Scan barcode
A review by bentrevett
How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens
2.0
The answer to the question “how do I take smart notes?” is apparently to use the Zettlekasten system because that’s cool and popular at the moment. The Zettlekasten system is only good if you’re making notes with the goal of eventually turning them into writing, e.g. research papers. If you’re not writing then you shouldn’t be using this system and this book is of no use to you and you should definitely not waste your time on it.
Basically, constantly be making rough notes, then at the end of the day turn these rough notes into actual sentences, where you create “links” between concepts that are ideally in your existing notes. These notes should be on little flash cards which you put into a box where each note is numbered/indexed (don’t think about what happens when you need to add a note between some existing notes because it all gets very messy) and then you can procrastinate by looking through all your notes and feel like you’re being very productive.
The whole system done with physical notes sounds like an absolute hassle that isn’t really worth it, luckily there’s loads of digital replacements, like Obsidian and LogSeq (the new productivity tools on the block! second brains! digital gardens! personal knowledge management systems! think how clever you’ll be once you start using these!)
The book starts with an introduction to the Zettlekasten system, then gushes on about how great it is with plenty of things you’ve probably heard many times before (writing is thinking! write things in your own words, don’t underline or copy verbatim! growth mindset!), followed by yet another introduction to Zettlekasten and then another gushing over it (and it very weirdly ends with a section on habits because I guess that Atomic Habits book was popular)?
I’m not sure of the point of the book was to repeat everything to drill it into my head, or it was just yet another case of padding out content (which seems to be a theme in these types of books, maybe someone should come up with a productivity system with the goal of writing shorter books?). It gets two stars instead of 1 because at least it’s under 250 pages.
Basically, constantly be making rough notes, then at the end of the day turn these rough notes into actual sentences, where you create “links” between concepts that are ideally in your existing notes. These notes should be on little flash cards which you put into a box where each note is numbered/indexed (don’t think about what happens when you need to add a note between some existing notes because it all gets very messy) and then you can procrastinate by looking through all your notes and feel like you’re being very productive.
The whole system done with physical notes sounds like an absolute hassle that isn’t really worth it, luckily there’s loads of digital replacements, like Obsidian and LogSeq (the new productivity tools on the block! second brains! digital gardens! personal knowledge management systems! think how clever you’ll be once you start using these!)
The book starts with an introduction to the Zettlekasten system, then gushes on about how great it is with plenty of things you’ve probably heard many times before (writing is thinking! write things in your own words, don’t underline or copy verbatim! growth mindset!), followed by yet another introduction to Zettlekasten and then another gushing over it (and it very weirdly ends with a section on habits because I guess that Atomic Habits book was popular)?
I’m not sure of the point of the book was to repeat everything to drill it into my head, or it was just yet another case of padding out content (which seems to be a theme in these types of books, maybe someone should come up with a productivity system with the goal of writing shorter books?). It gets two stars instead of 1 because at least it’s under 250 pages.