| I'm a fully trained German lawyer and my method of knowledge acquisition at University was distilling books down to If-then-else statements, systematic relationships but mostly definitions and schemes. Putting it all in Anki and recording notes to audio files. My mantra was: I should know it all. I was working on the side to finance my studies 2-3 times a week as well. It was a full-time job 247 for almost a decade. After University, I wanted to approach the same rigor to the topics I care about. Becoming the next Humboldt, Goethe and alike but all note-taking systems I have used over the past couple of years (PARA, Cornell Notes, Zettelkasten, Obsidian, Anki, recording audio files, simply writing in a text file, physical Journal, hope of simply remembering information etc.) always seemed promising first but eventually, I ran into the following problems: 1. Too time-consuming to maintain
2. Too detailed or too extensive to be useful to future me
3. Too constraining (Learning for me is a mix of organic accumulation [coming across same/similar topics over time] and guided thinking) and foreign to the way my brain operates
4. Not enough time for revision (big one) ... and probably many more problems I haven't discovered yet. Since then, I've created my own system: 1. Using any text editor or pen and paper
2. I jot down my dominant feeling or dominant feelings after reading a piece of information (for example, I feel X after I've read Y)
3. Writing down answers to a couple of Why questions until I have found the root of feeling X
4. Writing out a thought experiment (if variable Z of [causes or root of feeling X] changes, how would it effect feeling X?) A note-taking system should help you reflect on the information you take in and since we reflect in different ways, designing your own system will help you understand and remember information better. Occasionally wondering about the same topics over and over again and then remembering that you have already written about it a couple of times already, will start an inner dialogue that will get you further into a topic than you would have expected. Learning for life and studying for a profession, is vastly different. It depends on whether you want to just know or to apply, and then throw as much time at it as you possibly can, in a way that enables you to differentiate between the important and irrelevant bits. Any note-taking system is just a platform for this process. |