Note-Taking for Productivity

11 Feb 2025

Have you ever reflected on how you take notes in university? Do you feel that your notes are truly an asset to your learning, or do you just scribble down half-sentences that turn out to be illegible and unhelpful when preparing for an exam? Effective note-taking is an excellent tool for learning, not only helping with information retention and revision but also with brainstorming, improving active listening, and critical thinking.

When taking notes of material taught in class or read on paper, your mind has to organise and assess information for your understanding, ideally into a coherent structure. Therefore, the method by which you write down information is very impactful on the overall process, outcome, and your general productivity. Whether you write your notes by hand or type them out into digital documents, there are methods which can guide you when organising the information into clear and concise structures. The following 5 are referred to as the most used and successful ones:

1. The Cornell Method: This method is excellent for in-class notes, synthesizing material, and revision. It offers a systematic format, structuring your paper into three sections: Note-Taking Area (a wide column on the right for your general notes), Cue Column (a narrow column on the left for key concepts from general notes) and Summary (a section at the bottom of the page for summarising covered material). During class you write your general notes, after class you review them and extract main ideas/themes in the Cue Column and then write a summary. During revision, you hide the notes with another paper leaving the cues uncovered and try to say as much as you can remember from the material. You can also choose to write the summary at this stage when you feel confident in your knowledge of the material.

2. Outlining: Here, you take notes by organising them into areas of main topics (using bullet points or numbers) that lead into subcategories and examples, where you can provide more detail. This is great for logically synthesizing the material to aid your understanding, seeing what you have learned in a clear, coherent structure. These notes are easy to navigate and great for in-class noting as well as revision.

3. Mind-Mapping: This is basically a graphic representation of concepts from your studied material. Creating mind maps is a creative and evocative way of taking notes and brainstorming ideas, while emphasizing critical thinking by asking you to expand and connect the main concepts which you are learning about. It is also a flexible system in terms of approaching the categories in your maps, as you can visualize different clusters of concepts and colour code or organise further by numbers.

4. Charting Method: This method uses a table structure with columns (for categories) and rows (for adhering information) to structure your data into an overview. It is suitable for when you have a lot of facts or chronological information at hand that you want to organise logically, while also being good for comparison and conducting analyses or recognising patterns. This method reduces the body of your writing and is excellent for memorisation and effortless orientation within your material.

5. Sentence Method: With this method you write down every idea or piece of information into a sentence. This method is very simple and fast-paced therefore perfect for in-class note-taking, allowing you to capture a lot of information. However, it can also lead to long texts so organising your notes afterwards is a clever idea to make them clearer for upcoming revision.

Different methods work best with different people, subjects, and goals – for example, think of synthesizing for an exam vs mind mapping conceptual material for an essay. Furthermore, while research shows that handwriting your notes can significantly aid your conceptual understanding, digital notes are often much quicker and more practical. There are myriads of resources on the internet, from YouTube to university websites offering useful insights into different approaches for note-taking. The Skills Centre also holds workshops on note-taking and offers information handouts on their website.

Here’s to more productive and insightful learning – happy note-taking!