How I Take Notes While Reading − to Enhance My Focus and Extend My Memory

At the beginning of every semester, I always know which of my students will create the best output- Spoiler alert: It is always the ones that take notes.

Most of my students don’t take notes and can’t see the point.

Reading is not only to get to know the material better but also to get to know me.

It slows down my thoughts, increases my vocabulary, raises my self-awareness and self-esteem, builds good communication skills.

Reading makes me acutely aware that not all people have the same beliefs, desires, and intentions. Still, if I don’t take notes, much of that valuable knowledge gets lost along the way.

Taking notes extends my memory and functions as an external enhancement of my brain.

Taking notes ensures that my mind isn’t wandering and facilitates a deeper understanding of what I am reading.

Albert Einstein famously said:

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough

Taking notes allows me to reflect on more complicated topics and solve more challenging problems. Thank you, Einstein!

I Start With Why

I ask myself the most critical question: Why am I reading this, or why am I trying to learn this? What’s the point of all this?

The starting point of any journey is a why, the same goes for note-taking.

Why am I reading this in the first place?

Why am I taking notes?

What am I hoping to achieve with my notes?

What Am I Trying To Remember?

Everything I feel I am good at, I have remembered and can now apply in my life, but it all started with one question:

What am I trying to remember, or even better I’m, what I’m going to forget if I don’t learn this?

How do I need to use this information? e.g., on an article, a test, cited in an essay, as background for my personal development, etc.

What am I planning to do with my notes later? Am I taking notes forstudying or storing them, just in case?

Am I going to look at my notes again, or am I mostly taking notes to stay focused?

Memorization is a process of putting information into memory, understanding, retaining, and recalling this information.

That is why the process of remembering demands that I understand a concept, retain it for a period of time, and then recall the idea/concept when needed.

What’s The Point Of Taking Notes?

The primary purpose of note-taking is to boost my concentration and retain as much as possible of what I read.

I read thousands of books before I started to take notes and that is valuable information forever lost. Time I will never get back.

Today, I never read a book without taking notes, writing an article, or creating a class on the topic I am trying to learn.

Why?

For starters, it makes reading so much easier knowing that I am creating value for others; secondly, it helps me concentrate.

Everyone wins (^_^)

I Keep It Simple

I used to have difficulty reading books, and now I won’t stop reading.

My secret? Just a small number of notes keeps my mind from wandering. Sometimes if I am familiar with the topic, I only need to write down a few bullet points or questions.

How I take notes reinforces what I am paying attention to

Taking notes is like having a highly personal style. Still, no matter my style, it creates something that I can review later by studying and finding the information I need to revisit.

Notes allow me to repeat the material my way, ensuring that I have understood the main idea.

I Write Down MY Notes As Questions

I keep a small notebook at the side or put my phone on airplane mode and open my note-taking app when reading.

I then take breaks on each page or chapter to write down the main ideas and takeaways in the book.

I write small quotes based on what I read to help me capture and remember the material.

I love to use the Question Book Method when I take notes, this simple but powerful method is taking notes as questions rather than statements

This works well for two reasons:

1. The brain refuses to stop thinking about a question and will keep trying to answer it, even in my sleep.

2. I have some valid questions to ponder on later when I review my notes.

I write down the most important questions to answer instead of just writing down a lot of information on a piece of paper.

Why?

Because information is always contextual, and the more good questions I have, the more information/ data I have that gives context to a subject, person, or event.

In other words, context-awareness is my ability to extract knowledge from or apply knowledge to information, and it works so much better when I take notes.

My brain loves when I take notes, mostly because of the space I free up, which it then uses to pursue more creative things.

Summary of how I take notes while reading

Here’s a quick summary of how I take notes while reading:

I identify my purpose.

I Choose a technique that maximizes my focus on what aligns with my purpose.

There are many different ways of taking notes (notes in the margins, separate notes on paper, note-taking apps, the question-book method)

I always decide upfront if I take notes to optimize, review or retrieve information.

The review is the logical choice for material that I do not plan to study extensively.

The question book method I use when reading Non-fiction books and for researching.

If I need to go back to the text, again and again, I create a folder system in my notes that helps me find what I’m looking for later on.

Most importantly, you have to find the one that works for you.

I hope some of all this was helpful.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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