Scan barcode
A review by rociog
How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens
5.0
An invigorating read! I'm more excited to take up that overdue paper than I've been in a while. The book's premise is simple: taking smart notes is the cornerstone of good, productive, enjoyable writing. The note-taking method suggested is also relatively straightforward: a variation on a technique that made sociologist Niklas Luhmann (whom I'd never heard of!) a particularly prolific academic last century. The key to Luhmann's alarming rapidity of publication is one Ahrens here suggests for any researcher: thinking and writing with the help of a 'slip-box'. This is a box (in Luhmann's case a literal one, in Ahrens' contemporary suggestion, digital) that contains so-called 'final' notes (that is to say, not 'fleeting' notes taken while reading) which collate original ideas indexed into clusters that suggest new avenues of thought for its owner.
What I like about this approach is its emphasis on how writing is not the result but rather the means of thinking. The slip-box technique is premised on the idea that a clear structure for storing and connecting thoughts, insights, quibbles and arguments allows for ongoing creativity. This suggests that, contrary to what we sometimes assume, the lack of structure and restrictions harms both creativity and academic progress.
The book's solution for the all-too-familiar problem of the anxiety-inducing blank page is both reassuring and straightforward: writing is nothing more than the revision of a rough draft, a rough draft is just a series of concatenated notes, final notes are taken while researching and are sorted and indexed in advance.
As a minor quibble: I found the use of APA citation style distracting and occasionally off-putting (for instance the ridiculousness of citing Kant's famous 'What is Enlightenment?' as "(Kant 1784)").
What I like about this approach is its emphasis on how writing is not the result but rather the means of thinking. The slip-box technique is premised on the idea that a clear structure for storing and connecting thoughts, insights, quibbles and arguments allows for ongoing creativity. This suggests that, contrary to what we sometimes assume, the lack of structure and restrictions harms both creativity and academic progress.
The book's solution for the all-too-familiar problem of the anxiety-inducing blank page is both reassuring and straightforward: writing is nothing more than the revision of a rough draft, a rough draft is just a series of concatenated notes, final notes are taken while researching and are sorted and indexed in advance.
As a minor quibble: I found the use of APA citation style distracting and occasionally off-putting (for instance the ridiculousness of citing Kant's famous 'What is Enlightenment?' as "(Kant 1784)").