Summary of Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: The key to good and efficient writing lies in the intelligent organisation of ideas and notes. This book helps students, academics and nonfiction writers to get more done, write intelligent texts and learn for the long run. It teaches you how to take smart notes and ensure they bring you and your projects forward.

The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking-technique. This is the first comprehensive guide and description of this system in English, and not only does it explain how it works, but also why. It suits students and academics in the social sciences and humanities, nonfiction writers and others who are in the business of reading, thinking and writing.

Instead of wasting your time searching for notes, quotes or references, you can focus on what really counts: thinking, understanding and developing new ideas in writing. It does not matter if you prefer taking notes with pen and paper or on a computer, be it Windows, Mac or Linux. And you can start right away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Dec 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669343844

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

A good structure allows you to seamlessly move from one task to another - without threatening the whole arrangement or losing sight of the bigger picture. It is something you can trust. It relieves you of the burden of remembering and tracking everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and focus on what is important: the content, the argument and the ideas.

#2

Universities also try to turn students into planners, which is why it is so important to not let that happen to you. Good students struggle with their sentences and expressions because they care about finding the right one. It takes them longer to find a good idea to write about because they know from experience that the first idea is rarely that great and good questions rarely fall into their laps.

#3

Good students constantly raise the bar for themselves by focusing on what they haven’t learned and mastered yet. This is why high achievers who have had a taste of the vast amount of knowledge out there are likely to suffer from what psychologists call imposter syndrome, the feeling that you are not really up to the job, even though, of all people, you are.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The best way to deal with the complexity of the content you are taking notes from is to keep things as simple as possible, which is why the simple slip-box system is so effective. There is

Reviews for Summary of Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes

[Caroline Erstwhile · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Much better than the actual book by Sonke Ahrens the author of How to take Smart Notes.

[Cleber Pinheiro · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pretty clear! Extremely important content.
Great job, mate.
Thank you!

[Lukasz Korbasiewicz · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The author of this "book" didn't pay attention to the book. It has plenty of wood and oversimplifications.