The Problem With Note-Taking
Often when note-taking, it’s easy to look back at your created notes and wonder what you originally meant. This is apparent if you’re learning something new such as when taking an online course or grasping new concepts.
This is not your fault if you’ve found yourself in this situation. Most of the time, the act of writing is an attempt to comprehend the thoughts going on in your head at that moment in time.
Our brains absorb new information daily, especially in the modern world of distractions. So, over time, accessing your notes’ original intentions and meaning becomes a greater challenge.
1. Taking Notes of Your Notes
Taking notes of your notes is a useful strategy that can help overcome this short-term memory barrier to learning. Simply put, this is the practice of annotating your written notes with a fresh mind, as though you are observing them for the first time.
These extended notes allow you to reflect and ask questions, embracing a writing style similar to journaling. This helps you develop a critical mindset and consolidate your understanding of trickier concepts by gaining a new perspective.
There are several ways to blend this technique across all notetaking applications. For instance, you can change the font color or use italics to distinguish your initial notes from your extended point of view. However, many applications offer unique features which you can use to give this technique more depth and enhance your critical thinking skills.
How to Use Comments to Apply the Notes of Notes Concept
Comments are a great way to utilize the notes of notes technique. Notion offers a unique, easy-to-use comments system to annotate created pages. To create a comment, highlight the desired text and select the Comment button in the menu that appears, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + M.
You can also create page references within a comment, which can be convenient for linking pages and improving your understanding. Do this using the @ tool as outlined below:
Notion also allows you to view all page comments in a dedicated panel. As a result, you can distinguish your original notes from your annotations made later and thus better understand your thinking. To access this feature, click View all comments icon located in the top right corner of your workspace.
You may also consider other software that uses a commenting system or follow this guide to see how to comment on Office files in Google Drive.
2. Creating Revision Documents
It can be hard to retain information when you are overwhelmed with data. In an ideal world, we could write things down and have a permanent imprint of them in our brains, but this is far from the truth, as The Forgetting Curve demonstrates.
This is where the principle of active learning becomes useful, and with digital technology, implementing this practice becomes easy.
What Is a Revision Document?
A revision document is a way of rewriting or paraphrasing an existing page. This helps you learn by actively reinterpreting it rather than scrolling through your notes passively. One effective method of titling revision documents is duplicating the original document’s name and adding “rev. 2” for the second revision, “rev. 3 for the third revision”, and so forth.
Revision documents are an excellent method to help store information over prolonged periods. With many note-taking applications on the market offering unlimited notes usage, you can create as many revision documents as you need to solidify what you’ve learned.
How to Practice Active Learning Using Remnote
Remnote is a unique application that takes active learning one step further with its Flashcards feature. This allows you to quiz yourself on elements within a notes page and includes options to track your progress.
To create a basic flashcard, type the content you wish to display on the front of the card, then type » followed by the answer. You can then access all created flashcards in the Flashcards tab in the sidebar, as demonstrated below:
To reveal the answer to a flashcard prompt, press any key or click the Show Answer button. This will provide review options to test your understanding, each assigned with a time frame for reviewing the flashcard later.
With this feature, you don’t need to rely on remembering what content needs reviewing and when — Remnote will manage this for you automatically. This tool is also helpful for implementing spaced repetition — a learning technique that relies on consistency to help consolidate memory.
3. Setting Review Points
When taking notes, it can be easy to get caught up in the process without taking time to reflect. Reviewing your work at set intervals is a critical practice that can quickly become a habit with review documents.
What Are Review Documents?
Creating a review document involves breaking away to a new, separate notes page to track your progress, ask yourself reflective questions, and plan. Writing thoughtful notes on a separate page helps prevent your primary document from being littered with annotations, allowing you to focus on only necessary information while learning.
Using Sub-Pages in Notion to Create Review Documents
Notion offers an effective method for creating review documents fast with its sub-page feature. This allows you to create a review document instantaneously while working, helping you stay focused while giving your notes a clean, fresh look.
Using the sub-page feature will nest all of your review documents within your primary page, giving you quick and easy access to them. To create a sub-page, type the @ symbol followed by the name for the review document, then, from the menu that appears, select the New “title” sub-page option, shown below:
This will insert a link to the new page at the cursor’s current position.
Setting dedicated slots to review your work will help you manage your priorities as you work and give your tasks more clarity. Review documents are a simple solution for incorporating this practice, so you can effectively manage your time and learn more efficiently.
Upgrade Your Digital Note-Taking Today
These techniques can improve your digital notetaking and make you a more efficient learner. Put them into practice to transform your note-taking experience by storing information better, managing your time, and organizing your thoughts.
