Should you take your notes on a computer or should you stick to a paper notebook?
If you're watching this video you're probably looking for ways to take more efficient notes
in class and also make those notes easier to study later.
So, which method is the best for both of those?
On the one hand, taking notes on a computer is, in most cases, a lot faster than writing
them down by hand.
You can also go back and add things to already written notes, reformat things easily, and
as an added benefit you can sync things to different devices if you're using an app like
Evernote.
That way you can study notes on your phone or any other device you have with you.
But, on the other hand, when you take your notes on paper, you have a lot more flexibility.
You can draw arrows and notes, make symbols a lot easier, and for math notes, it's hands
down a better method.
Also, there are some research findings that actually speak in favor of paper notes and
those are what I want to cover in this video.
The study, which you can read more about if you go to the companion blog post for this
video, found that students who take their notes on a computer tend to write an average
of 310 words per lecture.
On the other hand, students who wrote on paper, took notes at an average of 173 words.
The study also found that students who took their notes on paper were more readily able
to recall what they had learned about a half an hour after the lecture.
The conclusion that the researchers came to was that students who take their notes on
laptops were more apt to just record verbatim what was said in the lecture.
While students who took their notes on paper were actually recording what they were learning
and creating new conclusions on the fly.
Now my last video on note-taking systems I talked about a system called the flow method
of note-taking.
This system was created by Scott Young and it's based on a principle he created called
Holistic Learning.
Holistic Learning basically means taking points of information that may be unrelated, making
a giant web of them, and making new conclusions out of that information.
The foundational idea behind Holistic Learning is to learn it once.
Learn the lecture material while you're in class by creating your own version of it in
your notes.
This is the point I want to get at in this video.
Whether or not you choose to take your notes on a computer or paper, you need to be deliberate
about learning, as well as you can, in class through the way you take your notes.
Think of it this way.
When your professor presents a new concept in class, your brain interprets the data in
two different ways.
It sees the syntax of the phrase or the word that was said, the letters and the way the
words are arranged in the sentence, but it also sees the meaning behind it.
So if your professor says that, "Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves."
Your brain sees the sentence and the letters that make it up, the syntax, but it also sees
two different concepts, eucalyptus leaves and koala bears, and connects them together.
Now when you're recording your notes on the computer it can be really easy to just slip
into the mindset of recording every single thing that was said.
When you do this, you're only paying attention to the syntax which means that, later on you
have to go back and relearn the concepts.
People who take notes on paper are more apt to look at the concepts as they're presented
and learn them right away.
This is because they're not using so much brain power on recording every little detail
in the lecture.
If you choose to take your notes on a computer, be deliberate about learning the concepts
as they're presented.
Don't be a transcription machine.
Or, if you find that the temptation to just mindlessly record notes on your computer is
too great, try switching to paper.
After you've taken some notes on paper, you can use an app on your phone to record them
and store them in Evernote.
Not only will this give you access to your notes wherever you have your phone, but it
also makes the text of your notes searchable as long as your handwriting isn't crap.
So, that's it for this video.
The takeaway here is just to be deliberate about learning the concepts that are presented
in class as they're being presented instead of just trying to record them all.
If you don't do this, you're just creating a lot more study time for yourself after class.
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