4.02 How to take better notes

Pretty much all PhD students have a vague (or very strong) sense that they’re not taking “good enough” notes. Yet for most of us, we’re not really clear what good enough notes would actually be like, and often have really unrealistic expectations about what function our notes should serve in the future. In this episode, I don’t give you new systems or softwares to improve your notetaking - instead, I talk about how notetaking is your first opportunity to practice being an academic who is IN the field, not just reporting ON the field. I’ll give you some specific notetaking activities to try and a pep talk on how important it is for the world to hear YOUR academic voice. 

If you found this episode useful, you might like this one on how to read more quickly and this one on why we should stop focusing on being more efficient. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. And today for once, I'm gonna start by telling you what this episode is, not by the fact that you've clicked on it. You'll know that I'm gonna be talking about how to make more effective notes and. This is a, this is a whole topic, right? This is a topic that you probably have had sessions on at your university.

You will definitely have seen people going on about, on Instagram and YouTube and all these places where you get tons of really, really helpful advice. Um, helpful. Helpful, sometimes helpful, sometimes less helpful. Yeah, but helpful in theory advice. This episode is not gonna talk about software. I'm not gonna talk about whether you should be writing your notes by hand or in long form documents, or in software that has nodes and connections and the ability to find your entire second brain and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If you are doing those [00:01:00] things, if they are working for you, happy days. Great. Probably we'll still get something out this episode, but it's probably not specifically for you. I'm not gonna teach you a specific system. I'm not gonna teach you a specific software, and I'm not going to tell you you have to do it like this.

You may be like, well, why am I here? Well, why you are here is because none of those things are the problem. All of those things are just a massive distraction. All of those things are an excuse to spend your time watching YouTube videos on how to make good notes instead of actually making some notes. So what we're gonna do, that was harsh.

I'm feisty today. It's okay. Let's go with it. So. What we're gonna do instead is we are gonna think about what is the problem with how we're doing it at the moment, and what are the mindset shifts that translate into techniques. Don't worry, this gets super tangible, but what are the mindset shifts that we have to make that are not just gonna make your notes better?

They are gonna help you establish yourself as an academic in your own head, [00:02:00] establish yourself as someone who has academic viewpoints, someone who has thoughts and messages that they want to put out there in the world. And we often don't think about that starting at notetaking. But today I'm gonna explain to you exactly why notetaking is the bit that is the foundation of all of that, and how your approach to note taking tells me a lot about your opinion of yourself in academia at the moment. So let's go. So I want you to think about the last time that you were taking notes and what you thought the purpose of that was. Now, if you've listened previously to the podcast, you may have heard the episode about how to take notes more quickly. If you haven't after this one, I strongly recommend that you go back and listen to that because there is, there's a little tiny bit of overlap, but it really backs up a lot of what we're talking about today.

There's also one about how to be more efficient or something like that. How to stop thinking about being efficient and be more effective. It's called something like that. [00:03:00] If you've got the archive, you'll find it easily. If you haven't, why not sign up for my newsletter? You'll get the archive. You'll be able to search and find all of these episodes. Anyway what do I mean when I say that how you take notes tells me about what you think of yourself as an academic. What I mean is the biggest issue I see with note taking, particularly for people towards the beginning of their PhD, but to be honest, it progresses all the way through is that you think the purpose of note taking and therefore the purpose of you as a person is to accurately understand and be able to summarize what other people have done.

Most people start their note taking journey with reading an article. What did they do? What did they find? What did they say that means? Okay? Really focused on what the other person did, said, thinks. And then in some way, our job, we often [00:04:00] see our job as collating that. Taking what they say, taking what they say, taking what they say, pulling it together into a piece that explains what the field thinks.

And if that's what you do, it's okay, but it's not the whole job. What that makes you is a kind of reporter on academia, and that's what you have to do right through undergrad and master's and to some extent the beginning bits of your PhD, particularly if you have taught courses as part of your PhD, um, you often are doing that, right?

You are collating what everybody else says and presenting it as some sort of coherent like overview of the field. The fact is, as an academic, what we want you to do is we wanna know on the basis of all of that, what do you think? What's your take on it all? And often what [00:05:00] happens is that you note take like a reporter, you write your lit review like a reporter reporting on that field, and then you get feedback from your supervisor that says, yes, but what's your argument here? Yes, but what's your viewpoint? You're like, I don't know. I've just read a whole load of stuff and written it into a really nice essay for you.

Okay. And you're like, I dunno, I'm just little me. The reason you still feel like just little me, the reason you still feel like an imposter, the reason that you don't feel like an academic a lot of the time is because you are not building that practice into your note taking and stuff, right from the very beginning.

You are seeing yourself as a reporter, right through to the point where somebody tells you you've gotta have an argument, and then you are panicking about, well, what is my argument? I don't know. So this is why I am not gonna teach you specific softwares and techniques, but instead teach you an approach [00:06:00] that, yeah, it'll get good notes. That's fine. That's almost by this wayside. What it will actually do is help develop your thinking as an independent academic who has got something to offer your field, because you do. I don't even know you and I know that you do. Those of you, I do know members listening. I know for 100% sure you guys have really important, interesting things to offer the world. We just have to convince you of it too. So, and this is the bit that you will have heard slightly if you've listened to that one about how to read more quickly, the point of note taking is not to make a true and faithful representation summary of what somebody else did. That is not your job. If you think that's what note taking is, you may as well let AI do it. All of you who are using AI to summarize your papers for you and stuff, if all you want to do is get a true and accurate summary. I mean, accurate can be a bit of a mixed bag, but often AI will be able to do [00:07:00] that for you. That is not your job. When you are reading an article, when you are taking notes about an article, about a book, your job is to think about the intersection between their research and your brain.

If you think about it like a big Venn diagram with two overlapping circles. You've got the stuff that they know and are presenting in that article, and then you've got the circle stuff that you know, and we've got this overlapping section, which is where the stuff that they're writing about in that article meets the stuff, you know, in your brain.

That's what we need to be writing about. What thoughts are you having while you read this? What is it making you think about? What is it making you realize? I have a few little questions you can ask yourself. Things like, what did this remind me of? This paper reminded me of an article by so andSo, where they argued something [00:08:00] completely different, and that's interesting because blah, blah, blah, blah.

Um, what did it make you wonder when you read this article? What did you, okay. Well that was interesting 'cause when they did that, they found this, but I wonder what would've happened if they'd controlled statistically for X. I wonder what would've happened if they'd asked them this. I wonder what would've happened if they'd added an additional condition. I wonder why these were the documents that were saved and not other documents, whatever it might be, depending on your discipline. Right? What does it make you wonder?

What are you still unclear about that should be going in your notes? I've read this and they've now clarified that. However, I am still unclear why blah, blah, blah, blah happens. What are you still unclear about? What have you now realized? Where has your thinking progressed to because your brain met this article. Okay. Where did it click and fit with something that you've read before [00:09:00] or that you understood before? What did it suddenly explain in a way that you'd never thought about that like that before? What do you now believe to be true based on what they said or what are you still unconvinced by and what do you want to further explore? What do you want to delve into a little bit more?

Now, tip here. This does not mean reading one article, saving 40 more PDFs of references that they referenced, and now you wanna look at all of those. Now, that's not how this works. What I want it to be instead is what specifically do you want to further explore? What's one thing that now that you've read this, you are dying to look up somewhere else? It's all about where does your brain meet this paper? Because you are not reading this because you are a reporter who is going to report on this field.

You are reading this because you are [00:10:00] part of this field. You are an academic in this field. Whatever level you're at, I don't care. You're a Master's student, whatever. You are an academic working in this field. That means you are part of this field, which means that your viewpoint of this literature is what's important.

And we get to practice that right now from the very beginning. And you might be going, oh, but Vic, I've been doing this lit review for the last year and I haven't done this. Now I need to go back and do this for all of the No, no, you've done what you've done. You've read what you've read, which means your brain is now in the state, it's in.

You have the knowledge that you have now because of what you've done over the last year, two years, whatever. All good. Not a problem. But the next thing you read, try and practice some of the things that we're talking about. Ask yourself those sorts of questions. Now we start from where we're at, not from where we wish we were.

So we're thinking, where does our brain meet [00:11:00] this? Now the only way that works is if you are clear on why you are reading that article. And for that I want you to go back to that other episode about how to read more quickly 'cause I really talk through how the purpose of reading an article will vary and why that's really important for how you read it, but essentially know why you are reading it.

Are you reading it 'cause you're gonna use the same method. Are you reading it? 'cause it's super similar to what you're gonna do? Are you reading it? Because it gives background into why this is a big thing in the world. Why are you reading it? And by the way, because my supervisor said so it's not a good enough reason. You need to know why you are reading it because then you are reading it in different ways. If you're reading it 'cause you're using the same method, you will focus on the methods and the results. You won't focus on the introduction and the con and discussion quite so much and the notes you take will be your thoughts about the methods, not your thoughts about how they back up their argument 'cause they're probably using it for something completely different. So get clear on your why and then remember the note taking is your [00:12:00] thoughts about that article where the two intersect.

If you are thinking, this is the problem where I do my podcast, I plan what I'm gonna say to you, right? I have my little points down here that I wanna say, and then I know you guys so well, but I can almost hear your little responses coming back to me. I spend so much time with my members listening to them talk about all this stuff that it, it kind of comes to me through the ether, what you're gonna be saying. You're gonna be saying, but I don't know anything. But who am I to judge this stuff? That's why we practice. Okay, because at the moment, this is just for your notes, no one's gonna read this stuff.

And if you don't practice in your notes, the first time you start thinking about where your brain intersects with all of this, and what viewpoint you have is gonna be in a draft that your supervisor reads. And that's scarier, right? We wanna make it not scary, and I'll coach you through it so that it doesn't feel so scary. But that's a higher stakes time right at the moment. We get to practice [00:13:00] in our notes. What are my thoughts on this? Knowing that no one else is gonna read them, knowing that it's only for us, and that we'll come back to it later, which I'll talk about in a minute. So we've got other opportunities to rethink and consolidate our learning and whatnot.

This is where we get to practice. So this is, especially for those of you who are going, oh, but I don't know what my viewpoint is. Brilliant. Perfect. Let's develop your viewpoint. Let's start experimenting with it in our notes in this lovely low stakes situation.

The second tip, so that's my first one. The second tip is I would really separate out thinking notes from keeping notes. Most people don't distinguish this. Most people think of them as notes. Maybe you think about like rough notes and polished notes, but I don't even want you to think like that. I want you to think of them as thinking notes and keeping notes. Thinking notes can be destroyed at the end of your [00:14:00] session.

You might wanna keep 'em, you might not, but they're literally, that's not the purpose of them. Thinking notes is what helps you to kind of stay focused while you're eating, to help you feel like you're actually doing something. You're not just staring at words while they drift around your head. They are what help you keep track of things. These are scruffy, these are little rough notes. These have got arrows. These don't make sense to anybody. They won't make sense to you in a month's time, but they help you keep on track. You might jot down words you wanna look up, you might wanna jot down things that surprised you or whatever, right?

These are just to help you think. Okay. You can use those prompts and those are on my email. I'll, I'll send you a list with that in. You can use those prompts to stimulate what am I thinking? But the point of those notes isn't to keep them. If you ask me which notes are more important, [00:15:00] thinking notes or keeping notes, and I'm going to go as far as to say, thinking notes are more important.

I would rather you made good thinking notes and really got your thinking going and binned them than you make beautiful records of what you've read that summarize other people's thinking without really thinking. And if you guys are writing 'em up in better handwriting, we are gonna have words. 'cause that is 14-year-old stuff.

We aren't doing it. Okay. We don't need to make it neat. We don't. We don't need to make it beautiful. Any of you who enjoy doing like color coding and stationery and all that stuff, take up art. Let's do art as a hobby. We do not need to make our work more complicated by insisting that it's beautiful as well. I've been there. Let's not do it anymore.

So when we're talking about keeping notes, we are not talking about just making those other notes pretty, we are talking about turning them into something that is actually a useful record to retain, and I'm gonna give you some tips about how to do that in a second.[00:16:00] 

But the way this works, we do thinking notes first, then we do keeping notes afterwards. Free yourself from the pressure of your notes, having to make sense the first time. We are thinking, we're pondering, then we're turning it into something that's short, that's easy, and that is not colour coded. Um, so that we can keep it afterwards and keep it wherever you like. I don't care if you're using a notebook or word or Google or obsidian or whatever. Keep it wherever.

The third thing then is what are these keeping notes? What should we be doing? Now, some of this I've already show told you. The keeping notes need to refer to the reason why we're reading it. So they should be focused on the reason we're reading it at the moment. They should be focused on what our thoughts about it are. What I want you to do though, is I want you to do that for each article that you read. I read this article because it changed my thinking like this. It made me realize that da da. Okay? And I want you [00:17:00] to write them in sentences. You might wanna make a quick summary of what they did and what they found. Just for your sake, a couple of lines. I used to like a table. If you were like comparing experimental trials for example or something like that, I used to like a little table that told me how many participants I had, what type of exercise regime they were put through, what the outcome measures were, blah, blah, blah.

I used to like that sort of thing. Maybe you want a bit of a summary, but the key thing is sentences about what you think now because of reading this article. That's the bit we keep. Now the bit that everybody misses is they think you go from, let's make notes about paper A, paper B, paper C, paper, D for a hundred papers.

And then we go, let's write a lit review. And we go, oh, that's scary. I don't know what to write. I don't know what I think. Where do I start? This is hard. Let's make a plan. Oh no, that's a hard plan's too hard. I know what I'll do. I'll read some [00:18:00] more and we go back off into the literature in order to read some more.

If that's your problem, I also have an article about why you shouldn't read while you're writing, so make sure you find that episode somewhere if that's your problem, I also have an episode about why you shouldn't read while you are writing, so make sure you check that one out, but it's because we are trying to make this enormous jump from notes on individual articles over here through to coherent lit review that somebody else can write.

Let's not do that. So what I want you to do is I want you to pick five papers that you've been intending to read that are all on similar things. I want you to do short notes on each of them and remember short notes, but not summarizing the article. It's focused on what you think about the article, what you know now.

Then, after you've done the fifth one, before you do anything else, I want you to read your notes about those five. And I want you to consolidate them into a mini [00:19:00] paragraph about what you know now that you've read those five articles, I want you to compare and compare, oh, I realize this here, but I realize that there, how does that come together?

Are they the same thing? Oh, that backs up my, oh, that doesn't back up my argument. Turn those notes for five articles into a paragraph, two paragraphs about those five articles where you don't just summarize them, where you pull it together into a coherent. Now that I've read these five, this is what I know and what I'm thinking.

Okay, the key then you do that again next week and then you, so then you've got two where you've got, this is what I think based on these five, this is what I think based on these five. Now we consolidate those and we write something slightly else. That's now what do I know having read those 10 things and consolidated it down.

Do you see how this starts building towards having something that will resemble a [00:20:00] lit review in due course and is centering you as the academic in the middle of this? Because what I would get out of reading those five articles will be different than what you get out of reading them and what your supervisor would get out of reading them and other people. And that is exactly what you should be doing.

It should be unique to you, and we practice it by doing it in these low stakes ways, in ways that no one's ever gonna read. Now, when I say this will build towards a lit review, I want you to hear me very clearly. I am not saying you use any of that text.

Sometimes people who bang on about efficiency on the internet will say, and if you do your notes using my amazing system, you can then just pull it straight through and your lit review is practically written. No, we're gonna rewrite it 'cause we're writing that for a different purpose. We've then got the reader in mind.

We are then making sure that we can get [00:21:00] our viewpoint across to our designated reader. We need to write that in a different way. That's fine. We don't, we're not gonna just cut and paste this stuff. That's not the purpose of it. The purpose is to develop your skills, to develop your understanding, for you to figure out what your viewpoint is so that by the time it's your turn to actually write the lit review, you know what your viewpoint is and all you've gotta do is just write it. Because the problem is most of us, the problem is not writing a lit review. The problem is we don't know what point we're making and we dunno how to figure out what the point is.

So we are deciding why we're reading something. We are remembering that all of our notes should be about the intersection between that article and our brain. What do we know now that we didn't know before? What are we still wondering? What are we still unsure about? What are we querying that they did? What do we wanna check? All that good stuff. We are gonna separate the notes we take while we are reading the thinking notes from [00:22:00] a very short version of the keeping notes that we're gonna make.

The keeping notes are gonna be about our thoughts. They're gonna be written in actual sentences and they're not gonna be beautiful. And then we are gonna try and consolidate. So we are gonna put time aside after we've read a few to summarize what I now know is this. And all of this is making you more effective at notes, but more importantly is making you more effective at thinking, and it's convincing you what I know already, which is that you are an academic and you deserve to be here.

When we are doing this when we're practicing, when we're expressing our opinions, when we're testing our opinions by reading other people's work and clarifying against it and thinking, Ooh, actually I'm now a bit more convinced of this and less of that. That's interesting. Let's document all that stuff. This is why you will then come back to these articles, read them again in the future, and go, oh, [00:23:00] my thinking has come on so far since I last read this.

This is being an academic, you are an academic. It is very difficult sometimes to conceptualize ourselves as an academic. And that is what I really wanna help you to do over the next few months, is to really think about how you can feel less of an imposter, more of an academic, and more like you're in control of this story.

And for those of you who like Easter eggs, that might be a little Easter egg for what you can expect from the membership next quarter. So I hope that was useful. I hope you're feeling super motivated to go away and read some articles and try all this stuff out. Do not regret what you've done in the past. We just start from here and we move forward. Let me know how you get on if you're not on my newsletter already. Why not?

Please join. It's all good. Go to my website, PhD life coach.com. Click on the big orange button in the middle and you'll find it there. Everyone on my newsletter also gets invited to my [00:24:00] monthly webinars, which are amazing.

Next week is gonna be super good. If you listen to this live, make sure you check that out. So thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week.