How to Take Smart Notes

One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

by Sönke Ahrens

Paperback, 176 pages

English language

Published Feb. 23, 2017 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

ISBN:: 9781542866507

(9 reviews)

An informational book that describes and advocates for the note taking system of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. The author's primary claim is that Luhmann's system of keeping a slip-box (or "zettelkasten") full of interesting ideas and bibliographic references can help students, academics, and non-fiction writers be more productive.

5 editions

prince lucija is reading reviewed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Insightful

No rating

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in developing or improving their note taking. It delves deep into how and when does Luhmann's Zettelkasten work, what are its core principles and backs up these claims with science. For the impatient: it's not about technique, but more about hardest part of research and writing: thinking, understanding, and writing in your own words. But Ahrens also provides numerous insights about our work, creativity and productivity (for example why is multitasking a bad idea).

Alex "Qwxlea" reviewed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

As good as it gets

5 stars

Five stars would imply a perfect book, but it isn't (what is?), but this one comes close, with caveats. If you like note taking, and if you like to read about how other people organise their notes, then this book is perfect. For normal people: it could be simpler, shorter, and with less anecdotes. For me though, it's one of those formative books, I have a "before" and "after" with this one. It changed how I think about reading, and especially notes taking.

Sergey Machulskis reviewed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Really liked it

4 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. It's well-written on a small scale (pages, chapters) but the overall structure is a mystery to me.

Did I find a way how to organize a mess in my notes? Not exactly, but I've found some good hints.

Good bits:

GTD doesn't work for non-linear writing. Academic writing is non-linear. I was taught otherwise.
Organize your notes around the context in which they're going to be useful. Not by topic. Organizing by topic is almost the same as organizing them by year. Looks neat, but it's hard to find a note you need right now.
Quotes are useless. If you need to apply the information you've found somewhere, rewrite it in your own words.
Brainstorming is useless. Sure, it produces ideas, but they're going to be of a very low quality.

Bad bits:

There's a lot of barely related information. The book tries …

I have mixed feelings about this book. It's well-written on a small scale (pages, chapters) but the overall structure is a mystery to me.

Did I find a way how to organize a mess in my notes? Not exactly, but I've found some good hints.

Good bits:

GTD doesn't work for non-linear writing. Academic writing is non-linear. I was taught otherwise.
Organize your notes around the context in which they're going to be useful. Not by topic. Organizing by topic is almost the same as organizing them by year. Looks neat, but it's hard to find a note you need right now.
Quotes are useless. If you need to apply the information you've found somewhere, rewrite it in your own words.
Brainstorming is useless. Sure, it produces ideas, but they're going to be of a very low quality.

Bad bits:

There's a lot of barely related information. The book tries to be everything: advice on writing in general, rant on the education system, a collection of cognitive biases. I don't think it really needs all this. As I understood, the original inventor of the method had the same problems with his writing. The proposed method of writing forces you to jump from thought to thought using associations. The text looks very natural for a writer but not for a reader.
I've read this (twice for several chapters) and still don't understand why the Zettelkasten method works. It explains how it works and what happens if you use it, though.
The system was invented by a social "scientist". It's a pity it wasn't invented by someone who produces useful writing. From my point of view, it was invented by a guy who lectures birds on how to fly.
Sometimes the author says "the original inventor did this and this so you should too". It's followed by a questionable explanation. Should I say it looks weird? Times changed.

I really recommend it if you:

Don't know why the education system is broken
Haven't heard about cognitive biases and mental models
Have no idea how to make good notes

Sasu reviewed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Inspiring, but the process description lacks clarity

4 stars

I found this book very inspiring, but when I actually tried to start using the Zettelkasten method, I found that I needed to find other resources to get enough clarity to get started. If you need to be sold on the merits of the method or want inspiration , this book may be helpful for you. If you just want to learn to use the Zettelkasten method, the abundance of freely available resources online is probably a better place to start.

arpia49@bookwyrm.social reviewed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Review of 'How to Take Smart Notes' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

La metodología que cuenta es muy interesante y los ejemplos que pone de cómo funcionan o no funcionan otras está muy bien pero es tremendamente repetitivo.

OragePika reviewed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

A meh

3 stars

Meh.

Soffice reviewed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Review of 'How to Take Smart Notes' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Una bella introduzione a un metodo di lettura e scrittura che descriverei come l'applicazione dell'interesse composto alla conoscenza. In questo momento sto usando Zettlr per mettere in pratica il zettelkasten, ma un progetto promettente è anche Roam Research, sebbene non sia software libero.

Chris Brooks

rated it

April 9, 2020

OragePika

rated it

July 30, 2021