How I Take Notes: the Best Note Taking Method | Jim Kwik

hi it's your brain coach Jim quick and the quick brain podcast and I'm going to be your brain coach as I am to help you to be able to upgrade your learning to upgrade your life and in our private Facebook group and also in our quick brain Universe app where you send messages to us we get this question about note-taking and there's some clarifying questions so this is kind of like a quick q a if you will I want to get a little bit more specific on how to take notes in a way that's more whole brain so that you can remember what you want to learn and also you could utilize what you want to learn now you could take notes in different ways some people just like to audio record everything from a lecture some people like to handwrite notes other people like something that's more digital now when people are tested for comprehension and retention we find that handwriting notes will improve comprehension and retention on that information we talk about about that the reasons why in another podcast you can refer back to that we'll put the link to that in our show notes at jimquick.com forward slash notes you should always read the Highlight notes always speed read those digital note taking certainly is convenient it's a great way of sharing information but um it's not as good as to help people to understand it and be able to retain it some people use devices though where they are handwriting notes onto their device and I think that's a great compromise if you will some people like me what I'll do is actually handwrite in a notebook because that's my preferred way and then we will digitize it so that we have it to be able to share so whatever method that you prefer I'm going to give you a way of doing it that's going to enhance your comprehension and retention and most importantly help you to implement this information all right and really why you take notes is to capture the information so you prevent or reduce mitigate what they call the forgetting curve you know the forgetting curve right right you hear something on a podcast you read something in a book you go to a lecture and what happens within 48 Hours you forget a lot of it in fact research shows about 80 percent of what you learn if you hear it just once is completely forgotten so to be able to reduce that you could capture it by taking notes now when they were research done at universities to find out the best way of taking notes and the worst way one of the worst ways is actually as you can imagine is verbatim like full transcripts having 23 pages of word for word verbatim a lecture if you will of a lecturer a professor is not as useful as having the key words and the key ideas because there could be something on page 17 that's more important than what's on on page one but our brains don't always think that way right you have a left brain and a right brain so how can you be able to knowing this taking notes more effectively by the way if you want to go deep in note taking the program to enroll in is quick thinking quickthinking.com go there it's our one of our Flagship programs along with our quick reading program and our quick recall program quick thinking is a little different because your ability to think and to adapt is your ultimate competitive advantage to be able to solve problems to make better decisions to be more creative and that's what quick thinking is about so we go deeply into the training again these podcasts we make free so it's consumable tips but if you a tip is something an idea that could help move the needle a little bit a training is where you permanently have this superpower a new level of capability an ability skill to be able to take things the next level because I get you every day for like 21 or 30 days for 15 minutes a day so we can really make it a habit these things so let's go into the note taking so one of the ways you could take notes is to grab a piece of paper I'm going to use a whiteboard for the purpose of this illustration and what I do is if I'm listening to let's say a podcast on sleep right we've done a lot of episodes on how to maximize and optimize your sleep and we know that better sleep will lead to better focus the next day help you to solve problems the next day help you consolidate short to long-term memory all the benefits of sleep what I do instead of just writing notes on a piece of paper is first I'll put a line right down the page very very simple line right down the page okay and then what I do is on the left side I'll do something called capture and on the right side I'll do something called create and this is what I call the capture create method so you capture on the left side and on the right side you're going to create so very very simple you want to keep this extremely simple and easy so left side you capture on the right side you create so what does that mean that means on the left side you're taking notes and on the right side you're making notes so you're going to take notes on the left side and make notes on the right side now the subtle but distinct difference and let me break it down for you when you learning something like how to sleep better right you're getting all these tips you want to capture them so you're going to capture those ideas on the left side you're going to get tips if you listen to our podcasts and the menu we've done with interviews with people like Sean Stevenson like the sleep doctor Dr Michael Bruce and so on we'll get tips on like no caffeine past 2 pm and I'll write that on the left side right maybe you'll get a tip a sleep tip on having an alarm clock not just to wake up but alarm clock to go to bed keeping a constant schedule blackout out curtains those would be things that we capture on the left side maybe something like having your mattress cold or sleeping in a cold room will help you to create to prompt you and Trigger you to know that it's time to go to sleep produce melatonin and so on right those would be your captures but on the right sides where the magic happens left side is kind of like your left brain it's very logical it's very language driven sequential but if your mind is going to distract you and it often does when we're trying to learn something we're listening to a podcast or reading a book or listening to a lecture then I rather instead of it going somewhere random I'd rather go to the right side of the page which is your right brain which is it's left side's logical the right side's more imagination it's more creativity and that's why the right side is create and so you're making notes and so what are you putting on the right side you're going to put your impressions of what you captured so something like how can I use this so that's where your imagination goes right all the different different ways you could use this another question you want to ask yourself that you could help make notes to prompt you by giving you a question why must I use this you know if you have a little bit of downtime instead of being distracted thinking about the dry cleaning or something you have to do right after that for work then like why must I use this why because so it goes from your head to your heart right and then finally when will I use this I'm going to start this today right one of the greatest productivity Performance Tools you have is your calendar and if you don't schedule it it's not going to happen that's why I say for every hour you spend listening to a podcast and in this case it's only 15 minutes that's why you binge listen to so many of our shows right spend another hour implementing it that's where you take the ideas and you put into implementation right and hopefully I give you a little inspiration show goes from your head to your heart to your hands you have an idea in your head but you're not acting with your hands get your heart involved so on the right side I'm using my imagination I'm thinking about how can I use this how does this compare to what I already know um what questions do I have about this subject that's where you're creating who do I want to teach this to that would be on the creative side right and how does this even relate to something else that I learned maybe it's something that's contradictory to something that you just learned so put that on the right side so you capture what you're learning on the left and then you're creating on the right side and again this is what I call the capture create method you take notes and then you make notes and it's so simple and here's the thing it's the Simplicity that fools you this is so simple it's such a simple thing that anybody could do and I would say do it right now some things are so simple that we don't do it you're like oh that's just too easy and you never get the benefit I'm going to challenge you to do it today and if you could do it again tomorrow get in the habit of taking notes it'll transform the way not only you learn the information but by capturing it and creating it you'll actually be able to teach yourself on top of that because that's where the magic happens when we talk about Like A Book Like Mine called Limitless what's truly Limitless where you're redrawing the borders and boundaries what's possible is in your creativity it's your ability to create it's your ability to imagine and this note-taking note making method capturing and creating is a tangible way you could do this and here's the other challenge besides doing it teach somebody else teach this to your partner teach this to your team teach this to a child or a family member think about one person in your life that you wish was listening to this right now and teach it to them because you get to benefit from the explanation effect when you take time to explain something to somebody else the effect is you're going to learn it better because when you teach it you get to learn it twice so that's my challenge to you are you ready to take notes and also make notes are ready to capture and create it's going to prove your focus it's going to improve your memory you're not going to be distracted as much and probably most importantly you're going to apply it because the truth is knowledge by itself is not power it's a myth at best its potential power it only becomes power when we what when we execute on it when we apply it knowledge times action equals power and you have so much power inside of you I want to thank you for listening to this episode thank you for watching it three points of action right now I want you number one to share this take a screenshot of this right now take a screenshot of this and what I want you to do is tag me post it online tag me in it and share it and what I want you to do is share in that post something that you're applying this to you know have you tried this already and as always I'll repost some of the ones randomly and we'll gift a copy of Limitless to one or two of you we should do it every single week and because we want to encourage you to make this a game make this playful make this fun the second thing I would say teach it to somebody else and then the third thing please leave a review if you've gotten value out of this session and you want to help us on our mission to build better brighter brains no brain Left Behind then the best thing you could do is leave us a review wherever you're consuming this right now on YouTube uh like put a comment down maybe it's in Spotify maybe it's in iTunes maybe you want to leave a review on Amazon we have I think 14 000 reviews for Limitless because when people hear your stories they can see themselves and you're able to affect people then I simply can't and we want to build an army a growing Army of brainiacs that you know that you change your brain you change your life you change your brain you change the world thank you so much for listening to this episode I'll see you in our next one until then be Limitless

Channel: Jim Kwik

Views: 201,670

Keywords: jim kwik, how to take notes, note taking tips, how i take notes, how to take better notes, study tips, note taking musts, note taking methods, kwik learning taking notes, note taking, kwik brain, how i take notes in college, jim kwik podcast, note taking on ipad, handwriting vs typing notes

Id: RfnLqdllftk

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2022