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.
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.
Filter out: U.S.E
Instead of trying to write down and memorize everything, filter out what you put into notes everything that's:
- Useless
- Self-explanatory
- Easy to memorize.
With sequential notes you just follow the story that's been told.
Conceptual notes lead to a more creative process by enabling you to come up with your own associations, as you link ideas in a way that make sense to you.
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.
Conceptual Notes Framework
Conceptual notes foster:
- Active learning when receiving the content (either attending a conference / lecture, watching a video, listening to a podcast) instead of trying rote memorization.
- Natural growth of your body of knowledge by using old concepts/notes and building on top of it instead of re-learning from scratch every time, which encourages Reasoning from first principles.
- Build connections between concepts the way our brain makes associations, so that you create and link your notes in a way that make sense to you and, so you truly understand and remember easier and faster what you need.
No disciplines / no folders = connection serendipity
The Universe is made of concepts that overlap and come time and again. That's why siloing concepts in "disciplines" or separate "folders" is counter-productive. When you take conceptual notes, you let them float freely and allow for serendipity in connection between any concept.
This encourages invention, not regurgitation.