
Ask HN: How do you keep notes while learning? - Oras
Hello HN,
While learning, watching online courses, reading books I would love to keep notes in a way that I can easily access later to recall and improve. When I don&#x27;t take notes, it does get overwhelming after few hours of study.
I have tried Cornell notes method, writing down notes in a notebook and Evernote but with notebook writing, it can be hard especially if I&#x27;m reading or watching on my laptop.<p>In other words, what&#x27;s your procedure for better learning and information retention?
======
nickjj
I don't take notes, and my memory isn't very good.

But when I take courses or try to learn something new, I'm often following
along or applying it to a real project of my own.

The act of doing makes me a million times better at retaining information than
writing notes.

Also I find that if you're at ground zero on a topic, then taking notes hurts
you because it's extremely tedious and time consuming to take notes. I'd
rather blaze through 3 books and get about 15% out of each book than
meticulously take notes on 1 book. Chances are you're going to learn a lot
more useful info in the same amount of time from the 3 book approach because
when you're learning something new, getting to the 80% in the 80/20 rule is
way more important than the fine details.

Trying to learn that last 20% from any material is often futile too. Real
world experience is going to be a much better teacher at that point.

