Why Take and Make Notes

Discover how note-taking and note-making can transform stress into serenity, enhancing mental health, focus, and tranquility through effective journaling practices

Why Take and Make Notes
Note-taking and note-making can be life-changing. Image generated using DALL-E

In this article, I'll share some ideas about why note-taking and note-making can change your life for the better (seriously!).

Note-taking and note-making are underrated

Note-taking is an underrated skill. I strongly believe that schools should teach proper note-taking skills as part of their curriculum. Effective note-taking is a superpower.

Similarly, note-making is also underrated. I've written about the difference between the two in another article, but in essence, note-taking is about capturing information and knowledge that comes from the outside world, while note-making is about expressing and capturing what comes from you.

Both can truly be transformative for your personal and professional life. Let me tell you why.

Note-taking vs Note-making
Taking notes and making notes are different but complementary. Learn about the difference and why you should care

Note-taking helps to learn more effectively

As a lifelong learner, taking notes while learning is truly essential to me. You will never see me without a way to take notes during a conference talk, a lesson, while watching an online course, or while reading a non-fiction book. I even take notes when I meet my therapist 😂.

As I've argued in my article about The Capture Habit, capturing thoughts, ideas and knowledge is key to being able to connect the dots. If you follow a lesson but don't capture the essence of what was presented, it means that you're relying completely on your memory, on the course material, or on other people, all of which are risky. Your memory may fail you at any time, and you might not be able to remember everything you need. The course material might only provide a brief summary, and omit a lot of information that was shared "live". And relying on other people is very risky because they might not be organized, might not care, or might have taken notes that don't "work" for you or that are incomplete.

Note-taking is, in a sense, the inverse of lecture delivery — Ben Schneiderman — Sparks of Innovation in Human-computer Interaction
The Capture Habit
Why capturing ideas and concepts can make a huge difference for your personal development and career

Assuming that you have an efficient and effective note-taking technique (a topic for another day), taking notes will let you capture everything you need. In addition, taking notes will help you memorize at least a part of the information, simply because you need to focus twice while taking notes: once to listen and understand, and once more to express the ideas in your own words.

Armed with your notes, you will later be able to apply the Feynman Technique or similar approaches to make sure you understood the material, identify your knowledge gaps, dive deeper, and study (if you need to).

The Feynman Technique
Richard Feynman has given us a wonderful technique to improve the way we learn. Discover the famous Feynman technique and start learning more effectively
Note-taking helps to learn and memorize. Image generated using DALL-E

Moreover, taking notes will help you capture important concepts, and make links between those (e.g., using concept maps). The act of taking notes will help you create better mental models. In turn, that deeper knowledge and those mental models will enable you to solve more complex problems.

As an added benefit, your notes will make it possible for you to share your knowledge with others. As such, note-taking can not only transform your own life but also improve other ones. How cool is that?!

Note-taking will help you retain more

If you keep your notes, then you'll always have a reference to come back to. Assuming you have solid notes, you will then be able to quickly remind yourself about ideas. Notes are persisted memories. They're records of ideas you've encountered, and records of your own thinking.

Notes are always evolving. Revisiting those will help you dive deeper, and memorize the important parts (if you need to), for instance using spaced repetition. Also, when you revisit those, you will be able to update them to match your current thinking, make links with new ideas, etc.

By the way, check out the article I wrote about why you should take notes while reading non-fiction books.

Why you should take notes while reading non-fiction books
Discover how note-taking while reading non-fiction books can dramatically enhance your understanding and retention

Note-taking helps to be organized and reliable, working as pros do

If you want to be a real professional at work, you need to be organized, structured, and reliable. Note-taking can help you check all of those boxes.

I've written an article a few years ago discussing this topic.

How to Take Notes at Work and Never Forget Anything
How to organize notes at work and never forget anything. Be on top of your game at work.

If you don't have time to read it now, then here's the gist of it:

  • You can better focus on what needs to be done
  • You can take note of all the work you have to do, capture the context, the deadlines, the responsibilities, etc
  • You can track your goals
  • You can capture meeting notes and know who said what and when
  • You can track decisions, when and why they were made
  • You can save and restore your mental contexts to improve your productivity
  • You can plan your work days/weeks ahead
  • You can make plans for yourself and your teams
  • You can perform rapid reviews and improve continuously
  • You can share information more efficiently
  • You can keep track of how you went from A to B
  • You can create world-class documentation for you and your teams
  • ...

Taking notes at work can have a very positive impact on your career, as it did on mine.

Note-taking keeps you engaged

When you are in a business meeting or in a classroom, your ability to focus your attention is directly related to the end results. If you're daydreaming, then you'll miss the important points, and you won't retain what truly matters. You have to really be there.

Note-taking helps you focus and be present. Image generated using DALL-E

Note-taking is doing. It forces you to be there, focus your attention, and to listen closely. Listening carefully will allow you to better understand.

Note-taking helps to organize information

When you take notes, you are forced to follow the pace. There's no time to waste because the lesson/discussion keeps going, and you have to capture the most important elements. To do so, your brain has no choice but to quickly organize information, identify the key ideas and structure the knowledge. Of course, your ability to do that will improve with practice. It's a skill that you need to develop over time. As your note-taking skills improve, you'll notice that your notes will become more and more valuable.

Organizing the information can also be done in multiple steps. While reviewing your notes, you can reorganize the content in a more logical fashion (e.g., based on the importance/relevance). At that point, having digital notes becomes much more practical.

Find Your Perfect Note-Taking app with this Free Database of ~300 Tools for Thought
Discover the Ultimate Database of ~300 note-taking and Personal Knowledge Management Tools.

Note-taking helps reduce stress

When you're stressed, taking notes can help you reduce your stress level. The simple act of writing helps reduce stress because it channels your attention and makes you think, which leaves less room for your stress and fears to take all your energy.

Note-taking can help reduce stress. Image generated using DALL-Efocusfocus

Note-taking helps to be more organized, objective, and realistic

During my recent breakup, taking notes helped me a great deal to remain objective and realistic. Instead of focusing on the pain and sadness, I took notes to organize myself, make plans, and focus on the next steps. Doing that not only helped me clarify my situation but took me from a sad, past-focused state to an enthusiastic, forward-looking one. This truly made a world of difference.

That's the beauty of note-taking. You take notes, organize those, structure ideas and thoughts, and turn those into actionable plans. Then, all you need is willpower to turning those into reality (a story for another day). This is also related to stress reduction. Having clear plans is reassuring, empowering, and avoids being overwhelmed.

Note-taking can help you go from idea to success

Great ideas are not made to fly around. They need to be transformed.

As I've argued in my article about The Capture Habit, words fly away, while writings remain. Capturing your best ideas is the first step to turn those into reality. Taking notes of your ideas will allow you to explore those further. This will help you be objective about their value, their feasibility, etc. Also, once you dive deeper and turn one into a project, making plans will once again turn a vague idea into something you can make real and tangible.

In a sense, note-taking can help you increase your luck surface area. The more ideas you turn into reality, the more you increase your chances to "be lucky" and be successful.

The Capture Habit
Why capturing ideas and concepts can make a huge difference for your personal development and career

Note-making makes you more creative

Making notes is a great way to explore ideas. It's no wonder that there's a deep correlation between note-making and creativity. When you take notes and make notes, you create and uncover connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.

If you combine the capture habit with note-making, you'll be able to mix your own ideas and those of others to derive new ones. And that's what creativity is all about.

As an author and content creator, my notes are incredibly valuable. Anything that I capture can later be reused, transformed, mixed, adapted, etc.

Note-making can help you learn more about yourself

Note-making is a fantastic way to help you learn more about yourself. By writing your thoughts and feelings down, you can learn about your mental state, make the unconscious conscious, discover more about how you think and feel about the world, etc.

As I've mentioned, note-making is about writing down what comes "from the inside". It means your thoughts, your ideas, your "aha" moments, your life experiences, your feelings, etc. Of course, you don't have to write it all down, it doesn't make sense. But writing the important things down can make a huge difference.

Note-taking and note-making can change your life

Taking notes can help you learn, which can already make a huge difference in your life. You can also leverage note-taking as well as note-making to plan and organize your life (e.g., decide who you want to be in 10 years and make plans to get there), deal with grief, deal with tough life challenges, and become a better version of yourself, day after day.

As a starting point, I strongly recommend journaling. You might have pre-conceived ideas about journaling, so I recommend you to read the articles I've written on the topic:

journaling - Sébastien Dubois
Explore Knowledge Management, Lifelong Learning, Note Making, Personal Organization, and Zen Productivity

You need a system

Hopefully, by now you should be convinced that note-taking and note-making are really valuable. But you might be wondering about how to get started...

My first recommendation is simple: start with pen and paper. Buy a notebook and take simple notes. Don't worry about techniques at first. Focus on clarity. But if you keep your notes around, which I strongly recommend, then that will quickly become messy unless you learn more about knowledge organization techniques. That's why I also recommend using a digital note-taking solution such as Obsidian to act as your single source of truth.

Why you need a single source of truth for your PKM system
Having a single source of truth for all types of data in your PKM is key to a solid system

Consider your paper notes as transient. You need those for practical reasons, but they're temporary. You need to transform the important ones into digital notes whenever possible.

Unlocking Potential: The Value of Transitioning from Analog to Digital
Unlock the Power of Digital: Transition from analog to digital for endless possibilities! Convert paper notes to a digital Personal Knowledge Management system, connect ideas, and harness the future of knowledge

If you're serious about note-taking and knowledge management, then at some point you will want to explore topics such as the PARA method, the Johnny Decimal system, the LIFT principle, why and how to tag notes, Maps of Content (MoCs) or the Zettelkasten method. Those are not mandatory, but based on my experience, they're really useful to stay organized and avoid ending up with a mess. And you can find more here:

personal knowledge management - Sébastien Dubois
Explore Knowledge Management, Lifelong Learning, Note Making, Personal Organization, and Zen Productivity

And for those of you who are in a hurry and want to go from zero to hero quickly, check out my Obsidian Starter Kit. It's a solid starting point based on my own knowledge management system. I've also published an overview of my system.

Obsidian Starter Kit and community
Who is this for?You are just getting started with note-taking or you’ve recently switched to ObsidianYou wonder how to take smart notesYou want to know how to properly organize your notes and avoid creating an overwhelming messYou want a solid system that scalesYou wonder what Zettelkasten, the PARA method, and the Johnny decimal system areGetting started with Obsidian is not the hardest thing in the world, but it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out how to structure and organize your knowledge base. You have a busy life, and you don’t want to spend weeks or even months figuring out the “right” approach.What is this?I’ve been passionate about information, knowledge management, and PKM for more than 20 years. As an author, blogger, knowledge worker, and entrepreneur, I needed solutions to store and organize an enormous amount of information.Over the years, I’ve explored, used, and advocated many tools but have been using Obsidian extensively since 2020. With the Obsidian Starter Kit, I offer you the result of my own research and experimentation. It’s like a cheat code to jump straight to stress-free note-making.I’ve spent months refining and perfecting my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system, and have spent countless hours tweaking my system. I’ve published a few articles to share some ideas about this. My system combines the Zettelkasten approach, the PARA method, the Johnny decimal system, and other ideas to create a solid basis for my work as an author, blogger, and content creator.The Obsidian Starter Kit is a ready-made Obsidian vault that includes my recommended organization system and plugins, as well as example notes to help you get started. It also comes along with a user-friendly guide.What’s included?If you buy access to the Obsidian Starter Kit, you’ll get:The Obsidian vaultA comprehensive and solid structure with support for Journaling and ZettelkastenLeveraging the PARA method and the Johnny Decimal systemMany recommended plugins to boost productivity and automate actionsA clear system for Journaling, Meeting Notes, Periodic reviews, etcMany templates to improve consistency and productivityA powerful dashboardMaintenance notes (e.g., find duplicate and orphaned notes)Automation rulesMany examplesThe user guideLifetime access to the Personal Knowledge Management community for support and knowledge sharingIn addition, you’ll also get free access to all future updates. Over time, I’ll expand it step by step to include tutorials about the various aspects; from exploration/curation to summarization and reuse.What’s in the user guide?The user guide is a growing and evergreen knowledge base about how to take smart notes. It includes:Installation instructions.Details about the contents of the Obsidian Starter Kit (i.e., Obsidian vault structure, key design principles, included plugins, etc.)A clear overview of Obsidian and its core concepts (everything you should know and care about)Clear explanations about...The Zettelkasten methodAtomic notesProgressive summarizationThe PARA methodThe LIFT principleThe Johnny Decimal systemJournalingMaps of Content (MoCs)Periodic reviewsWhy and how to tag notesTemplatingThe Markdown syntaxWhy you need a single source of truth for everythingThe collector’s fallacyThe Inbox Zero principleHow to capture informationHow to capture quotesHow to capture information about persons of interestHow to extract knowledge from daily notesHow to save mental contextsObsidian tips and tricksWhat’s in the video course?The Obsidian Starter Course is a video course (~2h20) of content covering:Obsidian: installation, user interface, key features, plugins, automation, tips and tricks, etcThe Markdown syntaxYAML metadataPersonal Knowledge Management techniques and principles: the Johnny Decimal system, the PARA method (e.g., the Zettelkasten method, the LIFT principle, Atomic notes, Maps of Content, knowledge capture & extraction, etc)JournalingPeriodic reviewsTemplatesAutomationTask managementBest practices and recommendationsHands-on explanationsand more!Evergreen contentThe user guide of the Obsidian Starter Kit is expanding day after day, week after week. It will soon include:More theoryDetailed processes (e.g. when to take notes, how to use Zettelkasten in practice, daily notes, periodic reviews, ...)Additional how-to guidesMore tips and tricks...The Obsidian vault also evolves over time:The structure improvesNew templates are addedNew plugins are addedetcRefunds policyIf you’re not 100% satisfied, then just let me know, and I’ll issue a full refund. I’ll only ask you a single question: How can I improve the product?If you think about asking for a refund, then consider reaching out to me with your issues, questions, and remarks. I’m always available and happy to help. My goal is to help you succeed.Testimonials”Finally clickeđ how awesome @Obsidian is! Thanks to your excellent Obsidian Starter Kit!”— Cal Desmond-Pearson (@CalSocialHermit)“Off and running w/ @obsdmd. I’ve installed the app & have @dSebastien Starter Kit & my own fresh start Vault open. Learning from former & putting into practice w/ real content in latter. So far, so good”— Raymond D Sims (@rsims)“Great content - got me up to speed with what I was looking for fast ! Sébastien answered some questions by mail also which was much appreciated ! Thanks”— Sam Gonzales”As someone who has bounced around trying to find the right Knowledge tool, I’ve realized that many of my issues have been related to the complexity of the tools and the processes. The structure, design and explanations provided in the Obsidian Starter Kit have finally given me the foundation I’ve needed. 100% worth it”— Michael Aaron (via e-mail)“I absolutely love your kit and it has been so immensely helpful”— Ashwin Appiah (via e-mail)“Thanks for making the product. I’m making efforts to start using Obsidian more in my daily workflow and having a place to start makes the task much less daunting!”— Liam Weight (via Twitter DM)“I’m very new to PKM, but the Obsidian Starter Kit has been a tremendous help in getting me started”— Fredrik Nordström (via the PKM community Slack)“Sebastien’s Obsidian Starter Kit is a powerful tool for those looking to dive into the world of Obsidian without being overwhelmed. It’s a comprehensive solution that significantly shortens the learning curve, providing an impressively structured way to start capturing notes and facilitating daily journaling. The kit’s integration of automated tasks and pre-designed templates are a boon to beginners, alleviating the initial intimidation of starting from scratch. If you’re new to Obsidian and need a solid starting point, this starter kit comes highly recommended. It doesn’t just help you navigate Obsidian, but also empowers you to harness its full potential right from the get-go.”— Lubos KolouchFredrik (via the PKM community Slack)“Just to thank the work and content that allowed me to discover the background of a custom vault. It was a real boost for me and given the price, it was a real investment of time and learning.”— Trobrillant

At the end of the day, what matters is that you design a system that works for you, whatever that is. As Richard Branson said:

It doesn’t matter how you record your notes. As long as you do.

I've published a video about this topic:

Conclusion

In this article, I've shared thoughts about why note-taking and note-making can change your life. I've given a number of concrete examples, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. It's an immensely useful skill to develop

I hope that you will at least give note-taking and note-making a serious try!

That's it for today! ✨