Productivity Hack: Tips for Taking Better Notes

All month I’ve been giving you tips on productivity and time management techniques. This post is all about taking notes. Whether you are in school or at work, there is probably many a time where you may need to take notes to capture the salient points of a lecture, a webinar, or a presentation. Believe it or not, the way you take notes can affect the way you study, improve your learning outcomes, and help you retain the information (Friedman, 2014).

In this post, I’ll give you the evidence for why writing your notes out by hand is a better choice than typing notes using a laptop or desktop computer. And I’ll give you some tips on how to take notes better.

Which is Better? Taking Notes by Hand or Using a Laptop?
It’s the 21st century and technology is king. According to the latest data collected by the Pew Research Center in 2016, 78% of U.S. adults have a desktop or laptop computer and about 51% of U.S. adults have tablet devices (Pew Research Center, 2017). It is estimated that 99% of incoming college freshman have a computer and about 65% bring that laptop to class sessions (Sana, Weston, & Cepeda, 2013).

Taking notes by hand in a notebook is old-fashioned, right? A laptop is so much more efficient – or is it?

Benefits of a Laptop for Note-Taking: Benefits of the use of computers in the classroom include the potential for faster note-taking, storage of digital copies of the notes, and convenient access to notes from one device instead of multiple notebooks (Carter, Greenberg & Walker, 2017).

Disadvantages of a Laptop for Note-Taking: Multiple research studies with college students show that students who use a laptop to take class notes don’t comprehend or retain as much as students who write notes by hand (Carter et al., 2017; Dynarksi, 2017; May, 2014; Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014, 2016; Patterson & Patterson, 2017; Sana et al., 2013;). Part of the problem is that students using laptops get distracted by multitasking during class. And multitask distractions didn’t just hurt the student, but even students who sat next to those using laptops were distracted by their neighbors’ multitasking. Lower test scores were a result (Sana et al., 2013).

One major disadvantage to using a laptop for note-taking is the tendency is to try to obtain a verbatim transcription. The result is that you will take a lot of notes and capture knowledge, but not necessarily understand or learn because you are not being mindful of the knowledge being received (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). Your brain is preoccupied with recording each word but not with making sense of the words (May, 2014).

Benefits of Writing Notes by Hand: Of course, the benefits of longhand for note-taking include a deeper understanding of the material, better test scores, and long-term retention of the material.

Students who handwrite their lecture notes have to pay more attention to the words of the lecturer – their brain has to work harder. They are more engaged with the material because to keep up they need to quickly reflect on what is being said, process the message, exact the salient points, and then summarize the message (Dynarski, 2017). The need to summarize forces the student to listen to the speaker more intently, thus accomplishing deeper learning and retaining the information for the long-term.

Disadvantages of Writing Notes by Hand: Writing in longhand takes more time than typing into a laptop. Missing important concepts because you are still writing down thoughts from the previous point can be frustrating. Students have many concerns about longhand note-taking — fears of missing information because the professor is talking too fast, not really knowing if you are capturing the important information, not being able to read your own handwriting or understand what you wrote down,

The bottom line is to listen well during class sessions, ask for help when you have questions, spend some time prepping for class so you can stay on track more easily, and practicing identifying major concepts (Bureau of Study Counsel, 2011).

Taking notes with a tablet
Taking notes with a tablet
Photo by Dose Media on Unsplash.com

Tablets and Note-Taking: If you use a laptop that transforms into a tablet and use a stylus to take handwritten notes – you might get the best of both worlds: technology and hand-written notes (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2016). Software programs can transcribe your handwritten notes to digital format so they are retrievable when you need them to review during study time.

Smarter Notes: No Mindless Transcription!
The first tip is not to write down every word that the instructor says! Just transcribing the instructor’s lecture is not helpful – again, your brain is focused on capturing the words being said, not making sense of the words being said. The stress of worrying about getting every word will preclude your ability for mindful understanding or deeper learning of the material. Instead of missing words, the more important thing is not missing the point of the information.

In classes where you might be given a copy of the slides or an outline of the topic, the stress of verbatim transcription is lessened. When this happens, try concentrating on the points the lecturer is making and distilling those into your own words. Paraphrasing takes deeper cognitive power than just transcribing so the information is more likely to be retained. Think about how you might apply the information.

One author argues that the pen may not be mightier than the keyboard – it may just be that the laptop note-takers are not being given direction to take smarter notes. Instead of verbatim or mindless transcription, listen and be deliberate and thoughtful about the notes you are taking (Beaudoin, 2014).

Additionally, there is software such as TextExpander and PhraseExpress that may help laptop note-takers decrease the time it takes to take notes by using abbreviations that expand into full text as you type.

Note-Taking Methods
One way to take smarter notes is to use a consistent method to take notes -either your own method or someone else’s. One popular method is the Cornell Note-Taking Method.

Cornell Note-Taking Method (Cornell, n.d.; May, 2014)
To use the Cornell Note-Taking Method you basically divide your note paper into three parts: the note-taking section (2/3rds of the page), one left-hand column for cues or key terms, and one summary row at the bottom of the paper.