thanks to Canon for sponsoring a portion of this video
one of my most commonly asked questions is how do we take notes that are fast easy level
1000 aesthetic pretty efficient effective guarantees straight 100s on all exams and
a plus pluses make your teacher go ah make your classmates cry it's envy and solve all
your life problems patience young grasshopper do not fear for today I will finally reveal
my secret to having fast and perfect notes that always look like this and that take just
five minutes foreign
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sorry for shattering your Illusions this early in the video but my notes are definitely not
always this pretty or perfect and I'm pretty sure this is the case for 98 of note takers
out there unless you quite literally print them from someone else who is in that two
percent and so quite a few of you asked me how to get over mistakes or perfectionism
when taking notes and there are two Simple Solutions to this just look around at the
notes of the smartest people you know in your school or just in general at your classmates
notes chances are the majority of them are not aesthetic or perfect for instance all
of my smartest friends have really plain notes so aesthetic does not necessarily equal grades
and number two just ask yourself will I regret not getting a good grade or not having perfect
notes for me personally the answer is great not the look of the notes so in today's Declassified
note-taking Survival Guide I'll be showing you guys my step by step subsystem for handwritten
notes on paper in layers and the best times in my humble opinion to make easy but aesthetic
notes [Music] [Applause] [Music] so to begin my main principle is to keep my notes low-key
says simple understandable and Sparky so the pre-phase or the pre-game fate the pre-note
taking phase the before I start taking the notes okay I first separate my notes by notebooks
if I can or you can always separate your notebook into different classes by using page Flags
that's also an option but I personally prefer different notebooks and I also tend to like
lighter notebooks since my spine is already curved by years of carrying a backpack that
weighs more than all of Taylor Swift's Awards combined and less weight the better for my
back but if my classes or my school requires certain notebooks or binders I just go with
that also if your notebooks happen to look absolutely identical a fun but very optional
idea is to decorate the cover to distinguish it or to make a cover page in the beginning
of the notebook and maybe you go to a school where decorating notes is an allow out but
at least probably you can on the cover
[Music] ing of cans and ons the Canon selfie cp1500 Wireless compact photo printer is the
perfect solution for making your notes and notebooks more aesthetic quickly and easily
and is the perfect portable photo printer for at home and on the go the Canon selfie
compact photo printer allows you to print straight from your iPhone and iPad with AirPrint
1 and from your favorite device from any room in the house with Wi-Fi and since it comes
in various print sizes for all your crafting needs you can use the printer for diagrams
for your notes collages on your notebook covers or cover pages and useful photos to enhance
your visual learning and memorization foreign [Music]
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so if you're interested in trying the Canon selfie compact photo printer be sure to click
the link in my description box again a big thanks to Canon for sponsoring that part of
the video and now back to the note-taking tips [Music]
so for my note-taking stationary Essentials they're all very minimalistic and very simple
as you can see and basically it's just a pen and a highlighter ideally a highlighter that
also has another end so that that's it and big big huge huge tip if you're using a pencil
or a pen try to find one that is comfortable for you I had the issue where in high school
I think I was using a Muji pen or some kind of pen that didn't have a rubber support I
really injured my thumb so definitely try to figure out which writing grip and also
which pen gives you the least discomfort big mistake big huge so another major question
a lot of you guys asked about note-taking is how do you know what to actually take notes
on and which information is noteworthy and so this is how I approach note-taking and
I tend to customize it for each class so step number one is to see if there is a study guide
or an outline that comes with a class so for example in the semester my cognitive psychology
class actually had study guides for each exam so instead of just writing notes I ended up
writing directly on the study guide and just filling it out essentially you'll know whatever
is going to be on the study guide will also most likely end up on the exam and you won't
be taking any Superfluous notes
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foreign [Music] so if there isn't a study guide for the class which usually there isn't
I then like to go to the end of the textbook and just skim through the outline and then
I essentially write whatever was in the outline because usually they only include the very
most important information I will probably expand a little bit on what is in the outline
but it gives me a general idea of what to write about if this is an option I also like
to just directly take notes on the slides obviously this is definitely a lot easier
if you have an iPad but if you feel like the slides of the lectures are useful and you
just prefer to write directly on them and come to class prepared and not have to actually
write out your own notes that also can be helpful for knowing what to write and the
final thing I do to figure out what to take notes on is I evaluate the first exam or chapter
test so for instance if I just took my first test I like to think about did I feel like
they were more based on the lecture or more based on the textbook where they more memorization
based or were they more conceptual and essentially by analyzing the questions I can then tailor
my future note taking in the rest of the class to the strategy that I have for the exams
[Music] so phase one are in class or lecture notes fast utilitarian guide letter for letter
and young I know that doesn't really make sense but just go with it so I first tend
to take notes on the lecture unless I have a class that specifically says that I should
first read the textbook and then go to the lecture and there are two options here one
is to just sit and listen to the lecture and not take any notes and just try to understand
everything the teacher is saying or option two is to try to write verbatim essentially
everything that the teacher is saying without actually understanding anything that they're
lecturing about simply because I have the memory of a squirrel and I tend to forget
basically everything five minutes after I heard it unless I wrote it down and now that
I've been doing online university I tend to do both in one where I just pause the lecture
and I try to understand everything that the professor is saying and I write notes simultaneously
but this is essentially a impossible in in-person classes unfortunately professors don't tend
to agree when you just put your hand up and say pause for me ma'am
it doesn't really go well so I don't recommend doing that and instead if you want to save
time you can either look at the lecture slides beforehand and just write down an outline
of essentially all of the points and the slides but if you don't have access to any lecture
slides then at this point I literally just rely on pretty much one pen I usually don't
even spend time making any headers at this point and I'm just frantically trying to write
as much as I can down from the professor or the teacher so here are some tips for making
your notes faster and what I like to do is I essentially shorten the words to essentially
texting language I will use plenty of abbreviations I also use symbols and yeah this just makes
note taking faster and more efficient so after the lecture I usually quickly skim through
the notes and I write down on a sticky note any questions that I have so then once I get
home I take notes from the textbook on the specific chapter pages that the teacher told
us to but I only write down notes on things that were not mentioned in the lecture so
that I don't write them down twice and waste time just repeating everything and I double
check to see at the end if the textbook answered my questions that I had on the sticky note
if it did then great and if it didn't then I'll usually ask the teacher or I will go
on the Internet and try to find an explanation or tutorial that will help me understand the
concept [Music]
so phase two is better accurate succinct informative and complete so these are the kinds of notes
that I usually take when I'm preparing for a chapter test or a unit test so at this point
I like to rewrite and combine my textbook and lecture notes into one and make sure I
really fully understand everything that they're saying so these notes are a little more Visual
and fancy than my previous notes but still nothing too crazy and honestly you can make
really pretty notes even with just two colors and a couple pens so I think ultimately it's
about doing what makes you feel best if taking pretty notes really stresses you out then
just don't but if you find it relaxing and you like drawing and doodling it makes your
notes easier to read more Visual and just more fun which is always a plus so at this
point I also might add in some practice questions from past quizzes or examples from the textbook
if I feel like I need to review them I will add in some visual diagrams or images and
sometimes I'll even do this thing where I cover vocabulary or certain phrases or words
with a page flag or just cover it up with a piece of paper and that way essentially
My Notes act as flashcards and I don't really need to make separate ones and I can test
myself with my own notes
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and so last but not least is the cheat sheet phase which is cut down helpful essential
always with you and turtles I couldn't think of anything else for the letter T so we're
just going with hurdles so before making my exam summary pages I always like to either
do a practice test to understand what my weakest areas are or where I am struggling the most
or I do this thing called blurting which is essentially where you just write down everything
that you can remember from the top of your head on a specific topic and then you check
whether you got everything correct and you go over what you didn't get correct and you
also go over the things that you didn't remember and so after that I make my cheat sheet which
is essentially my exam summary page which I have shown in previous videos usually my
exam summary pages are by far the prettiest or or the most visually appealing notes that
I make and often this is because I'm trying to really really remember what is on them
because I've just noticed that when I have really visual notes and lots of diagrams for
whatever reason I can kind of remember even certain information on where it was in the
page and for instance mind mapping helps me make connections between different concepts
and essentially on my cheat sheet or my exam summary pages I just put down the information
that I really struggle with the most that I want to keep reviewing over and over again
for the days leading up to an exam and specifically on the information that I'm least confident
in and I feel like I need to review the most also I just want to emphasize that notes are
not one size fits all and they also even vary depending on the subject and here are examples
of your notes and just goes to show that everyone has different note-taking processes I think
it's finding the system that combines good results and also enjoyable at the same time
I think that's the ideal lethal comb combo to make studying more fun and enjoyable
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