![]() In order to think, the premise goes, you need to write. But taking and storing notes well, means you don’t need to rely on memory, or scraps of post-its or chronological notes that don’t make sense in context so you can’t remember what it is you were trying to remember anyway. While, considering this, it is important to understand that writing and taking notes isn’t the ‘end-game’ for a writer (and we are all writers). When we might have books about how to write essays or dissertations and how to think critically, there is little literature available and far less teaching, about how to take good notes. It is that the skill of good note-taking has been left out of many study skills books. The initial premise of the book is interesting to start with. The idea of the Zettlekasten is that notes would all be linked to each other by topic so you create notes from everything you read/watch/discuss/learn around topics and draw links together in themes which you might not have seen, if you create ‘book’ or ‘lecture’ notes in a traditional way.īy not restricting notes to the book or the paper you are making notes about and linking by ideas, you might fall across links that the authors haven’t and find your own topics or see things you didn’t know you didn’t know, that you want to follow up. The book doesn’t just describe a system though, it seeks to provide an understanding of what note taking is used for and how and particularly to challenge those who might (and I include myself here), underline vaguely interesting paragraphs while I was reading something and rarely return to it. This book explains the system that Luhmann used and refines some of the discussion around in as times have changed and notes are more likely to be digitised now. He used this method of note taking and storing and it has been debated ever since. ‘ Zettlekasten‘ is a note-taking technique devised by Niklaus Luhmann, a well -known sociologist in Germany who wrote vast numbers of papers. ![]() ‘Studying does not prepare students for independent research, it is independent research’ And being of a curious mind, I bought the book. That’s the name of the ‘one simple technique’ which is referred to on the front cover, that will ‘boost writing, learning and thinking – for students, academics and non-fiction writers’. This book is an explanation of the Zettlekasten technique. I was recommended Roam Research (I’ll come back to that in another post) on Twitter when I was asking for advice about note taking apps and then through trying to learn about Roam and how to best use it, I came across discussion of the Zettlekasten technique of note-taking. I can’t remember how I first fell across this book. And best ideas are usually the ones we haven’t anticipated anyway. ![]() Each added a bit of information, filtered only by our interest, is a contribution to our future understanding, thinking and writing. ![]() I doubt we would have even learned to speak. ‘Imagine if we went through life learning only what we planned to learn or being explicitly taught. ![]() It is available on Amazon here and you can also download the first chapter, free, here and learn more about the book. This review relates to the book ‘How to Take Smart Notes’ by Sonke Ahrens. ![]()
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