# List of note-taking formats

While you can do whatever system works best for you, there are only a few popular styles.

Experiment with the note-taking style that works best for you:

- Various strategies and styles may help you remember everything more easily.
- Each person's brain is different, so each note-taking system works best for some [personalities](personality.md).

Outline system:

1. Write general ideas with supporting ideas indented below them.
2. Keep indenting as needed.

Cornell system:

1. Write out all the main ideas from the source material.
2. Create a summary at the bottom at least 24 hours later.
3. Write out all the keywords and key phrases to the left of those notes.

Mapping:

1. Make an idea, then circle it.
2. Make another idea elsewhere on the page, then circle that as well.
3. Connect the ideas with a line.
4. Keep making bubbles for new ideas and drawing lines to connect them.

Zettelkasten:

1. Make notes on an index card or system as a hierarchy.
2. Add "tags" to concepts as you go, combining them with other cards.
3. Attach the cards together and move them around as the groups start making sense.
4. Keep moving and restructuring the notes as you need or want.

Military photographic memory trick:

1. Sit somewhere where you can turn the lights on and off without getting up.
2. Cut a rectangular hole in a piece of paper roughly the size of the book's paragraph.
3. Position one of the paragraphs you want to memorize and turn the lights off.
4. While staring at the paragraph, flip the light on for a half-second, then off again.
5. When the imprint fades, keep flipping it on for a half-second and off again.
6. If you do it right, you'll eventually be able to see the paragraph and read it in your mind.

Condensation trick:

1. Take plenty of notes about almost everything you don't know.
2. Later, condense that information by paraphrasing it.
3. Keep paraphrasing it until you've distilled the entire subject to 3--4 pages.
4. Paraphrase further until it can fit on 1 page.
5. Paraphrase a summary onto an index card.

Reference tracking:

1. Store all references on separate documents/cards:
   - Title each document to make it easy to [organize](organization.md).
   - Write the name of the author and the book/article at the top with the page number
   - Summarize 1-2 related facts on that document, and use separate documents for each associated idea.
   - Copy the idea word-for-word if you're quoting it, or paraphrase it if you're not.
   - Be obsessively specific and concrete as you can about facts, numbers, and dates.
2. Organize the documents for review, and aim for [re-creating](mind-creativity.md) *another* document with all the notes.

Feynman technique:

1. Write the name of the concept as the heading.
2. Explain the concept as if you were teaching it to someone else.
3. Identify any areas where you don't feel confident you understand the concept.
4. Rewrite those uncertain areas in simpler terms.

SQ3R method:

1. Survey: Scan the table of contents and chapter summaries.
2. Question: Skim back through the summaries and note any questions you have.
3. Read: Consume the content in its entirety.
4. Recite: Summarize, take notes, and put it in your own words.
5. Review: Reread, expand notes, and discuss with colleagues.

The Stucky method:

1. Stockpile everything you ever want to learn on a subject.
2. Grab an article and write an off-the-cuff summary of the information as briefly as possible.
3. Add another article by splicing its summary in with the first article.
4. Repeat until you've either grown tired of the subject through pure familiarity or you've exhausted your material.
5. [The result](https://stucky.tech/method/) will look like a well-ordered system, and you'll understand the information more than how it was originally written.