As we’re about to begin the planning conferences for 2024 at AWS, I’ve been pondering rather a lot about how I take notes. In the identical vein, the method of placing collectively a re: Invent keynote takes months, and it implies that I’m assembly with a whole lot of sensible of us doing analysis and constructing superb merchandise. And at each assembly I’m taking notes — a number of them.
The earliest reminiscences I’ve of taking notes are in major faculty. I’d copy word-for-word what the trainer would say or write on the board. Things like definitions and multiplication tables. Then I’d go residence, examine what I’d copied, and finally take a take a look at. In follow, I used to be studying to encode, retailer, and recall data. When you consider it, it’s a bit like S3.
But this was memorisation, not synthesis.
As I continued alongside my instructional journey, and the subject material grew to become more and more extra advanced, it compelled me to rethink notice taking. It was much less about being a scribe, and extra about listening, observing, and comprehending what was being taught. For instance, the youthful me could have copied the next definition verbatim: “The classic role of mitochondria is oxidative phosphorylation, which generates ATP by utilising the energy released during the oxidation of the food we eat.” And when finding out, I’d have dedicated this to reminiscence with out essentially understanding the way it truly labored. What would have been extra useful would have been to learn the definition, then write it out in a manner that was significant to me, similar to: “Mitochondria are the power plant of the cell. They generate most of the chemical energy needed to power the cell’s biochemical reactions.” Maybe even diagram the method within the margins. This is synthesis. This denotes understanding.
And there’s analysis to again this up. Specifically, that verbatim notice taking simply isn’t as efficient whenever you’re attempting to study and retain new data.
Pen and paper
To at the present time, I nonetheless take a whole lot of my notes by hand. It helps me to keep up focus and internalise the essential bits. It’s unattainable to write down as quick as individuals converse, so I’m compelled to write down down what I feel is most essential or make notice of what I don’t perceive in order that I can ask questions.
The Cornell Method
I’ve spent fairly a little bit of time over the previous few months studying about and relearning completely different note-taking approaches. Everything from outlining to thoughts mapping to charting. And what’s labored fairly effectively for me is the Cornell Method. A easy method that has you cut up a pocket book web page into 4 components: 1/ title, 2/ notes, 3/ key phrases/questions, and 4/ abstract. And no, it’s not as a result of I labored at Cornell for the higher a part of a decade, however as a result of this technique encourages you to doc your thought processes (i.e., ask questions), synthesise what you’re studying in real-time (i.e., take notes), and summarise all of it after the actual fact (i.e., write a succinct abstract).
What I wind up with are structured notes which are straightforward to learn, organise, and revisit, as a result of it’s extra than simply writing one thing down, however with the ability to return and assessment questions and problem assumptions.
A current examine by Kuniyoshi Sakai, titled Paper Notebooks vs. Mobile Devices: Brain Activation Differences During Memory Retrieval, truly confirmed increased retention and recall for topics that used pen and paper versus a keyboard, or pill and stylus. However, there’s broad settlement that taking notes, in any type with any enter, helps with encoding, retention, and recall.
As you’ll be able to see from the picture above, I’m a giant fan of analog note-taking. For me, analog helps with memorising, synthesising, and summarising. As quickly as I write one thing down with pen and paper, it additionally appears to seek out its manner into my mind – one thing that doesn’t occur with digital. I even use the Cornell technique when getting ready for conferences; I summarise the briefing doc in my pocket book, and it instantly sticks. The reality that you’re energetic with the textual content as an alternative of simply studying it drives this course of.
Using ML and generative AI
There is a whole lot of worth within the act of taking notes and actively synthesising data. But we dwell in a world with extra information than we might ever moderately count on to comb by. This is an space the place ML and generative AI will play an more and more essential position. Just a few examples that come to thoughts are:
- Using a transcription service with speaker identification to complement the notes you’re taking throughout a gathering.
- Using pc imaginative and prescient and optical character recognition (OCR) to transform your handwritten notes into docs that you may simply share with others or retailer in a central location. (Assuming that you just’re not already utilizing one thing like Kindle Scribe).
- Near-instant summarisation.
- Iterating over a whole corpus of notes utilizing an LLM to establish themes, tendencies, and essential individuals throughout a whole bunch of pages from conferences, lectures, doc opinions, on-site visits, and so forth.
I see this like studying a map. If you return 20 years, studying a map was a reasonably frequent ability. You’d plan a route, take some notes, then attempt to navigate it. And if you happen to took the route sufficient instances, you’d bring it to mind. You’d keep in mind a fountain or the color of a selected home alongside the way in which. You’d know when and the place there can be site visitors or development, and the alternate routes to get round it. But nowadays, we simply use our telephones. We observe turn-by-turn instructions from street-to-street while not having to commit an excessive amount of to reminiscence.
It’s useful. It’s straightforward. That’s probably not up for debate. But studying a bodily map continues to be a really helpful ability. There will inevitably be instances that you just don’t have cell service (otherwise you lose your telephone, or possibly you need to disconnect from expertise), and realizing the place you’re and find out how to get the place you’re going are essential. And similar to taking notes by hand, it means that you can take away among the noise created by expertise, and to deal with the essential bits.
I’m genuinely curious to see how analysis will evolve within the subsequent 10+ years as we proceed to review what works finest for digital natives.
Take notes, a number of them
I’ll go away you with a quote from the author Anne Lamott: “[…] one of the worst feelings I can think of, [is] to have had a wonderful moment or insight or vision or phrase, to know you had it, then lose it.” My recommendation: take notes, a number of them.
Now, go construct!
Note: I’m genuinely curious how my readers take notes and synthesise data. If you’re doing issues in a different way than me, let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.