| Others have mentioned many ways to write useful notes. My recommendation is that you rewrite your notes to retain what you learned. I like to think of the rewrite as refactoring my notes on a particular subject. I like to treat my collection of notes as a concise book/article on a topic, this means I should be able to read through them and have everything I need. Ideally this means key points are quoted with references to other notes such as lecture slides or books and page numbers. The other recommendation I have is that the time between your first write and your rewrite depends on how good your memory is. I prefer to do it between 3 to 7 days after the first write. This means that anything that didn't fully stick gets somewhat forgotten, but once I re-read lecture slides or parts of a book, I pick it up again, and am able to put in a more thorough, yet concise, summary. As you rewrite you should also focus on whether your organisation of the topic fits this new set of notes. The high level table of contents becomes your your view on the ontology of the subject matter. Think of it as a mind-map that you can refer back to and expand on as your knowledge about the domain grows. BTW, I used to use Evernote with their linking feature for this. I now maintain a folder of Markdown files that link to each other. Maintaining your own personal Wiki may also achieve the same goal. |