Shelves stretch as far as the eye can see, the wood a beautiful burnt umber shining softly under the florescent lights. They stretch both high and far, towering above you like friendly giants and receding into the distance like an invitation to wander further.
On those shelves, books relaxed by the hundreds of thousands, casually displaying their bindings in a seductive effort to entice a passerby to stop, pick them up, and get lost in their pages.
You are one such passerby, and those pages call to you like a siren song, tempting you to get lost in their depths.
Luckily, you don’t have to resist their allure. You’re in a library, after all!
Perhaps you are like me, and wish for the superpower to run your fingers along their spines and instantly absorb their content for yourself. Just imagine how much knowledge you could accrue in a lifetime! Enough to, well, fill a library!
But unfortunately, we have to put in a lot more work if we want to extract the valuable nuggets from books and transfer them into our brains.
And if we want to remember those nuggets long-term, well, that’s a whole extra level of hard work.
What is the best way to do this? Develop an effective note-taking strategy.
Whether you’re an avid reader or a reluctant one, books likely play some role in your life. Even if you dislike books themselves, consider how much time you spend reading any material each day.
Social media. The news. Text messages. Advertisements. Billboards. Receipts. Documents for work. Emails. Instructions. Recipes. Street signs. YouTube comments. Reviews. Websites. Blog posts like this one — the list goes on and on.
The fact is, we’re constantly absorbing new information. We literally live in what is termed the “information age” due to the proliferation and ease of access to information on the internet.
Information has become a product, and we are all consumers, whether we like it or not.
It’s incredibly easy to fall into the habit of absorbing all of this information mindlessly. After all, there’s a constant influx of it, coming from all directions.
And there are layers and layers of messages being handed to us with each piece of information. Everything and everyone has an agenda.
At some point, you have to stop and ask yourself, “How much am I willing to absorb? To what extent and in what ways will I let others influence my thinking?”
In other words, critical thinking is the only way to combat the waves of information that are washing over all of us in an endless ocean of anchor-less sources and unnavigable data.
We need to develop better ways to perceive, read, discern, and handle information.
Now you may be wondering what all this has to do with note-taking. Well, my friend, let’s dive into it.
How Note Taking Impacts the Brain
Taking notes has a host of benefits, many of which have to do with your brain, cognition, and comprehension. And when I say your brain, I mean your physical brain. As in, note-taking can physically alter your brain in a positive way.
The act of taking notes is a significant workout for your brain. Especially if you handwrite your notes; handwriting is a more complex and involved process than typing on a keyboard, and as a result, the note-taker experiences higher levels of comprehension and retention.
It certainly sharpens your memory, especially if you put in the work to review like you should. Studies have shown that students who take notes have higher retention rates than those who don’t, as proven by their test scores.
Over time, your brain’s capacity for memory will literally increase with repeated use. If you recall information consistently enough, it will strengthen the neurological connections in your brain and increase its storage capacity.
A sharper memory is a good step towards a sharper mind. As your knowledge base crystalizes, you will have a greater capacity to compare new information with what you already know, giving you better evaluative capacity.
As you take notes, you turn a simple listening or reading activity into an active engagement with the content.
Good, effective note-taking requires a lot of intentionality; you must endeavor to understand what is being said so that you can write it down in your own words, and doing so prompts a posture of inquiry and inquisitiveness.
You’ll look for inconsistencies and gaps in the information, comparing it with what you already know and understand to see if it makes sense.
You’ll try to pull out the main ideas and key concepts so that you can highlight the important details of the concept, and in so doing, you will identify the essence of the concept.
You’ll be better able to identify pros and cons and understand different ways of interpreting the information.
Note-taking has even been shown to inspire more creative thinking and creativity in general. The majority of the best note-taking methods are well-suited to pulling out the associations and relationships between data points.
You’ll also be more organized in your thinking, and you’ll be able to apply those structures to any new information you come across. You’ll be able to prioritize which points of data are the most relevant and which can be discarded.
And this is only a handful of the benefits!
So as you can see, there are plenty of ways that note-taking as a practice will help boost your cognitive thinking skills and make you better equipped to navigate today’s information age.
How to Take Effective Notes
Before we get to the box and bullet method of note-taking, there’s some ground we have to cover first.
Namely, we have to identify some of the common characteristics of good notes as well as look at some of the other popular note-taking styles so that you’ll understand the full potential of the box and bullet method.
Here are some of the characteristics of good notes:
First, actively listen to the speaker. Or, if you’re taking notes from a book, actively pay attention to what you’re reading. Don’t be a passive learner. Instead, engage yourself with the topic. Ask questions. Make sure you understand what you’re reading.
Write down the relevant information, and only the relevant information. A common mistake is to either write too much or too little; too much will overwhelm your notes and make them nearly impossible to navigate, while too little won’t give you enough details to remember what it was even about.
Pull the key ideas out of the main topic and only write down the supporting details that are directly relevant. That will help keep your notes clear and easy to understand.
It’s also important to write down the information in your own words instead of copying the speaker’s or book’s. Verbatim notes are passive notes; you need to fully engage with them to make the content yours.
In terms of the actual writing, don’t go overboard with the information. Keep your sentences short and to the point; they can even be incomplete sentences, so long as they get the main idea across. You don’t need complete grammar for your notes; it’s not like you’re writing a textbook!
Utilize any abbreviations or symbols that will make your writing faster, such as stars, circles, arrows, texting lingo, and shortening words. You could also use shorthand to increase your speed.
Common Note-Taking Methods
One of the best ways to instantly improve the effectiveness of your notes is to use a note-taking template. These note-taking systems are designed to make your notes as effective as possible, encouraging structure and organization to help you pull out the main ideas of the topic.
Well-structured learning materials are wonderful tools to help you in your learning journey. Let’s take a look at some of the most common note-taking methods on the market.
Sentence Method
This method is essentially a list of complete sentences, each illustrating a separate fact or concept. Each line is marked by a bullet point or number. It’s fast, simple, and it can’t be denied that this method is capable of recording information.
However, it truly is the bare bones of note-taking and doesn’t have enough structure to really help you work with the information or be able to easily review it later.
Outline Method
This method is similar to the sentence method in that it includes bulleted or numbered lines in a format resembling a list. However, that’s where the resemblance ends.
Outlining stores information in a clear, logical hierarchy. It uses headings to highlight main ideas, and subheadings and bullet points to incorporate supporting details.
Information is broken down into smaller and smaller parts, with their status in the hierarchy indicated by how far they’re indented to the right of the left margin.
Flow Method
This is a visual method that uses arrows and lines to connect ideas. Its purpose is to demonstrate how higher-level concepts are related to each other; the more interconnected the ideas, the more suitable the flow method will be.
It’s great for visual learners and complex subjects, but its focus is more on relationships than details. There’s a limited amount of detailed information you can include with each point.
Cornell Method
Developed by a professor at Cornell University, this method divides the page into three sections: a narrow column to the left for key terms, a wider column to the right for the bulk of your notes, and a space at the bottom for summarizing the main takeaways.
This is one of the most popular templates due to its versatility and ease of review, though one of its downfalls is a certain rigidity that is difficult to overcome sometimes.
Boxing Method
This method groups information by dividing it into boxes or frames. Related information is easy to identify because it’s all in the same box. You can even incorporate subtopics by putting boxes within boxes. It’s easy to use on the computer, and one of its advantages is the ease with which it can incorporate visuals within its boxes.
Mind Mapping
This is one of the most visual types of note-taking styles. It represents information in a hierarchical manner, starting with the main topic at the center of the page and radiating outward with lines branching to subtopics and supporting details.
It highlights the associations between the information through the use of visual cues such as arrows, colors, and shapes.
T Method
This method is primarily used for numerical disciplines such as math, physics, and engineering. You draw a T shape across your page to create two separate columns. On the left side, write the equations, formulas, and problems. On the right side, write personal notes and any questions you might have.
Box and Bullet Method
Now that we’ve covered some of the essentials of creating good notes and some of the most popular note taking methods on the market, let’s turn our attention to the star of the day: the box and bullet method of note-taking. Here’s how it works:
There are two elements to the box and bullet method that are probably quite apparent to you: there are boxes, and there are bullet points.
Start by drawing a box at the top of the page. In it, write the first central idea introduced by the lecture or the book you’re reading.
Underneath that box, write all of the relevant supporting details in bullet point format, listing them out like the sentence method of note taking.
When you’ve exhausted your bulleted list of supporting items for the first box, create a second box with the second central idea. And so on and so forth.
Pros and Cons of Boxes and the Boxing Method
When we look back at the boxing method, one of the advantages is that it’s easy to identify groupings of topics. There’s a box for each subject and its subpoints; everything in the box is related to each other, and it’s easy to see that relation. Main ideas are easily filtered by being organized into boxes.
It’s a very visual technique, and like we mentioned earlier, it’s easy to incorporate visuals into boxes to make them stand out while still being contained on the page.
Boxes are easy to use for both digital and handwritten notes, although they’re definitely more convenient for digital notes, where the boxes can be easily modified and made larger or smaller as needed.
However, boxes do take up a large section of the page. It requires extra time to make them. And they’re not suitable for every subject because not all subjects can be divided so linearly.
Pros and Cons of Bullets and the Sentence Method
Bullet points are used in a number of traditional note-taking methods, such as the Cornell method, outline method, and sentence method. They’re excellent for delineating information into smaller, bite-sized chunks that can be easily skimmed during review.
With bullet points, you can easily highlight key points in a logical, linear way. It’s very simple to do, has a clean structure, and doesn’t require much of your attention or time.
You can use indentations to add more hierarchy to your bullet points, or you can simply list them out as with the sentence method.
However, the lack of hierarchy in the sentence method is what limits its usefulness in terms of organization; the page is neat, yes, but the data doesn’t include much interconnectedness. It’s a list of disconnected facts or ideas that don’t add up to a cohesive whole.
The Genius of the Box and Bullet Method
The box and bullet method takes the pros of the boxing method, combines them with the pros of the sentence method, and minimizes the cons of both.
First, you have boxes to mark the main ideas, making them visually obvious. This helps with reviewing since you can just look at the page and immediately know what the key points are.
Not only can you identify them individually, but you can also scan the page and pull out all of the main ideas. When reviewing, this will help you see the connections between the main points, adding to your big-picture understanding of the topic.
Second, you have the bullet points. They’re in list format, which is the easiest and fastest form of note-taking to use.
And yet, their lack of hierarchy is minimized thanks to the boxes, which add labels and organization to the notes. All of the bullets are directly subjected to the box they are placed under, creating local coherence.
What you end up with is a very simple and fast way to take notes, making this the best note-taking method for when the topic is time sensitive.
The simplicity of the format also helps you to really boil the topic down to its essence: main ideas and supporting details. It’s versatile and can be applied to many disciplines, from social studies to the sciences to philosophy.
It can also be used by students of any age or grade level. As soon as children can write, they can be introduced to the box and bullet method. It can be used during lectures, for reading books, for brainstorming ideas, and even for analyzing posts on social media.
Putting the Box and Bullet Method Into Practice
Remember the library we started out in? Let’s go back to that. The box and bullet method is great for a number of different learning formats, but it’s particularly good for reading materials. Let’s look at how you should use this method to take notes on a chapter in a book.
Start by preparing your page. Write the title and author of the book at the top of the page, along with the date that you’re taking the notes. It’s important to record these elements for future reference when you come back to review your notes.
The best way to use this method for your reading is to read the material twice. Read the chapter the first time through, familiarizing yourself with the information and building an understanding of what the text is saying.
When you read the chapter through a second time, look for the central ideas of the text. What are the main points? What are the main takeaways?
Write the first point you identify in the first box on your page, then list out all of the important supporting details related to that point in bullet points.
Follow suit with all of the remaining key points that you identify in the chapter. Sometimes there will be only one main point, but often a chapter will have several. Just make as many boxes and bullet lists as needed to pull the main points out of the chapter.
If there is a lot of information in the text, you can even do a box and bullet list for each paragraph. This way, you can simplify even a complicated social studies text or article and break it down into its most important parts.
You can use the exact same method for a post on Facebook that you want to think more critically about. Take the post and pull out the main concept, then list its supporting details.
For notes where you want to think critically about the subject rather than just record the information, you can put the main arguments in the boxes and use the bullets to respond to those arguments. Or, you can put your questions in the boxes and use the bullets to expand more deeply on them.
As you can see, there are plenty of applications of the box and bullet method when it comes to reading materials and thinking more critically about them. Take one of the many pieces of data that you read today and try your hand at evaluating it with the box and bullet method of note-taking!
Conclusion
It can be extremely challenging to navigate the constant influx of information that we experience in the modern world. Even if you limit your internet access, you’ll still find hordes of content in every store you walk into and on the lips of most people you meet.
There are definite benefits to limiting your exposure to a large number of these ideas because many of the messages are not actually very positive, true, or beneficial. It’s important to be very cognizant and careful about what you allow into your mind.
But it’s also extremely important to have the tools you need to properly evaluate information and discern its validity. In a time when critical thinking is not taught well in schools, you need to be intentional about developing those skills yourself.
Note-taking is an excellent way to do that. As we’ve discussed, there are plenty of substantial and proven cognitive benefits to taking notes on a regular basis.
It improves your memory, sharpens your ability to identify relevant information, puts you in an inquisitive state of mind, and physically improves your brain’s functioning.
You’ll be better at seeing flaws in information, identifying agendas and biases, making connections and associations, drawing out patterns, asking intelligent questions, applying your knowledge, thinking on your feet, and making decisions.
Your brain function will be literally more efficient because you will have practiced the art of evaluation and critical thinking. The more you use these skills, the more ingrained they become in your brain’s synapses and the more natural it is to use them.
The basics of effective note-taking will help you experience these cognitive benefits and start giving you the tools to navigate today’s information age.
These basics include the ability to identify and prioritize the most important information out of a sea of data. You’ll be able to structure information in a way that is organized and clear, rather than in a disarray of disconnected data points.
Get in the habit of active listening, whether you’re in a classroom or listening to a podcast. Any time information is handed to you, take on a posture of attentiveness and engagement. Passivity lowers your guard and allows all kinds of lesser, flawed data into your subconscious. Pay attention!
A form of active engagement with the information is to put it in your own words when taking notes; don’t rely on the formulations of the speaker or author. Take control of the information and make sure you fully understand it by packaging it in a way that makes sense to you.
Then, we looked at a bunch of templates, such as the Cornell note-taking method, all leading up to our expose of the box and bullet method of note-taking. This method is one of the very best when it comes to marrying simplicity with effectiveness and speed.
This method is particularly useful for reading materials. Its versatility means that it can be applied with equal adeptness to complex literature, such as articles or studies, as well as to info bytes, such as social media posts.
It’s often used to record information, but it can also be modified to evaluate information with your own observations, responses, and questions.
It’s easy to write, easy to modify, and easy to review.
What more could you want when it comes to a note-taking strategy?