How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

I have very recently rediscovered my love of writing. However, while researching, I quickly realized the note taking methods taught in school were not working. I soon heard about the Zettlekasten method , which sounded great but was hard to wrap my head around from YouTube videos and small blogs. How to Take Smart Notes explained with clear examples and well formed insights exactly what the method excelled at and how to use it.

This book was a good read. Mr. Ahrens put a lot of hard work into it. However, the book reads more like a college text book. It really didn't show you how to take notes .

This book is the ultimate guide to structured note-taking using a connection-based process. Its unparalleled approach to content retention and recall, backed by insightful excerpts and examples, makes it the go-to methodology for anyone seeking to enhance their ability to apply and maintain concepts. If you're looking for a foolproof way to boost your memory and maximize your retention skills, then this book is an absolute must-read.

Sönke Ahrens lays bare the thinking behind the zettelkasten method to being more productive in writing. Although the mechanics of how to construct an analog or digital system to support active learning is certainly present, what I appreciated most was the well reasoned and supported arguments on why such a system works because of how the human thinks, with its own inherent biases that can get in the way of good thinking and writing.By the end of the book, I was left with a profound, “what if…?” thought. What if I had started my initial university journey by building such a system to enable thinking? What difference would it have had in my academic life that has run parallel to my work-life, on a part-time basis, for decades?The gift of any author and their work is to make us think. In this regard, Ahrens succeeds in this work and has inspired me to dig deeper into the topic and consider creating my own zettelkasten, built upon the foundational ideas and processes written in this book. It’s worth a read. Thank you, Sönke.

I have no idea why there are so many praises for this book. The IDEA in this book is amazing. But the actual book is very badly written. The system discussed in this book is not even something the author created, so I don't think this author should be celebrated for telling other people about someone else's great idea, when the author just basically spends 170 densely packed pages saying the same thing over and over, and over, and over, and over...without really doing an even mediocre job of showing anyone how to really implement this great technique. I think part of the problem is that he is continuously singing the praises of the technique and repeating himself so often, that any actual descriptions of how to 'do the thing' are lost among the endless rambling. Again, great idea, but this is a really terrible book when it comes to execution or "how-to."

It is really important to read the Afterword and the Appendix in Sonke Ahrens' HTTSN, and the warning is warranted because those went almost unnoticed in my Kindle version. So make sure you don't miss it.There, Ahrens summarizes his own experience with the Slip-Box method he advocates about all through his book and provides a practical example extracted from Niklas Luhmann's own Slip-Box (he who actually invented it and first used it as a storage of ideas for his prolific intellectual life.)The whole book itself is an example of how to distil ideas into fleeting and literature notes, elaborate them into permanent notes and then combine them in a publishable manuscript. These are Ahrens' contributions to the method, because Luhmann's notes, as I've later researched, were much more fluid and without rigid categories.Anyway, it is amusing to see how Ahrens compares and contrasts the ideas of people as diverse as Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nassim Taleb, Carol Dweck and Daniel Kahnemann among many others. But if it were just for that, HTTSN would be just another motivational book with a catchy subtitle and filled with second-hand, recycled ideas. What makes it stand out, imho, is first, Ahrens' genuine interest in expanding his reader's independent and creative thinking and, second, his equally empathetic critiques to the linear, compartmentalized structure of the traditional educational/academic systems. Indeed, that remitted me to Yacov Hecht's Democratic Education, as it puts curiosity and effortless engagement to the center of the learning experience, but maybe with a little more order and structure, which at least to me was quite comforting.Ahrens devotes a good chunk of HTWSN to the functioning of the human mind based on recent studies, and heavily advocates in favor of an external structure and memory to help both store and retrieve ideas while also freeing up the mind of the heavy load of unused memories. He also emphasizes the importance to keep it all simple and engaging (which naturally remitted me to John Dewey's 'play'.) Even though Ahrens does not make reference toSchiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man, I couldn't avoid remembering it from my Philosophy of Art classes, and that made a nice new note in my own Obsidian Slip-Box. As nice as the example of Abraham Wald's insight about which parts of the RAF airplanes should get reinforced armour. I immediately recognized Taleb's survivorship bias from Fooled by Randomness, but Ahrens' example is certainly much more poignant because it takes the concept to its root.I enjoyed HTTSN much more than I was expecting. It is a quite simple book, but as Ahrens puts it, simple is not necessarily easy. He uses the case of Malcolm McLean inventing the containership in the 1950s to illustrate how simplicity may be hard to implement, but I think the power of this image goes much beyond: to make this simple system work, you need to fill in the boxes, and fill in them nice and well.

Excelente livro para quem quer aprender a tomar notas com Obsidian

El libro me ayudó a organizar mis ideas para estructurarlas mejor por escrito.Considero que la impresión del libro es “extraña”: el interlineado está muy reducido y los márgenes no son uniformes (nótese como la paginación y el texto están casi hasta el borde de la página). Personalmente, eso afecta mi experiencia de lectura… aunque lo conservo como referencia ya que tiene varias nociones rescatables.

I read the first edition of this book four years ago just prior to commencing a doctorate and it helped me set the foundation of a method of writing that has transformed my writing. There’s no easy button and no tricks; it involves self discipline, being organized, and, most importantly, writing every day. My zettelkasten is based in Roam Research, a tool that I use in my doctoral writing and in my professional practice. Regardless of the tool you use, this book will help you organize the DNA of your personal slip box. Don’t enter into this method lightly thinking it’s something you can pick up in a weekend. Give it a year of intentional practice, and it will become your conversation partner for the rest of your writing life.

Leider nur in Englisch: die zweite, verbesserte Auflage. Ein echter Augenöffner. Sehr gute Anleitung mit Beispiel und Erörterung der Luhmannschen Arbeitsweise. Kleines Ärgernis: ich hatte die deutsche Ausgabe aus 2017, die hinsichtlich der praktischen Umsetzung doch große Lücken hat

Really helped me shape and collect my thinking in one place.