All of us take notes, but few of us know how to do it properly.

Until my last year of university, I didn't know how to take notes properly.

Can you imagine that?

15 years of taking notes and I still wasn't any good.

How many times have you walked out of a lecture and realize that you have no idea what you've just heard?

Do you ever think to yourself there must be a better way to take notes?

If you do, you're in for a treat.

In this video attempt to provide you with a solution for taking the best notes possible.

Students usually suffer from at least one of three note taking problems there, taking notes passively, they're distracted and lectures, or they have not mentally primed for the lecture.

I'll explore each of these topics in more detail.

So what do I mean?

By taking notes passively?

The main form of passive note taking is writing down every single word, the teacher says, without giving it any thought.

The next time you're in a lecture, just take a look around the room.

You'll see that 95% of students are mindlessly writing down every word, the professor says.

When I was in university, I would sometimes feel guilty if I was not constantly taking notes.

Everyone was doing it.

So must be the right thing to do, right?

There's almost this hive mind behavior with no taking.

Let me say this.

Taking good notes is hard work.

You have to actively be thinking and listening.

Most students don't want to put this hard work in.

So the default to the easier task of writing down everything yet understanding nothing Problem Number two is being distracted in lectures.

Students often have trouble focusing lectures.

Because of the two EFS, Facebook and friends, Facebook is more or less a metaphor for social media texting and technology.

When a student doesn't give their undivided attention to taking notes, which is hard work, remember, they end up taking bad notes.

Sitting near friends is usually not a good idea because they constantly shift our attention to conversations that arm or interesting in the moment.

In most lectures, I sat separate from my friends.

I'm someone who really likes to separate my work from my play.

I don't like to do activities where there is a gray area.

For example, when I sit near my friends, I have to constantly shift my tension between what they're talking about and what is going on in the lecture.

I'd much rather focus hard in the lecture and then go really deep into other conversations during my break.

Besides, good friends don't care if you don't talk to them during the lecture, and it gives them a chance to focus better as well.

Problem number three is not being mentally primed.

The average person needs to see something a few times before it really sticks in their head.

Most students come to the lectures un prepared and therefore I'm primed.

Since they have no prior knowledge of the topic, the lecture is the first time they're hearing about it.

Naturally, you're not going to learn very much if it's your first time hearing about a difficult topic.

So now let's go over how to take good notes.

Note taking method I recommend, is the Cornell method.

Split the page up into three sections.

Main ideas, summary and notes.

This methods gonna help you clearly organize your thoughts in the lecture.

More importantly, it promotes active learning.

Taking notes is hard.

When we're sitting in a lecture, we often have to choose between listening to the professor's words or writing stuff down.

This can easily feel overwhelming.

As a result, most students immediately default to rewriting everything, the professor says, so that they can review it later.

In my opinion, this is a huge waste of time.

After writing, the notes will have to spend time understanding them later because we're not being active learners in class.

On top of that, when we're going over our notes, we might have some questions about the topic and run into things we don't understand.

Now we have to email, are professors or go meter during office hours in order to clear up any misunderstandings.

When we write down everything, the professor says, we become superficially focused on what they're saying and forego any kind of understanding.

Instead, it's better to listen for understanding in the first place.

Get into the habit of mentally trying to reteach yourself with the teachers, saying Think to yourself How would I explain this to someone else?

As a lecture progresses, This is commonly referred to as the Feinman technique, so As I said before, most people need to see something a few times before they truly understand it.

Coming into a lecture, having never seen the material before is doing yourself a huge disservice.

I know what you're thinking.

I don't have time to read a whole chapter on the topic from the textbook.

I understand I was a student ones, too.

Here's a practical hack to mentally prime yourself without having to do any heavy reading.

Most professors air gonna hand out a syllabus early in the semester that outlines what topics they are going to talk about on any given date, if you know what the topic is going to be in the next lecture, and you should look that topic up in your textbook.

Next, I want you to start a Cornell Notes page.

Go through each of the headings in your textbook for that topic and write them down in the main idea section of your Cornell Notes page.

Now you have a rough idea of what the teacher is going to talk about.

If you want to take it a step further, look up YouTube videos on each of those headings before you go to sleep.

This will allow you to get a general overview of the topic.

When you go to the lecture, you'll have a rough idea of what topics are going to be talked about, and you will have encountered some of the information already.

This greatly increases your ability to understand what's going on in a lecture now commonly asked.

Question is, should my notes be clean and organized, or should I rewrite my notes on my computer?

In my opinion, never sacrificed speed for cleanliness and organization.

The Cornell notes method is already fairly organized.

I used to worry about making my notes pretty.

I use highlighters and different colors for graphs and examples.

Honestly, it was a huge waste of time.

The final destination for the information is in our brains, not our notes.

I would make the writing need enough to read later and organized enough to follow after the semester.

It's unlikely that we're ever gonna look at these notes again.

Rewriting notes is another huge waste of time.

More often than not, it's another form of passive learning.

Just focus on applying and understanding the information rather than rewriting it or making it Niedere again.

The final destination is your brain.

At the end of each lecture, I would take 10 minutes to summarize and reteach the main points of what I just learned.

Using simple language and conclusion, focus on being an active learner and class and being mentally primed.

Use the Cornell notes method to take better notes.

If you have any questions at the end of the lecture, make sure to ask your professor right away.

That's all for this video.

What no taking system do you use?

Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for watching.

And I'll see you next time.

Yeah, people come, people go.

I just I do know no one.