Imagine kicking off your school day or work week with a big lecture or a symposium that could advance your career. What's the first thing you grab? Is it your tablet, or your journal? Note-taking as a habit has come a long way, giving students and professionals a wide range of tools to record and review ideas shared with them by mentors and guest speakers. And while digital phone apps, tablets, and laptops make organizing information easier than ever, there's still something about old-school pen and paper that people can't let go of.
While countless studies have weighed the pros and cons of digital versus physical ways of taking notes, this article takes a different route, looking into Reddit for personal experiences and preferences on how to take notes effectively.
What Are the Other Best Ways to Take Notes?
For most students and professionals, sticking with pen and paper for collecting and organizing notes feels right. At the same time, plenty of people are mixing things up, using different types of note-taking methods to keep track of essential details in a way that works best for them.
1. Take snapshots first, write down notes later.
- Phones are good for taking screenshots and organizing schedules. But for memorization and studying, notebooks and pens work the best.
- Taking down notes digitally works well for quick lectures, and most would record or snap photos of slides so they have their review copies instantly. Still, there are some who want a more immersive way to study, especially if they want to recall not just the notes but when and where they wrote them.
2. Use digital tools to reorganize handwritten notes
- While some people prefer reviewing hand-written notes, there are those who’d want a more organized way of rereading their lessons. That’s the beauty of having both digital and paper tools for studying.
- Of course, one should always be grateful that they have different means to record and consolidate the notes and references they are writing.
3. Write notes in your own words
- Whether it’s digital or physical, the best way to take notes is to engage the information, not just copying it to the journals. Writing them in your own words can be a great suggestion, as noted by one redditor.
At the end of the day, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to notetaking. Most people feel that the "old-school" way of writing notes on paper isn't going away soon, while others would make use of their mobile devices and apps to organize their notes and lectures. The real trick is finding what feels natural and helps them stay on top of their studies and presentations.
So, find the best way to write notes and reports. Whether you go scribbling notes using a quality UPrinting notebook, or jotting down bullet points on your laptop, or both, with enough practice, you'll figure out the style that not only keeps you organized but also makes learning and remembering easier.
