How to Take Smart Notes
One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers
Book Edition Details
Summary
"How to Take Smart Notes (2017) is exactly that – an explanation of how and why to take smart notes. It explains how this simple, little-known, and often misunderstood technique can aid your thinking, writing, and learning. With the help of smart notes, you may never face the horror of a blank page again."
Introduction
In our information-rich world, we constantly consume knowledge through reading, attending lectures, and engaging with ideas, yet so much of what we encounter simply vanishes from our minds. The challenge isn't just remembering what we've learned, but transforming scattered insights into meaningful understanding and compelling written work. Most of us have experienced the frustration of sitting before a blank page, struggling to recall brilliant thoughts we once had or to connect ideas in ways that create genuine insight. What if there was a way to capture not just information, but to build a thinking partnership with your notes that grows more valuable over time? This book reveals a deceptively simple yet powerful system that can revolutionize how you read, think, and write, turning every piece of knowledge you encounter into a building block for deeper understanding and more impactful communication.
Write to Think: Turn Reading into Lasting Knowledge
The most transformative shift in intellectual work comes from recognizing that thinking and writing aren't separate activities where writing merely records pre-formed thoughts. True thinking happens through writing, and the quality of your final work depends far more on what you've done with ideas before you even choose a topic than on your drafting skills. Consider the remarkable case of Niklas Luhmann, a German civil servant who worked a standard 9-to-5 job yet became one of the most prolific social scientists of the twentieth century. Luhmann didn't start as an academic prodigy. He was simply someone who read voraciously in his spare time and had grown frustrated that his note-taking wasn't leading anywhere meaningful. His breakthrough came when he revolutionized how he engaged with ideas while reading. Instead of underlining passages or writing comments in margins, Luhmann developed a conversation with every text he encountered. He would read with pen in hand, but rather than copying quotes or making brief annotations, he would translate the author's ideas into his own words and consider how they connected to his existing understanding. This wasn't mere summarizing, it was active thinking made visible through writing. Each interaction with a text became an opportunity to develop his own ideas further. The transformation in Luhmann's intellectual life was dramatic. His daily reading practice, combined with this thinking-through-writing approach, eventually generated so much interconnected insight that a prominent sociologist invited him to become a professor based on the depth and originality of his thinking. What changed wasn't just his note-taking technique, but his entire relationship with knowledge. To implement this approach, start treating every reading session as a thinking session. Keep paper nearby and regularly pause to write brief notes that capture not just what the author is saying, but what it means to you, how it connects to other ideas you've encountered, and what questions it raises. Focus on translating ideas into your own language rather than copying the author's words. This simple shift transforms passive consumption into active intellectual development, ensuring that every hour spent reading contributes to your growing understanding rather than simply passing time.
Build Your External Brain: The Smart Note System
Creating a reliable external thinking system requires moving beyond traditional filing methods toward an approach that mirrors how our minds actually make connections. The most effective note-taking systems don't just store information, they actively facilitate the discovery of relationships between ideas across different contexts and time periods. Luhmann's breakthrough came when he abandoned topic-based organization entirely. Instead of filing notes under subject headings like "psychology" or "economics," he created a system where each note received a simple number and could connect to any other note regardless of subject matter. This might seem chaotic, but it was actually ingenious. By freeing his notes from rigid categories, he enabled unexpected connections that would never emerge in a traditional filing system. The magic happened when Luhmann sat down to work. Rather than trying to remember everything in his head or searching through topically organized folders, he could follow chains of connected notes that had developed over months and years. A note about decision-making might connect to observations about organizational behavior, which connected to insights about social systems, creating rich networks of thought that no single reading session could have produced. His system contained about 90,000 notes by the end of his life, but this wasn't the result of obsessive documentation. It represented just six notes per day over thirty years, each one carefully crafted to contribute to his ongoing intellectual development. The notes weren't just storage devices, they were thinking partners that helped him discover patterns and connections he couldn't see while ideas remained isolated in his memory. To build your own external brain, establish a simple but consistent system for capturing and connecting ideas. Whether digital or physical, create a method where each note stands alone with enough context to be understood later, yet can easily link to other relevant notes. Focus on making connections explicit rather than leaving them implicit in your mind. The goal isn't to build a comprehensive database, but to create a thinking environment that grows more valuable and surprising as it develops.
Connect Ideas: Let Thoughts Build on Thoughts
The real power of smart note-taking emerges not from individual notes, but from the conversations that develop between ideas over time. This requires shifting from viewing notes as isolated pieces of information toward seeing them as participants in ongoing intellectual dialogues that can span months or years. The key insight that revolutionized Luhmann's thinking was recognizing that ideas become more valuable when they encounter other ideas, especially unexpected ones. His slip-box system was designed to promote these encounters. When he added a new note, he wouldn't just file it away, he would actively look for connections to existing notes, sometimes linking ideas that seemed completely unrelated on the surface. This connection-making wasn't busy work, it was the heart of his thinking process. Each time he linked two notes, he was essentially asking himself: How do these ideas inform each other? What new perspective emerges when I consider them together? What questions arise from this combination that I hadn't thought of before? These weren't abstract exercises, they were concrete steps that consistently generated fresh insights and unexpected research directions. Over time, certain notes became connection hubs, accumulating links from many other notes and serving as entry points into rich networks of thought. Other notes remained more peripheral but still contributed to the overall intellectual ecosystem. Some connections proved more fruitful than others, but the system's strength lay in maintaining all these relationships simultaneously, creating a web of ideas that was far more sophisticated than what any individual memory could maintain. The most surprising aspect of this approach is how it changes your relationship with uncertainty and confusion. Instead of seeing contradictions between ideas as problems to avoid, you begin welcoming them as opportunities for deeper understanding. When you find two notes that seem to disagree, you can explore that tension explicitly, often discovering nuances and distinctions that lead to more sophisticated thinking. Start practicing explicit connection-making by regularly reviewing your recent notes and asking how they relate to older ones. Don't force connections, but remain open to surprising relationships. When you do make a connection, write briefly about why it seems significant. This practice gradually builds your capacity for associative thinking and helps you recognize patterns that would otherwise remain invisible.
From Notes to Insights: Create and Share Knowledge
The ultimate test of any note-taking system is whether it actually helps you create original work that others value. This requires learning to extract insights from your network of notes and translate them into linear, compelling communication while maintaining the richness and interconnectedness that makes your thinking distinctive. The transformation from networked notes to finished writing involves a fundamental shift in perspective. While building your note system, you focus on making connections and following interesting tangents wherever they lead. But when crafting a manuscript, you must choose one thread of thought and develop it systematically while setting aside other interesting but tangential ideas. Luhmann described this transition as moving from having conversations with his slip-box to having conversations with potential readers. His notes had helped him develop sophisticated understanding of complex topics, but sharing that understanding required translating networked insights into linear arguments that others could follow step by step. This wasn't simply a matter of arranging existing notes in order, it required reimagining his insights for an audience that hadn't participated in his extended thinking process. The breakthrough came when Luhmann realized he never had to start with a blank page. By the time he was ready to write on any topic, he already had numerous notes containing relevant observations, arguments, and evidence. His writing process became more like assembling and refining existing materials than generating content from scratch. This didn't make the work easy, but it made it manageable and sustainable. What made his approach particularly powerful was how it handled the inevitable challenges of long-term projects. When he got stuck on one piece of writing, he could shift to working on another project where his thinking had developed further, or he could return to reading and note-taking to develop his ideas more fully. This flexibility kept him productive and engaged while building toward multiple future projects simultaneously. To implement this approach, resist the urge to choose writing topics before you've developed substantial material to work with. Instead, let topics emerge from clusters of connected notes where you've already done significant thinking. When you do begin writing, treat your first draft as a conversation between your notes and your intended audience, explaining not just what you think but why these ideas matter and how they connect to larger concerns your readers share.
Summary
This book reveals that the secret to better thinking and writing lies not in improved drafting techniques or sophisticated planning methods, but in fundamentally changing how we engage with ideas during reading and note-taking. As the author emphasizes, "You have to externalise your ideas, you have to write. If we write, it is more likely that we understand what we read, remember what we learn and that our thoughts make sense." The smart note-taking system transforms every encounter with information into an opportunity for intellectual development, gradually building a thinking partnership that becomes more valuable and surprising over time. Rather than waiting for inspiration or struggling with blank pages, you can begin today by simply keeping paper nearby while reading and writing brief notes that capture not just what authors say, but what their ideas mean to you and how they connect to your developing understanding. This small change in daily practice can revolutionize your intellectual life, turning scattered reading into connected insight and isolated thoughts into compelling communication.
By Sönke Ahrens
