Introduction

For a long period of time, I often found that note-taking was a bit waste of time(I mean the literally writing), but I also know that it was still helpful somehow in my learning journey, then I thought time-wasting might be a necessary cost.

Until I felt the balance is declining — the time spent on writing was much more than the number of things I learned. I started to investigate all the issues I met because I was upset about it due to how inefficient it was.

Finally, I figured it out; the solution is to implement the RRICS principle. In today's article, I will detail two of them — Condensable and Recallable; they’re mainly about the content in a note.

The good note

Only write down the note that we'll still understand without effort in the future.

The best way to understand Condensable and Recallable is by reviewing how good notes are created by smart students. Because no one had dedicated to teach them how, it’s weird that they all sort of know how to make a good note:

Make it lesser

The lower number of notes we can make to achieve the learning purpose, the better. Usually, students take notes on math course far more than on history course, even though the amount of knowledge both courses give them are the same on average. This implies at least one thing — we only take notes if it’s necessary.

That is to say, unless we encounter the situations (e.g. the concept is complicated so it's necessary to take a note to make it clear), we usually just keep most of the new info in the textbook with some annotations (e.g. highlight); otherwise, we don't note.

Make it fit

A good note is a note with a specific format that fits in a certain domain of knowledge. There is no such universal format suitable for any kind of domain knowledge (e.g. math vs. history).

Make it clever

A note with a format that fits in a specific domain knowledge is great, but its content should be clever.

Make it intuitive

A good note is a note with intuitive content that a writer can still understand what it means when she/he reviews it in the future. A fit and clever note is great, but it should also be intuitive.

Make it modular

One concept, one note. Sometimes it’s hard to follow this idea but do your best.

To summarize, Condensable and Recallable are the criteria that have the above concepts mixed in a way that can determine whether the content of a note is good or bad.

The bad note

A bad note is evil because people think they receive the benefits from the start, but it turns out, after a period of time, when people review the note, it has annoying returns.

Below shows a few common problems of a bad note (they usually depend on each other somehow, but I try to separate them only for educational purposes):

Multiple purposes — marketing & learning

The purpose of a public blog post is for marketing, while a non-public note is for learning. The tricky thing happens when we mix purposes; write down a non-public note as like a public blog post, or a public blog post also serves the writer’s learning purpose.

We tend to use different types of words, images, tones, etc. in a public article, because we know someone might read it in the future. But such articles, from the viewpoint of learning purpose, usually are long, contain unnecessary words, and have other problems.

Are the notes written by a smart student public? Usually no. Not because they don’t want so, they focus on a single purpose — learning.

Are the notes written by a smart student with redundant words? Usually no. Because that is time-wasting and has no obvious benefits.

Mixing too much new knowledge

This is bad because, when we need to review one of the concepts in a note someday (which is highly possible), we have no choice but need to scan all the content, which is time-wasting. Also, the more knowledge is embedded in a note, the higher possibility that its content is long and complicated, and we’ll have a hard time understanding the content (and the context).

… (there’re just too many problems)

I can name more problems that a bad note will bring to the surface, but I think you already get it.

Summary 🎉

The content in a note is like a double-edged sword. We can use its bright side by practicing — following the criteria of Condensable and Recallable to determine whether the content is good or bad, then fix it.

Next, we’ll look at the other two criteria in depth — Retrievable & Indexable.