As I was getting ready to start my 2024 planning meeting at AWS, I was thinking a lot about how to take notes. In the same vein, the process of preparing a re:Invent keynote takes months, which means I do research and meet a lot of smart people who are building amazing products. And at every meeting, I take a lot of notes.
My earliest memory of taking notes is when I was in elementary school. I would copy exactly what the teacher said or wrote on the blackboard. Things like definitions and multiplication tables. Then I went home, studied what I copied, and eventually took the test. In reality, we have learned to encode, store, and recall information. If you think about it, it’s similar to the S3.
But this was not a synthesis, it was memorization.
As I continued my educational journey and the topics became more complex, I had to rethink my note-taking. It was more important to listen, observe, and understand what was being taught, rather than being a scribe. For example, as a child, I might have copied the following definition verbatim: “The classical role of mitochondria is oxidative phosphorylation, which uses the energy released when the food we eat is oxidized to produce ATP.” And when I studied, I would have memorized this without necessarily understanding how it actually worked. It would have been more helpful to read the definition and write it down in a way that made sense to me, like this: power plant cells. They produce most of the chemical energy needed to power the biochemical reactions of the cell.” Perhaps you could diagram the process on the margins. This is synthesis. This means understanding.
And there is research to back this up. Taking notes verbatim is not very effective, especially when trying to learn and retain new information.
Pen and paper
To this day, I still write a lot of notes by hand. It helps me stay focused and internalize important parts. Since it is impossible to write as fast as people talk, I am forced to write down what I think is most important or jot down things I don’t understand so I can ask questions.
Cornell Method
I’ve spent a lot of time reading and relearning about different note-taking methods over the past few months. Everything from outlines to mind mapping to charting. And one that has worked pretty well for me is the Cornell Method. It’s a simple approach where you divide your notebook pages into four sections: 1/title, 2/notes, 3/keywords/questions, and 4/summary. No, it’s not because I worked at Cornell for nearly a decade. The method involves documenting your thinking process (i.e., asking questions), synthesizing what you’ve learned in real time (i.e., taking notes), and summarizing everything after the fact (i.e., writing a concise summary).
What I end up with is a structured notebook that is easy to read, organize, and revisit because it’s more than just writing something down, it’s also allowing me to go back and review questions and challenge my assumptions.
A recent study conducted by Kuniyoshi Sakai is titled: Paper Notebooks vs. Mobile Devices: Differences in Brain Activation During Memory RetrievalIn fact, subjects who used pen and paper showed better retention and recall than those who used a keyboard or tablet and stylus. However, there is broad agreement that taking notes in any form, using any input, helps with encoding, retention, and recall.
As you can see in the image above, I’m a huge fan of analog note taking. For me, analog helps me remember, synthesize, and summarize. The moment I write something down with pen and paper, it seems to seep into my brain. This doesn’t happen in digital. I also use the Cornell Method when preparing for meetings. I summarize the briefing document in my notes and it takes effect immediately. The fact that you are acting with the text rather than just reading it drives this process.
Using ML and generative AI
There is a lot of value in taking notes and actively synthesizing information. But we live in a world where there is more data than we can reasonably expect. This is an area where ML and generative AI will play an increasingly important role. Some examples that come to mind are:
- To supplement the notes taken during meetings, we use a transcription service with speaker identification capabilities.
- Use computer vision and optical character recognition (OCR) to turn your handwritten notes into documents that you can easily share with others or store in a central location (assuming you’re not already using something like Kindle Scribe).
- Almost instant summary.
- Use LLM to iterate through your entire collection of notes, identifying topics, trends, and important people across hundreds of pages of meetings, lectures, document reviews, and field visits.
I think of it like reading a map. If you go back 20 years, reading a map was a pretty common skill. You would plan a route, make some notes, and then navigate the route. And if you took that route enough times, you would memorize it. You would memorize the colors of fountains or specific houses along the way. You would know when and where there would be traffic or construction, and you could figure out alternate routes to get around it. But these days, we just use our phones. We don’t have to spend too much time remembering, and we just follow directions from street to street.
It helps. It’s easy. There’s no debate about that. But reading a physical map is still a very useful skill. There will inevitably be times when you don’t have cell service (or you lose your phone, or maybe you just want to disconnect from technology), and it’s important to know where you are and where you’re going. And just like writing notes by hand, you can filter out the noise caused by technology and focus on what’s important.
As I continue to research what works best for digital natives, I’m really curious to see how research will evolve over the next decade and beyond.
Take lots of notes
To quote author Anne Lamott: “(…) one of the worst feelings I can think of is realizing that you’ve had a great moment or insight or vision or phrase, and then you lose it.” My advice: Take lots of notes.
Make it now!
memo: I’m really curious to see how my readers take notes and synthesize information. If you do something differently than I do, let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.
