Thinking for yourself MoC • Note-taking MoC
Conceptual notes
A better way than taking sequential notes—which is the way we're usually taught at school—is to take conceptual notes.
Sequential notes are notes taken exactly as you come across information. It is the identical storage and rote memorization of what we encounter. But it's not How the humain brain works.
When you write a conceptual note, you don't write every possible information down. You don't write every detail. Google and Wikipedia already exist to provide the minutiae and precision about details.. In a conceptual note, you write the overall concept about whatever information you want to learn and retain memory of.
It's about writing down the most important, over-arching stuff, in your own words.
The Universe is made of concepts that overlap and come time and again.
In a conceptual notes, you leave out the fine details and focus on the big picture. The most essential traits of the information you write about. The gist, The big lines, alongside the connections with other concepts you learned about. It is similar to Reasoning from first principles. You strip away all the fuss and go to the essence.
It is the true assimilation and understanding of a concept, rather than mere memorization.
If it's harder to do at first, good, because struggling with a subject is what makes you actually learn it.