How to Take Smart Notes

Your willpower has limits; your ability to think does not.

Many self-help books on writing focus on what to do when you confront a blank page. They overlook the potential of creating an information-gathering process that ensures your page isn’t blank when you begin. Most writing manuals omit an important part of academic, research, business or non-fiction writing: taking notes.

Bad note-taking has no immediate repercussions. The problems appear later, when you attempt to write a cogent work based on flawed notes. At that point, many people will reach for a how-to book so they can get on track. But by then, it’s too late.

You write daily. For many people, writing is akin to breathing. If you hit a snag when you begin to write, it may be because you’re trying to retrieve arguments and points of information from your head. Combining smaller points and referring to the material you have already written might make writing significantly easier.

To have these smaller pieces ready to use, you need a system that allows you to concentrate on ideas and arguments instead...