbatim focus on translating which is writing things down in your own words as your professor

speaks avoid the urge to continuously write instead I want you to take notes in chunks focus on your professor's

words for 10 to 20 seconds let it digest and then write the main points in your own words if you've never taken notes

like this before it's going to feel uncomfortable because it'll feel like you're glossing over the important stuff

the diagrams the the facts the dates the events but the truth is you can revisit all these specific Minor Details on your

own time what you will not have access to later however is your professors and the overarching themes and ideas they

want to convey in fact these are often the ideas your professor might communicate on the spot and in the

moment they might not be available in a textbook or some external resource here's another way to think about it

learning is like Pottery you focus on the overall shape and structure first and then once you have that in place you

can go in and focus on the Minor Details and patterns to bring your Masterpiece to life knowledge Works similarly

instead of going right into the little details you need to create the structure first and this is often through the key

themes and messages and ideas and then once you have a sense of what you're learning and why you're learning it then

you can drill down with all the Minor Details to refine your understanding all this comes back to the one lesson that I

preach on this channel over and over again discomfort is a byproduct of learning actively engage engaging with

your professor's words instead of passively copying everything down is hard and most students won't want to do

that but you can either actively engage during lecture and trim down your study time outside of class or you can

passively engage and drastically extend your study sessions mistake number two obsessing over form now what do I mean

by this by Form I'm referring to the aesthetic and the format of your notes now I don't mean to sound like a hater

when I'm saying this but aesthetically pleasing notes are very over at if you want to decorate your notes and make

them look pretty outside of class please by all means do so and don't let me stop you but do not obsess over the aesthetic

while you're in lecture for two reasons first the more you focus on the aesthetic the less you focus on the

actual lecture embellishing your notes just gives you a false sense of productivity and second you'll be in a

constant state of panic trying to keep up with your professor and so again we run into this issue where you're not

actively engaging with the lecture content okay now let's talk about the format of your notes some of the

smartest students I know obsess over the format and rightfully so they want to make sure that their notes are neat and

organized to maximize their learning but my advice don't overthink it choose a format that works for you and run with

it for example if you don't like Cornell notes don't use Cornell notes because some academic Guru told you that they

were effective which they are by the way but I totally understand why you might not be a fan of them again what matters

more is the process of not taking itself for example are you actively engaging are you processing ideas in your own

words are you focusing on the key themes and messages that's what matters more but I would be remiss if I didn't at

least tell you what the different note-taking formats are so let's run through them quickly again if any of

these resonate with you great if not keep doing you first we have the good old outline method and this is the

notetaking method that carried me throughout high school and college and the premise is pretty simple organize

information hierarchically hierarch hierarchically is that how you say that use bullets to put main topics at the

top followed by subtopics underneath I prefer this format because it gives me the most space to work with which isn't

necessarily the case with the second format Cornell notes so for Cornell notes you want to divide your page into

three sections in narrow left column for cues and questions a wider right column for the notes themselves and then a

section at the bottom for summaries a benefit of this structure is that it forces active engagement with the

electure material but a drawback is that it takes a lot more time time after class or maybe even during class you're

going to have to remember to fill out that summary section for every single page now if you're not a fan of writing

summaries then you might be a fan of this third format the box method now I'll admit this one is a bit unusual and

I've never used it myself but the idea is simple group similar notes together and box them this can provide clear

visual separation between distinct ideas which can make studying a lot easier but my favorite not taking format at least

the one to study with are mind m Maps mind maps are great because they reflect the interconnected nature of knowledge

you have a central idea in the middle and then you have related ideas branching off and then you can integrate

distinct colors with separate areas of the Mind map to help with memory retention but I know what you're

wondering goart didn't you say you used the outline method during school and not mind maps that's correct I used the

outline method to take notes during class but I used mind maps to study outside of class mind maps can get very

messy if you're using them dur in lecture because you might not know when to split a branch into a sub Branch or

when to use different colors that's why I think that mind maps are instead useful when you're familiar with the

concept and understand the surrounding landscape once you've acquired knowledge you can then use a mind map to make

sense of it and see how everything fits together you know what else should fit together your study tools which is why I

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description to download Opera today and claim your free Spotify Premium offer and now back to the video mistake number

three ignoring your inner monologue so you know that voice inside your head during lecture the one that's like oh

wait this doesn't make any sense or wait how does that work capture these thoughts in your notes doing so is a

great way to reflect on the material and to make your notes much more memorable for example as I'm reading a book I will

annotate my exact thoughts in the margins if I find something funny I will write down LOL or if I find something

weird I'll say WTF followed by an explanation or sometimes if we're talking about a person that reminds me

of someone that I know or if we're talking about an event that reminds me of something that I've experienced I

will also note that down the more personal you can make your notes and connect these distinct Concepts to your

own lived experiences the easier it's going to be to retain that information the most important type of annotation

though in my opinion is the question mark if something confuses you anything confuses you during lecture even for

just a moment write down a question mark in the margin and in the moment not later not via email not after class

raise your hand and ask for clarification because I promise you the ideas that you're telling yourself

you'll revisit on your own time you won't you will probably forget about it as soon as lecture ends and also over

the course of the semester you'll encounter more material than you can possibly imagine and you will not have

time to go back through everything and see which parts confused you those question marks will be your indicators

and they will guide your study sessions so this way you can skip over the self-explanatory Concepts and double

down on what confuses you mistake number four failing to contextualize knowledge doesn't exist in isolation when you

learn something new it's probably connected to something you've learned previously or it's related to an

adjacent Topic in a different class your knowledge exists in the shape of a tree in other words it looks kind of like a

mind map when you take notes on a new topic you have to embed it in your knowledge Network in other words you

have to take this new piece of information and connect it to an old piece of information if you fail to

establish these connections your new knowledge will exist in isolation and slowly wither away over time but what

does this process look like how do you actually create these connections and contextualize your knowledge well I have

have three methods for you method number one is to include callbacks if you're taking notes on a topic that feels

familiar say so in your notes literally write down something like this reminds me of the theorems we learned last week

or this reminds me of reaction rates in chemistry you can embed these callbacks into your notes as you're taking them or

you can add them to the margins after class now an even stronger way to contextualize your knowledge is Method

number two draw comparisons callbacks are great but they're simple you're creating a connection without EXP

exploring the basis for that connection to further solidify your knowledge include a call back followed by a point

of similarity or a point of differentiation for example let's say you're taking notes on photosynthesis a

call back might be this Builds on our study of cellular respiration then a point of similarity might be both

processes involve energy conversion and then if you want to take it even further a point of differentiation might be

photosynthesis stores energy in glucose whereas cellular respiration releases it now you don't have have to do this with

all your notes all the time but it's an especially useful exercise if you're studying for an exam and want to make

sense of different concepts okay and then method number three map it out as I said earlier mind maps are a great study

tool in addition to taking notes during class I also recommend that you have a mind map that you build out over the

course of a semester or a unit after each lecture come back to this mind map and see if you can find a place to fit

in these new Concepts that you just learned the more connections you can draw between these new Concepts and the

existing topics on your mind map the better off you're going to be all right and then mistake number five this is

perhaps one of the biggest mistakes students make when taking notes doing a single pass let me explain no student is

going to take perfect notes on the first go but what do most students do they take their notes they close their

notebooks and they don't revisit them until exam time or better yet just never at all here's what I think you should do

instead after you finish taking your notes great put them away and go about about your day but after 24 hours or

even the same night I want you to revisit what you wrote down what you'll notice is that some of the stuff might

not make sense to you or some of the stuff you might want to flesh out even further this is the exercise and these

are the realizations that separate decent students from phenomenal students because it's uncomfortable taking notes

is the easy part using your notes to test Challenge and solidify your understanding is the harder and the more

important part in this whole process so as you're taking notes consider leaving gaps every few lines so you have space

to come back and refine your thoughts you'll want to revisit your notes shortly after you've taken them maybe

even the night of and then you'll want to revisit them 3 days later and then 5 days later and 2 weeks later and so on

this of course is the principle of space repetition which I'm sure every study tuber on this platform has talked about

the idea is to revisit your notes at increasing intervals to prevent the knowledge from decaying use these blank

lines to elaborate on any points or to clarify confusing details and at the the same time quiz yourself as you're going

through your notes rereading your notes is a bit overrated you also want to actively quiz yourself as you're doing

so so review a chunk cover it up with a piece of paper and then try to recite the main points in your own words better

yet take your notes and pretend you're teaching that material to someone else this of course is the fan technique

which I've talked about in previous videos and this study method is one I lived by especially for my social

studies courses the overarching idea here is that your notes shouldn't just be some stale resource that you create

once and then abandon rather your notes should be a resource that you revisit review and refine over the course of a

semester y'all that does it for today's video if you have a moment please take a minute or two to leave a meaningful

comment and let me know what resonated most with you and also if you want to excel in school and organize everything

you have going on check out my notion template which is linked in the description of this video y'all best of

luck this school year I hope 2025 is treating you right and I'll see you again next week