09-02-2020 ~ Girvin Djapardi

How To Write Good Notes

Up until now, no one has ever figured what is the single best way to write notes. Some prefer to jam in as much information as possible whereas others prefer straight to the point, concise type of notes. Some go digital whereas some find that inefficient.

Personally, I do not have an opinion regarding the best way to write notes except for the fact having notes is better than not having them at all. I write my notes in a sense where I first listen to the class, listen to another source talking about the same topic (Khan Academy) and then, purely from memory, construct my own notes. Purely from memory as this actively reminds your brain that you will only be able to write the notes if you pay attention and understand the topic.

If you like to color code, go for it. This may help your revision team be more efficient as it separates definitions, key concepts, less important information, etc. I personally do not colour code my notes but instead, I just underline important aspects or make the font bigger. In terms of writing online notes, I generally do not use them but for subjects such as Biology, it may help as a lot of diagrams needs to be drawn.

One thing to pay attention to is to avoid over-highlighting your notes. This may create an illusion of understanding. The more you highlight or underline your notes, the more your brain feels it has a grasp regarding the topic, regardless of how true this may be. Extensive study has been conducted regarding highlighting. I will save you the fuss of reading all of it. Majority of evidence points on to the fact that highlighting is only beneficial is done minimally and correctly. If not, it may cause the brain to not take in as much 'input' from the highlighted text as the brain may perceive as if it has fully mastered that section.

Highlighting should one be done for very crucial information as well as key points. For example, if a statement states that vectors have both direction and magnitude whereas scalar quantities only have magnitude, instead of highlighting the entire sentence, highlight the words: direction and magnitude, which place more emphasis.

Next blog post I will be sharing study tips that I myself find particularly helpful as well as general key points that are backed up by statistics to aid efficient studying.