How To Take Smart Notes – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.hey what's going on mike gaston here and today we're going to talk about a book that has the potential to transform your life and no that is not puffery as we say in the advertising industry this is the gosh honest truth this book is phenomenal the title of the book is how to take smart notes it's written by dr zonka aarons easy to read under 150 pages and essentially what the book does is it reveals the system that helped nicholas luermann he was one of the 20th century's most important social theorists it helped luremen publish over 70 books in over 400 scholarly articles it helped lumen put out an amazing amount an insightful complex deep highly respected amount of thinking and content and what dr ahrens does is he takes a look at lumen's system and he breaks it down and shares it with the world he's leveraged it himself and it's quite powerful so why should you care about this book it's fascinating okay take smart notes sounds like a snoozer let me tell you and this is where we get into the transformation of your life if you want to become someone who's a powerful thinker who has original ideas who's able to synthesize various ideas and come up with original content original thinking insights this book is going to help you do that there's a process to getting great ideas and this book reveals it now let's talk a little bit about the content the structure i said it was a simple book under 150 pages it's got three main sections essentially the first section is everything you need to know it's like what do i need to know how do i do it very easy just gives you the information right up front the second section are four underlying principles that will help you as you go about your journey as a thinker as a learner and the last gives you six steps to successful writing the last section just gives you these kind of tips or steps now there are three main takeaways for me first that writing is thinking writing is thinking the second takeaway is the value of an external system and the third takeaway is the superiority of an emergent approach now let me explain those three things you're like okay sound kind of esoteric there brother mike what are you talking about i don't know about you but i've been writing content for many years 20 plus years and one of the mistakes one of the errors that i've that i've lived in is this idea that i have to have my thoughts i have to think everything through and then i sit down and write out my thoughts i share those thoughts with you that the thinking happens before the writing i've got to figure things out and then i write to share what i've thought what i've come up with what i've come to understand and aren's makes the argument that no writing the process of writing is actually a way to think a very powerful way to think that writing isn't something that happens after you've figured things out after you've had your thoughts but that writing is the process of thinking you might be reading a passage of a book and i think a lot of us do this you you want to underline something you want to highlight it you want to copy a quote down and put that quote on a card or in a file somewhere and lumen and aaron's argue that no that's not the way that you do it that's not thinking that's just copying so what you want to do is take that passage and write about that passage and try to distill that passage down into your own words not just copy the author's ideas but interact with it write about a little bit and distill it down what do you think about that passage if there's an important passage to you and you want to remember it you want to own it you want to integrate it into your way of working and thinking and doing you need to write about it and distill it down into your own words and that process of writing is thinking and the same goes for an essay the same goes for a script the same goes for a book no matter what you want to write about you don't think first and then write the actual process of writing is the thinking and over time that leads to a finished product the second concept here is this power the value of an external system lumen uh used this system that he called the zettel costin which is german for essentially like a note box or a slip box think of a card catalog and essentially what he would do is he would write these notes that he would take as he was reading something on a similar to like a three by five card and he would store it in his zettel costin and this is a system that he developed and perfected over many years but the zettel constant is like the the kind of core the focal point of this whole approach now the interesting thing about is it's a thing it's a box now it can be a digital there are there are digital zettle custom programs out there people like to use apps like rom research and others like it i myself like to use three by five cards and put them in a box because i like the process of physically writing something out it's easier to remember that way for me but the interesting thing about the zettel costan system is that you would write your notes down and then you could link them and i'm not going to get into all the details of how you would do that but it's essentially like hyperlinking you would link your notes so if one note related to another through a numbering system you could link them and the argument here the takeaway here is that there's too much typically for the human mind to remember there's too much for us to keep in you read a book and you forget most of that book you can underline the book you can dog-ear it you can highlight it you can database it if you're reading on a kindle but the other day we don't remember all this stuff and the argument is that you need some type of external system almost like a lattice work latticework to hold your thinking and not just hold it as bits of data as in as independent thoughts or ideas or quotes but to link them and integrate them and network them so they start relating to each other they begin to become contextualized and by doing this you start to see your thinking come together your thinking synthesizes your ideas come together you see connections you have insights and you develop original thoughts all this from taking smart notes as you're reading a document now there are three types of notes that zonka ahrens suggests that we use as we go about this system one is the fleeting note the other is the literature note and the last one is the permanent note so for instance a fleeting note essentially keeps something to write on wherever you go i like to use my ipad pro typically because i'm using it all the time at work and that's you you have a thought you just jot it down maybe it's i need to look into this follow up on that what about this question you might have an insight or an aha or something you just want to pursue it's a fleeting note you don't give it much time you just scribble it out and then on a regular basis either daily weekly you will sit and process those fleeting notes and go through them and say oh yeah i need to follow up on this i wanted to check or reread this segment of an article or i want to take this thought that i had and maybe start to prepare a potential article or essay on this idea and start to work on that but that's a fleeting note the next is your literature note now these are notes that you would take as you read something i like to keep a moleskin style book with me and a pen and as i'm reading a book i might see something in there that stands out to me a concept a position a question a piece of information and i'm going to scribble a note on that now typically i'm not writing quotes i'm not just sitting there saying okay you know let me get this quote in the page number but i'm referencing the page number and i'm distilling down what i've read into my own words maybe my own thoughts on it maybe i'm referencing on the paper or something else that i've read somewhere else or another thought that i've had or a situation that it applies to and these are literature notes and the final notes are going to be your permanent notes this is where you go through your literature notes you go through your fleeting notes as they apply and you're choosing which ones are going to end up in your zl costume into your box or into your digital system these are the things that you want to capture the things that you want to own and you're going to refine these you're going to take these distill them down you're going to reference where you had your original idea from where it comes from but this is where you start to build your your system your latticework your database of ideas that are networked and connected together the permanent notes serve you over a lifetime that's why i said earlier i wish i knew about this system when i was younger because i've read i don't even know how many books i've read in my lifetime i love reading and the tons of dog years and underlines but the end of the day i don't remember all that stuff i remember general ideas i might remember topics or themes concepts but i have not internalized these and made them my own and i don't have a physical system that i could go back to where they all relate to one another i can say hey here's the synthesized idea that i came up with after reading these authors often i might sit down and say hey i want to write an article on x and i start to write it and i churn through it you lose energy you're trying to you know bang this thing out what lumen would do and aaron's advise is if you're reading multiple things you're pursuing multiple interests you're taking notes on different topics you're going through your fleeting notes you're going through your literature notes and your permanent notes you're kind of growing your understanding you're growing your thinking but in multiple directions on multiple topics with various levels of specificity this means that you can allow the work to emerge up as you're taking your notes as you're distilling down your thoughts and as your thoughts are interacting with new thoughts and you're synthesizing coming up with new ideas what happens is your topics your content your writing bubbles up it emerges from this note-taking process it's something that reveals itself over time and if you have enough of these projects going at once you essentially just have to follow where your interests are you may be interested today in going deeper with one of your projects and because they're emerging over time you can work on that maybe a day or two later you've lost interest in that but you've got a couple other things and lumen would do this he would go from project to project and he would just produce book after book after article after book after article after article i mean he was highly productive and so he he embraced and advocated for an emergent approach to his work and those are the three things this idea that writing is thinking that we need to leverage the power of an external system for our thinking and that lastly we should take an emergent approach to our work and by doing these things by embracing these ideas and doing them we'll see amazing amazing results now let me share with you real quick some of the personal impact that i've experienced from embracing and implementing this approach in my own life first of all i'm getting way more out of what i'm reading it might take me a little bit longer to process a book i might engage it a little differently but i'm digging in and i'm getting so much more out of what i'm reading i'm getting more understanding i'm retaining more and i'm having more opportunities to apply what i'm learning to my current day situation whether it's in my personal life or in my work life secondly i'm developing significantly more insights and i'm producing a lot more original thinking i'm finding myself not just parroting what i've learned from an author not just regurgitating some information i may have consumed somewhere else but i'm taking the thoughts of one author maybe the ideas of another author i'm synthesizing those and coming up with my own insights my own original thinking i'm still able to give credit where credit is due but it's it's allowing me to ladder up in ways that i've never done before and that's really satisfying just on a personal level but that also is having direct impact on my consulting this increased thinking and this increased ability it's it's directly resulted in high paying consulting projects i've come into situations where i've been able to provide insights into those situations and solve significant problems and be remunerated quite handsomely for that it's had a very direct impact on my life and that's why i said the beginning of this i think this is going to have the potential to transform your life because it's having such an impact on mine now here's what i liked about the book aarons does a great job he's a great writer it's highly digestible he leads with the facts and and it's it's very accessible he weaves in a nicholas lumen in a way that's very pleasant lots of real world examples easy to read and so on also easy to go back to easy to reference well organized what i didn't like i found myself wanting more data information on how exactly do i do this zettel costin how does this system work now the upside is there are there's a reddits there's a subreddit devoted to it there are blogs online there's a bunch of stuff available so you know you can access how other people do it and and what i realized afterwards is there really isn't a hard and fast way there isn't like a right way and a wrong way but there are some things that i think could be there to get the neophyte like myself started ours does a great job he shares things like software resources and so on but for a pen and paper warrior like myself i just i would have liked a little bit more hand holding i don't fault him for that i think the book is what it is i don't think it's weaker because of that but if there was anything that i didn't like i just wanted a section with a little bit more hands-on detail but that's what the internet is for i guess lastly why should you read it well if it isn't apparent to you already i think if you are someone that wants to produce original deep thoughtful meaningful thinking if you want to produce content if you want to build a career based on your originality and the depth of your thought then you should read this book at the least uh it will tickle your fancy but i think at the most it will help you become the best version of yourself possible guys that's all i have for you today i hope this was useful to you i will put a link to the book on amazon in the description below of course if you hit that link i might get a couple nickels from our from our good friend jeff bezos so please do that uh but even if you don't do that i hope that you found this useful check this book out get it at your library order it on amazon however you get your hands on it read this book tell me what you think if you've done this before if you've used the system leave a message in the comments if you have questions do the same and if you haven't done so already well you know what i'm going to say smash that subscribe button guys i love you all and i'll catch you in the next video [Music] you