I’m currently reading The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul. It’s a fantastic read: a rare blend of anecdotal evidence and hard science. Paul’s thesis is the human mind is limited and to maximize the capabilities of one’s mind, he or she must leverage the external world. There are several means and methods discussed in her book, but the one I want to focus on is one that is beaten into our heads throughout our educational and professional careers – note taking.
A History of Note Taking
Note taking has taken many forms in human history. In ancient times, humans mostly relied on their brains to maintain and record information. As societies became more complex through the evolution of language and inventions such as paper and punctuation, transferring information to other mediums became paramount to society’s advancement. Fast forward through the invention of the printing press, the public library, the internet, and the smart phone, and you arrive at our present state – ancient biology overwhelmed by modern technology.
What do we do? At least when it comes to taking effective notes, Charles Darwin provides a clue. Darwin is undisputedly one of history’s greatest naturalists, but he wouldn’t have become that if not for two factors – curiosity and diligent note taking. The former is something we’ve discussed ad nauseum throughout Becoming Polymathic. The latter is what we will focus on in this piece.
Darwin’s Guide to Note Taking
Darwin honed his note taking techniques while voyaging on the HMS Beagle from 1831-1836. A keen observer, he began to notice the diligence with which Captain Robert Fitzroy kept his ship logs. The ships logs were written records of everything which took place on the Beagle that day.
Darwin decided to emulate Fitzroy in his own journaling. He began by recording his own external and internal observations on the two-month voyage from England to South America. Upon arrival in South America, he applied the same diligence to his observations about nature.
Darwin’s notes are an eclectic mix of drawings, equations, long handed, and shorthanded notes. But, if you were to read said notes, they wouldn’t make sense. Aside from the Victorian English and penmanship, the notes appear unorganized. Yet, he was able to leverage these notes twenty years later while writing On the Origin of Species. The ability to leverage past notes far into the future speaks to the power of externalizing our brain’s record keeping.
Erick Greene’s Guide to Note Taking
It would be unwise to say Darwin’s note taking technique is perfect. To provide some guidelines, we turn to another naturalist – Professor Erick Greene. In one of Greene’s essays, he described an assignment he gave to his upper-level graduate class.
The first part was to observe a “single thing” for an entire semester. The second part was to develop a list of research questions from their observations. In the same essay, he also provided a list of twenty best practices for field notes. The three which I found most impactful were:
- Write for yourself and for posterity
- If you use abbreviations, make sure there is a key in your field notebook
- Form a writing habit a la Thomas Jefferson
Leveraging Detachment Gain
Externalizing your brain’s record keeping doesn’t just aid you by removing the immediate stress of remembering, it also aids you in the development of future ideas. By recording information then returning to it later, we are allowing ourselves to engage in detachment gain.
Detachment gain is the process of isolating an idea from the context and sentiment surrounding it. This disengagement period allows the brain to connect new information with old and thus form new ideas. There is no better example of this process than Darwin leveraging Beagle notes to write On the Origin of Species.
Developing Effective Note Taking for YOU
To this day, I struggle to take effective notes, but I am a lot better now than six months ago. When Becoming Polymathic started, I was experimenting with mind mapping. At a high level, mind mapping is recording notes via sketches and text then connecting them via various graphics.
Prior to writing this piece, I looked at some of these old notes. They made even less sense to me than Darwin’s Beagle notes. The issue was two-fold. First, I didn’t realize drawings weren’t an effective way for me to recall information. Second, I wasn’t very good at drawing.
Regarding technique, I’ve come to find long hand notes with arrows and modified fonts is what works best for me. I’m not surprised at this result considering my affinity for writing. However, there has been another important realization which has made my note taking much more effective – only taking notes on things which resonate with me.
In academic and professional settings, we tend to note things we think are useful or think we’ll need to remember. While that may seem necessary, it’s actually contradictory to how we learn and retain information.
Building Your Web of Knowledge
We learn and retain information by connecting old concepts to new. If our new concepts can’t be connected to old ones, we stand little chance of remembering them. This is where, yet again, interest comes into play. By taking notes on information which impacts you, you’re inherently connecting it to previous information which has also impacted you. From there, you brain begins to weave a strong web of information upon which all future information will connect. That web is one of impactful and navigable knowledge.
By no means am I saying I’ve mastered note taking. There are definitely items from Darwin and Greene I want to incorporate moving forward such as the abbreviation index and greater levels of detail. I do believe, however, I’ve improved my ability to filter out what information resonates with me. It’s a necessary first step, one which I encourage you all to take after reading this letter.
To restate Erick Greene, write for yourself and your future self. That is it…
Be More.
Become Polymathic.
Quote of the Week: “Thomas Jefferson was such an inveterate chronicler of daily events in his notebooks that he even took the time to record the weather four times on the day he helped write the Declaration of Independence. So unless you have something far more pressing than writing the Declaration of Independence, you have no excuse for avoiding your field notebook!” – Erick Greene, Professor