This article was automatically translated from Japanese using AI. The Japanese version is the authoritative version.
People say all kinds of things about the study notes of smart people—that they’re beautiful, easy to read, and so on.
But when you try to imitate that and take neat notes in class, it often ends up being nothing more than a copy of what’s on the board, or it takes too much time, and things just don’t go well.
The most important thing about taking notes is finding and mastering a note-taking style that works for you.
Here I’d like to write about note-taking techniques, using my own approach as an example.
Rules for Taking Notes
First of all, no matter how much you study note-taking methods, you won’t be able to put them into practice.
What matters is deciding on your own set of note-taking rules.
There are three important points to consider when setting these rules.
- Keep it as simple and clear as possible
- Are you the type who reviews notes later, or the type who memorizes on the spot?
- How you categorize information
Keep it as simple and clear as possible
In situations where you’re taking notes during a class or lecture, information is basically flowing past you.
To take notes under those conditions, the key is getting things down on paper quickly.
That’s exactly why you need to keep up with the flow of information rather than making everything look pretty with a wide variety of colors.
Taking notes isn’t the main task—taking in the information is.
So your rules shouldn’t be the kind that make you stop and think, “Wait, which rule was that again?” They need to let you pick colors and decide how to write things intuitively.
Are you the type who reviews notes later, or the type who memorizes on the spot?
After class, you’ll probably use your notes when studying for exams.
What you write in your notes changes depending on whether you use them like a textbook or as cues to jog your memory.
If you use them like a textbook, you need to write down as much of the information from class as possible, which takes a corresponding amount of time.
But since you can then study primarily from those notes, they’re extremely convenient later on.
If you use them as memory cues, you filter the information down to a degree, which lets you concentrate on the class.
The problem is that when you go to study later, you often need to consult your textbook or other materials.
It may also depend on your teacher’s lecture style and the exams, but decide first and foremost which type you are.
If you’re the type who can remember most of what was covered in class, the latter approach should be fine.
If you’re someone who needs repetition to remember things, the former is probably better.
What you shouldn’t do is decide based on things like “my notes look nicer this way” or “I feel uneasy leaving anything out.”
How you categorize information
Color-coding in your notes is really just a way of categorizing information.
In other words, once you’ve sorted information into categories, all you have to do is assign a color to each one, and your color-coding rules are set.
Before thinking about colors, you need to decide what kinds of information you actually need to distinguish.
I’ll describe my own categorization scheme below.
One way to categorize is by important versus unimportant information.
Then, how finely do you divide things by importance?
Two levels, three levels, or more?
Besides importance, there are also headings, things the teacher said, things not in the textbook, supplementary information, and so on.
If you decide in advance how to provisionally record exceptions when they come up, you can get through the moment without hesitating and then refine your rules afterward.
If you set your rules with these key points in mind, you’ll end up with the ultimate note-taking method tailored to you.
How I Take Notes
I’ve been speaking conceptually up to now, so let me offer my own note-taking method as a concrete example.
First, I’m the type who memorizes on the spot, so I treat my notes as supplementary and put the emphasis on absorbing information during class.
Since I don’t want to spend much time writing, I keep my rules extremely simple.
My categorization is just whether information is important or not.
Important information goes in red, everything else in black.
Because I write a lot in red, I use an erasable ballpoint pen (FriXion) for it.
For information that might be important, or things I realize are important after writing them down, I underline them in red.
Anecdotes the teacher mentions are useful for recalling the content, so I jot them down small in black near the related material.
Books like “Note-Taking Techniques of University of Tokyo Students” get published, and they usually tell you to take beautiful notes—but that works for some people and not for others.
It didn’t work for me.
(My handwriting isn’t nice to begin with, so I never got into the habit of reviewing my notes when studying for exams.)
And since using many colors just made me hesitate, I found my own approach by accepting that my notes are simply memos.
Even if your notes aren’t beautiful, you can still get good at studying.
There’s no single correct way to take notes that works for everyone, so try various approaches and find a style that suits you—and that you enjoy!!