up:: [[PKM MOC]] # # This Obsidian Notetaking Method Made Me Love School Again <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PuqGjNJMiZQ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> Most Cornell students I know take notes by copying what the Professor says verbatim, identically annotating the slides, or multitasking by answering texts, looking for clothes on Amazon, or watching a football game. **This notetaking is passive.** In this video I will explain how I take active conceptual lecture notes in Obsidian before after and during class. In contrast to more passive notetaking this method allows me to study, see relationships between classes, and create a unique knowledge base that stays with me across semesters. But most importantly, it gives me a feeling of curiosity, wonder, and joy in my learning inside and outside of College. Understand that this is my personal notetaking style and I don't recommend you force it on yourself. The *Personal* in Personal Knowledge Management often gets forgotten. First let's talk about what you turn into if you take notes the way most students do. ### The Cookie Cutter Student The notetaking methods mentioned at the beginning have one particularly insidious effect. **They make you a [[Cookie Cutter Student|Cookie Cutter Student]].** The cookie cutter student follows [[Notetaking]] principles rather than [[Notemaking]]. They take notes mostly in other peoples words rather than their own. Their knowledge base becoming nearly identical to all the other students taking notes in the same way. In the long term, the cookie cutter student becomes disconnected and bored with their academic life. They have no deep seated interest in their classes because none of their notes feel personal. # How I Take Notes What's the solution? I have developed a system of notetaking for *all* of my classes that has brought joy back into the process of notetaking. ## Conceptual Notemaking Instead of mindless copying of what the professor says during class I use a style of notemaking--making notes in your own words rather than the words of others (coined by [[Nick Milo]])--known as [[Conceptual Notemaking]]. Conceptual notemaking is a form [[Notemaking]] that uses concepts as the fundamental unit of knowledge management. Instead of notetaking predominantly through sequential format on exactly what the professor says, you take notes on individual concepts and *link them together.* I'm of the belief that there are no rigid disciplines in the universe, only concepts. All disciplines--Biology, Neuroanatomy, Behavioral Statistics, American History, etc.--are just highly related concepts linked together into a coherent and more easily digestible form. If everything we can learn is a mix of interrelated concepts than it makes no sense to create notes that treat classes as isolated. And yet that is exactly how most students take their notes! Conceptual notemaking means my Behavioral Neuroscience notes on Dopamine get linked to a note from my independent reading on Social homeostasis. ![[Pasted image 20221003070905.png]] My notes on the differences between emotional focality across cultures from my Social Psychology class get linked to a note on Attachment Theory. ![[Pasted image 20221003071011.png]] My notes on information consumption in the age of the internet get linked to my notes on the Lindy Effect. ![[Pasted image 20221003121941.png]] To link my notes I use Personal Knowledge Management app [[Obsidian]]. It works exactly like any other notetaking software except I have the ability to create outgoing links and back links which work the same way as links in Wikipedia except they go both directions, both to the note I link to and back to the original note if I'm in the "outlinked" note. This isn't an article about how to use Obsidian but if your interested the best starting point is this [beginner video series by community member Nick Milo.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbLb6QCK88) Before I show you the nuances of my process, let's talk about why taking conceptual notes is so awesome! ## Benefits of Conceptual Notemaking There are three big benefits to conceptual notemaking: 1. You can link concepts from different disciplines together letting you build an [Infinite Library](https://www.aidanhelfant.com/your-infinite-library/) 2. You can engage in deep processing 3. You can add joy back into notetaking ### You Can Link Concepts Linking concepts together allows you to build your own Infinite Library, a unique collection of ideas built upon the foundation of your unique combination of family, background, education, experiences, and genetics. **There will never be another you.** Because we live in a age of information abundance, knowledge itself is no longer as powerful. Instead, it's the perspective you bring to it that matters. And linking your notes provides the perfect means of expressing that unique perspective as no other person will link in the exact same way you will. ### Engage in Deep Processing As a student, one of your reasons for notetaking will be to embed it into memory for your exams. The first step to creating memories is, encoding and one of the best ways to increase the natural strength of [[Encoding]] is to connect new information to past knowledge, a method known as [[Deep processing]]. Deep processing makes for stronger memories because newly encoded information has more old cues associated with it which can spark retrieval later on. ### You Can Add Joy Back Into Notetaking A few weeks after I started conceptual notemaking, I noticed my joy and curiosity for learning increase dramatically. Instead of being a cookie cutter student, I began fleshing out a unique knowledge base, fueled by connections made between notes from my unique perspective. I wake up most days with wonder of what I will find after journeying into my system that day. **Learning is fun.** # My Conceptual Notemaking Process > Not all those who wander are lost. - J.R.R. Tolkien Hearing about conceptual notemaking after notetaking as a cookie cutter student will probably feel overwhelming. But the process of conceptual notemaking is remarkably simple. It's the execution that's hard. Let's go through my process before, after, and during class. ## Before class At the beginning of the semester I create a new note and title it with the name of the class. Then I fill it out with all the topics we will go over in class (usually I can find this in the course homepage or by scanning over the textbook for the class). Let's use my Social Psychology class as an example. This is my home page for the class: ![[Pasted image 20221003123818.png]] By drafting out all the lectures at the beginning of the semester, I get an idea for the progression of information we will be going through over the course of the class. ## During class On any individual lecture day, I will open up the note for that days lecture and add in my standard new note template: ![[Pasted image 20221019094745.png]] In the up section I will fill out the higher order note that corresponds to the lecture note. Usually this is simply my main page for the class that has all of my lecture notes and other notes inside of it. So for my lecture notes on Evolutionary Psychology this would be my main hubpage for the class. By linking the home page in the up section I can easily move back and forth between the hub page and the lecture note on both ends. ![[Pasted image 20221019094930.png]] While the professor talks, I listen intently, trying to understand what they are saying. I have the lecture slides up on my computer for reference. **But I don't write down what they say verbatim.** Doing so would make me a cookie cutter student. Instead, I wait 20 seconds to a minute before I even think about writing anything down. Taking notes on everything takes cognitive load away from understanding. If you spend more time trying to understand the lecture you will spend less time later on studying. While listening to lecture, I look for information that isn’t USE, Unimportant, Self Explanatory, or Easy enough to memorize on the spot. If it isn’t, consider taking notes on it. Once I feel find something that isn't USE, I distill what the professor said *in my own words* and take inspiration from the popular Cornell Notetaking method by trying to frame my notes in the form of questions. Let's see how I did in the Evolutionary Psychology note. Evolutionary Psychologists believe that the fundamental thing motivating human action is the replication of genes into the next generations gene pool. During the lecture, three main arguments were brought up arguing against evolutionary psychology. While taking notes I framed these three arguments under one big question as a header: ![[Pasted image 20221003125821.png]] When I toggle this header it opens the three arguments which themselves are framed as questions. ![[Pasted image 20221003125923.png]] Each of these arguments contain answers written *in my own words.* ![[Pasted image 20221003130118.png]] Wording my notes like flashcards make studying later on seamless. During a study session I can open up my lecture notes and make my way through the questions by answering them in my head. And by waiting for 20 seconds to a minute before writing anything down, I strengthen the initial encoding of information by forcing myself to distill the professors words. If I ever need to add in a slide to support my notes, I just take snip an image from the slides and add in it in. Here's an example: ![[Pasted image 20221003130557.png]] ###### 🥜The Four Questions of Peanut Butter Godhood Taking notes in this way is a massive step up but these notes are still isolated to the class we are taking notes on. To do the *Conceptual* part of conceptual notemaking you have to ask yourself the four questions of peanut butter godhood (I like peanut butter if you can't tell). 1. "What does this remind me of?" 2. "What is this similar to?" 3. "How is this different from?" 4. "This is interesting because?" Once you have found an answer for one of these questions, write it down and link to or create another note in your system that provides an answer. I did this in one of the notes shown above about the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy reminded me of a note I created earlier on the fact that not everything natural is good, a belief that conflicts with many of the "only organic" food eaters of today who make their claims off the admittingly terrible Western Diet (which I also link to). ![[Pasted image 20221003131006.png]] The note on "not everything natural is good" links to a bunch of other notes like my Evolution MOC (see: [[MOC]]s), notes on Nazism, and notes on [[Nutritionism]] from Michael Pollan's book, [[In Defense of Food]]. Here's a view of the back linked notes (notes that mention my "not everything natural is good" note) using the linked view. ![[Pasted image 20221003132432.png]] And here's a view of the outgoing links for this note showing all the notes that link out from my "not everything natural is good note." ![[Pasted image 20221003132607.png]] For more spatially oriented people (like me), seeing the connections in the local graph view can be helpful. ![[Pasted image 20221003132207.png]] Now here's the cool thing. Some of these notes linked in my "note everything natural is good note" themselves have tons of links inside of them. For example, my book note on In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, links out to a ton of other notes on nutrition science. ![[Pasted image 20221003132853.png]] And all of these notes are second orderly linked to my original lecture notes on Evolutionary Psychology. Isn't that cool! My lecture notes have stopped being isolated to just my class but now relate to my own independent research in Nutrition Science that themselves link out to tons of other notes. But if you link notes from separate classes and your professor gives exams per chapter, how do you make sure you don't study notes from another class while studying for a specific class? What I suggest is tagging notes with the chapters you will need to study them from. For example, if you have a note from Psychology 101 that you know the majority comes from chapter 3, tag it with #chapter1-4. Then when you are ready to study for your exams, you can create a dataview query that pulls only notes tagged with chapters 1-4 or whatever chapters you are studying. This way you can still link to other related notes from classes you are taking to build a unique knowledge base, but only pull the notes you need to study for a specific class on a given study day. To sum up the conceptual notemaking process goes like this: 1. Wait 20-60 seconds before distilling notes in own words as a question 2. Reflect on the four questions of Peanut Butter Godhood 3. Try to link to other notes or create a new note to link Do this for an entire lecture and you will have a beautiful unique linking of knowledge. Here's the local graph view of my whole Evolutionary Psychology note. ![[Pasted image 20221003132025.png]] Repeat this for every one of your lectures and something magical will happen. Just look at the local graph for my entire class on Introduction to Social Psychology. I put the depth of the graph to 2 (you can see notes that are second order linked) so you can better see where everything is linking. The arrow points to my Evolutionary Psychology lecture note. ![[Pasted image 20221003134048.png]] Here's the same local graph view but for my home page on my Behavioral Neuroscience class. ![[Pasted image 20221003134611.png]] Oh and hey look! There's my Evolutionary Psychology Note. ![[Pasted image 20221003134704.png]] ## After Class What do you do with these notes after class is over? Like I said earlier, by framing the notes in the form of questions they become perfect for studying off of like a flashcard or short answer question either alone or in groups. And by continuing to refer back to them with links over time you naturally go through spaced repetition as a form of studying. It's important to remember that the initial lecture notes you make during class don't have to be perfect. You can make changes to them over time. As you go through your classes and learn more, you will naturally find holes and issues with the notes that you took earlier on. I like to make changes opportunistically, altering small things every now and then when they come up instead of going back through my notes in one heavy lift (see: [[Efforts over projects when developing ideas]]). ### After the Semester The main reason I organize all my notes for the class under a class homepage is because it makes it much easier to study the relevant information for the class over the semester. But once the semester is over there is no reason my notes have to stay locked in an artificial class home page. This is why I delete it after the semester ends and embed the class notes where they make sense in my system (probably in a mix of [[MOC]]s and other notes). ### A note on STEM classes My lecture notetaking is slightly different for STEM classes. On the whole, the conceptual notetaking process is essentially the same. The big difference is that I try and predict the answers to professors questions beforehand. Let me elaborate. After an explanation of something, Professors in STEM classes will often go through example problems on the board. It's useless to write down what the professor writes and save these examples in your notes because simply looking at an example problem that's already completed does nothing in developing understanding. In fact it will probably just make you think you know what you're doing because of the [[Psychology of Overconfidence]]. Instead, you should try and do the problem yourself in your head or on a spare piece of paper. Then you can check your process alongside the professor. Using this method, you know exactly what to take notes on because if you stumble on a particular part of the problem, it's clearly something you are struggling with conceptually and you should write down. Plus it's way more active than just watching them do the problem. ### Conclusion: The Art of Compounding Knowledge Using my Conceptual Notemaking process, I'm building a unique interconnected body of knowledge, a culmination of my personal ideas and interpretations of my classes, own thoughts, conversations, and information consumption outside of school. Instead of going from semester to semester with a clean slate having forgotten everything from the previous year, I connect knowledge from my classes between semesters as well. In effect, my knowledge compounds growing more and more useful the more notes I have rather than less. I wake up every day with a wonder and curiosity for what new notes and connections I will make. I have reignited my joy for learning. While I can't guarantee that this notemaking process will work for you, I strongly encourage you to try it out for a few weeks at least. Be sure to check out [[How I Take Book Notes in Obsidian Compound Your Knowledge!]]. I go into depth into how I take notes on books inside of Obsidian borrowing many of the same principles of Conceptual Notemaking.