The Art of Note Taking in the Digital Age

Editor, content marketer, product manager and writer with 12+ years of experience in the startup, design and tech digital media industries. Read total profile

Notation taking is as ancient an art as any. In that location are hefty tomes on the subject of how to best capture and organize information in a swift and legible manner and courses devoted to the bailiwick in colleges.

And yet, the most popular proposition in our Skribit widget , which you tin can utilize to suggest articles for Lifehack authors to write, is on the question of whether to apply digital or traditional methods of note taking. Information technology seems that the mountains of existent information haven't all the same caught upwards with the modern age, addressing traditional annotation-taking methods, but altogether bypassing digital note-taking technologies and techniques and assistance in deciding which method of note-taking is best for the private.

What practice we desire to have notes for?

In that location are all sorts of reasons to accept notes, and it's important to beginning expect to these reasons in deciding which particular method of note-taking is best for united states in the modern age. Different note taking needs demand different note taking methods and the importance of each of these needs to each of the states differs drastically. University students and freelance writers both tend to take notes for dissimilar reasons.

What might you need to take notes for? Here's a few I thought of (feel free to add your own in the comments):

• Ubiquitous capture—a notation taking organisation to help you capture ideas, thoughts and important data any time, any where. Note taking to ensure yous never forget.
• Retaining information from lectures and seminars—yous can't take a lecture home similar you lot can a book, but taking notes helps to outset the temporary nature of verbally delivered information.
• Problem solving—annotation taking equally a method of sorting out the flighty thoughts in your head with a more tactile medium.
• Visualization—visualizing complex systems and concepts with the help of diagrams and sketches.

While I'm sure I haven't covered every conceivable reason to take notes, these are the things that come up to mind as the most important, popular and common reasons for annotation taking.

Digital methods of notation taking

Digital methods of notation taking have grown in popularity over the concluding few years in particular. Applications similar Evernote and OneNote accept risen in popularity, with the old receiving enthusiastic reviews from many sites including this one and supporting many devices, including the iPhone. This makes information technology an excellent choice when it comes to ubiquitous capture.

The ubiquity of deject-supported, multi-platform applications is not the simply advantage to digital note taking. Your notes become indexable and searchable, which is infinitely useful in itself. And I don't know about you, only I tin blazon mode faster than I can write with a pen—that's either a product of the age we live in or the production of working as a writer who pumps out thousands of words on my keyboard each day, I don't know. Merely I'thousand guessing that nigh of you reading can type faster than y'all can write, too.

Also, every bit users of Evernote on the iPhone will know best, dropping photos of whiteboards, business cards, presenter'due south slides and the like into your notes is superbly piece of cake—with traditional methods, you have to write out every chip of info you want to keep.

But digital notation taking methods autumn down in a few important areas; cartoon diagrams, sketches and mind maps is usually impossible and where it is possible, by no means a pleasant experience. Experience free to drop me a link to an app that makes this sort of thing enjoyable, simply I don't believe such a thing exists. The obvious exception: tablet PCs. Merely nobody really wants to purchase a computer that can take notes better than a laptop and practise picayune else quite too.

Any sort of visualization is limited when it comes to digital note taking, and not just when it comes to diagrams, but the power to fashion text in any format not based on the paragraph.

Let's go back to the list of reasons for annotation taking and see how digital notation taking does:

• Ubiquitous capture—digital is a winner when it comes to ubiquity, though y'all'll demand a few fancy—and often expensive—devices to make that ubiquity true.
• Retaining information from lectures—digital wins here. Most people can proceed upward with the presenter far more speedily with a laptop than with pen and paper.
• Problem solving—sort of. Problem solving oft requires non-linear thought, and thus non-linear expression, but you tin still flesh an idea out in paragraph or bullet form.
• Visualization—non really; you need specialist, expensive equipment such every bit a tablet PC or fifty-fifty a graphic artist's tablet to make visualization as a role of note taking work.

Traditional methods of annotation taking

The good old pen and paper has served humanity well for… well, a damn long time. Get dorsum a bit farther and you've got papyrus, wax, chiseled stone and all sorts of things. The reason most annotation taking literature panders to such methods is but that such methods accept existed for a long fourth dimension. Nobody brought a laptop to take notes in a lecture ten years ago.

And while it can be dull, unless you lot learn skills such as shorthand usually merely learned past journalists and professional annotation takers, and tin't exist searched or snap an paradigm in betwixt blocks of text (without going home and printing one out and taping it in, which sort of defeats the purpose), information technology is flexible. Yous've got a blank canvas of paper before you, and you can mark it still y'all wish.

You can format text in foreign and unusual ways, including the famous Cornell method of note taking, diagram, sketch and visualize in whatsoever manner you wish without obstructing. Many fans of paper-based note taking telephone call it liberating, and not without reason. This is why the Moleskine has become an icon of frappucino-sipping hipster culture; those guys hate to be restricted.

There's one other reason many people love taking their notes on paper. It's never mentioned in a applied context, but I think it'south an of import point to make. It's tactile. Some people experience they can connect with their words more easily than they can with text on a screen when they create those words with a pen. And if that helps you process information, that'due south bully.

How exercise traditional methods of notation taking line upwardly with our listing of reasons to take notes?

• Ubiquitous capture—in that location'due south no reason you tin't take a notebook with you everywhere, simply at that place'south no denying that ubiquitous capture is far more easily achieved with digital methods (unless the thought to exist captured is visual in nature). Packing a phone in your pocket is piece of cake, taking a laptop everywhere is second nature for many, but lugging around a pen and pad isn't always desirable.
• Retaining information from lectures—if you can write quickly, write shorthand, or you're adept at actually truncating data on the fly and so you tin get it down before the lecturer moves on, note taking in lectures is totally doable with pen and paper. Just I wouldn't practice it; my mitt would balk upwardly long earlier I defenseless upward with what the speaker was going on about.
• Problem solving—you lot've got free control of the page which is always helpful when it comes to not-linear thinking; map it out nonetheless you lot like. Writing with a pen as well forces y'all to slow down a bit more, which is much better for processing information and coming upward with ideas than the fast-paced globe of typing. Paper wins when it comes to trouble solving.
• Visualization—digital note taking just can't match pen and paper for visualizing concepts, whether it's a diagram or sketch, or a good old mind map. Maybe one day things will alter in this department, but it's a clear win for paper.

The verdict?

The verdict is upwards to you.

Annotation taking is one of those things where the all-time course of activeness is totally dependent on what you demand to exercise. Do you need to sketch ideas for your graphic blueprint chore? Go paper. Do yous need to keep rails of shopping lists, things you've got to do tomorrow and ideas for articles? Get digital. Need the benefits of both? Then go with both.

The pros and cons are lined up in a row for you here—the decision, I promise, is much easier than it was before!

nesbitthonant2001.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/the-art-of-note-taking-in-the-digital-age.html

Share this post