Note Taking

[robertbanking]

Hello you wonderful and intelligent people that make up this forum, i sincerely hope you are having a good weekend and doing well.

I have recently been doing a course on digital marketing, which consists mainly of videos which features live examples of how to do what i am learning. Whether that is Search Engine Optimisation and PPC Marketing. I found i have made about 9 full A4 pages of notes, and i find i have made too many notes. As when i am applying the knowledge i find that to have so many notes is not productive. I feel like i have summarised the whole course. I kindly wondered what i should do to limit my notetaking, should i create like a summary in bullet points of each section, maybe just one or two sentences? I always worry my notes will leave me not been able to understand what i have written but i suppose i can also refer back to the course. If anyone could kindly help me with this it would mean the world to me and i would be forever grateful and thankful.

Sending you lots of good wishes and thanks for all the amazing people on this forum, who help others and post some amazing content. Have a fantastic weekend and all the very best.

 

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[YouCanDoThis]

Did the courses you followed include copywriting? Or creative writing at all? Because that's a skill you can use in your own note taking too.

I usually take notes with the mindset of "I'm writing an article on this that I could post on a blog". With the mindset that others should benefit, you can elevate your writing. Even if no one else sees it.

Don't copy word-for-word what was said, but try to paraphrase the message of the section in as few as words as possible while still keeping the message. Use your own voice. See this as copywriting to yourself. You want communicate your message both clearly and succinctly. Just like you want to do on websites.

Your future self is just another person.

Another technique you could try out is Progressive Summarization. Tiago Forte talks a lot about that. In essence you take notes while, say, reading a book. When you get back to your notes later on, you start highlighting the things view as valuable at that point. Coming back for a third time? Start bolding the valuable parts in only the highlights. And so on. This way you zone in more and more to what you actually find valuable, without throwing away your entire summary.

 

[robertbanking]

Did the courses you following include copywriting? Or creative writing at all? Because that's a skill you can use in your own note taking too.

I usually take notes with the mindset of "I'm writing an article on this that I could post on a blog". With the mindset that others should benefit, you can elevate your writing. Even if no one else sees it.

Don't copy word-for-word what was said, but try to paraphrase the message of the section in as few as words as possible while still keeping the message. Use your own voice. See this as copywriting to yourself. You want communicate your message both clearly and succinctly. Just like you want to do on websites.

Your future self is just another person.

Another technique you could try out is Progressive Summarization. Tiago Forte talks a lot about that. In essence you take note while, say, reading a book. When you get back to your notes later on, you start highlighting the things view as valuable at that point. Coming back for a third time? Start bolding the valuable parts in only the highlights. And so on. This way you zone in more and more to what you actually find valuable, without throwing away your entire summary.

Thank you very much for your response YouCanDoThis, you are a wonderful and amazing human being. I truly hope you are doing well and are happy.

Sadly the course did not include copywriting, however this is something i could consider learning so i am very thankful of you mentioning this. In summary i was watching various videos on Search Engine Optimisation and PPC Marketing, i found i was skipping the video forward in 3 minute sections then making notes on that point. I worry that if i use as few words as possible i may not understand the message. However i can look things up again if i need to.

Can i kindly ask how you would go about paraphrasing for instance a 20 minute video on Search Engine Optimisation, are you kindly looking for the most important message in this video please? Further or a summary that trys to tie together what the whole video is about please? If you please had any thoughts on this it would mean the world to me and i would be very thankful.

Sending you lots of good wishes YouCanDoThis and thank you so much for being an incredible and helpful human being. I truly hope that you have alot of success and thank you so much for your time and support.

 

[Tom H.]

Don't try to create a reference to all of the material covered in a video. Instead your notes should be a higher-level encoding of core concepts as you relate to them.

Try visual notetaking, such as in the books "Sketchnote Handbook", "Pencil Me In" and others. There are plenty of people promoting the same similar ideas... if you just search for "sketch notes" it will get you started.

Look up Benjamin Keep and Justin Sung on YouTube. They both give great advice about note taking. I wouldn't get hung up on trying to learn Sung's mindmap methods exactly, unless you are really stuck and need someone's step by step advice. But definitely hear what they have to say and apply it to your own notetaking.

I like "free recall" as demonstrated by Benjamin Keep. It's super simple, but feels like it's pretty effective and helping you learn quickly.