How to Take Smart Notes

1. First at all make a flexible work-flow which will not come out of planning but from deliberate practice and experience. A flexible workflow is characterized by the anticipation of actions, and this anticipation does not mean predicting future events but rather adapting predefined events or tasks based on unforeseen situations. Otherwise, it will require us to focus again and again on one particular task and build a routine for us, but a routine must be defined by us explicitly and not by tasks. Every task should be treated with same attention in order to a task to adaptable to any unforeseen situation and also avoid multitasking.
2. The learning process is not gauged by the quantity of pages written daily but by the depth of comprehension and the assimilation of new ideas. Write down ideas that pops in your mind or found while reading a page with bibliographic details in your own words, which will prevent filling the brain's limited short-term memory space. Once you have finished reading, expand on the captured idea and make connections to your existing notes. But noticing relevant information isn't always straightforward due to a phenomenon called Confirmation bias ³ which involves focusing solely on information that aligns with or supports your existing ideas and ignoring contradictory elements. So, pay attention to all relevant information or ideas, regardless of whether they support our current ideas. Additionally, being open to contradictory arguments without compromising progress is essential. Embracing both supporting and contradictory elements allows us to make informed decisions and possibly arrive at new insights.
3. Our brain has a fixed way of thinking that relies on small pieces of recently acquired information. Our brain only sees what we expect to see and not what is actually presented. Consider the case of mathematician Abraham Wald during World War II, tasked with enhancing the protection of Royal Air Force planes by armoring the places which are often took bullet (Mangel and Samaniego 1984). Instead of advising the RAF to cover areas with visible bullet holes, he recommended covering the parts that remained untouched. This unconventional approach stemmed from the realization that the RAF's assumption was solely based on the returned planes with bullet holes, neglecting those that did not return and might have damage in critical areas like fuel tanks. This cognitive bias applies to all field of activity and is called survivorship bias because we focus on individuals or things that "survived" a process, ignoring those that failed. The key to overcoming survivorship bias is to ask counterfactual questions, such as "what if?". For instance, what would happen if the bullet hit a different area instead of the already hit area?
4. Creativity arises from our ability to abstract ⁴ - extract general ideas, concepts or principles from a context, and to redefine them. These abilities are not only necessary for the creative process but also for solving technical problems. One's ability to abstract and redefine a problem will result in an adaptable solution. In some cases, it is necessary to rediscover the problem to redefine the question, of course without changing its original meaning, to use an already existing solution. This helps to understand what type of answer we can expect by asking the question in this way and what answer is missing from the initial question.
5. Keep ideas simple, and simplicity doesn't necessarily mean ease. Take the example of buying stocks low and selling them high. We interpret this idea as buying stocks at a lower price and selling them at a high price as a good deal, but the only thing that matters is the real value of the stock we are buying, as the said Warren Buffett, investor and teacher, who ignores the price of days gone by. A stock is a share of a company whose price is defined by the market, that is, by the number of supply and demand. This supply and demand depends on the participant and the value of the stock. We therefore need to understand the business of the company we are buying the shares, the competition and the technologies involved.
6. We have the best chance to change our behaviour over the long term if we start with a realistic idea about the difficulties of behavioural change (Dean 2013). The trick is not to try to break with old habits and also not to use willpower to force oneself to do something else, but to strategically build up new habits that have a chance to replace the old ones.

He uses two slip-boxes for note taking, first a bibliographical ⁵ one which contains references and brief notes on the content of literature. Finally, the main slip-box which contains his collected and generated ideas from the notes in bibliographic slip-box.

When ever he found some interesting information while reading he take bibliographic information on one side the card and brief notes in other side of the card.

Quickly after (hours or days), he review previously captured notes pertinence with his current project, thinking, or interest. He then elaborates further on the captured ideas on a new piece of paper. This involves taking the idea from its initial context and placing it into another context without much altering the original meaning. He creates only one idea for each note and places it into the main slip-box. This note is written in grammatically correct form as a final output, explicitly referencing the literature from where he got the idea, rather than a quick note formed with keywords. More often, new final notes are related to existing notes, forming a continuity.

He then add reference to new note from other notes somewhere else in the slip-box and/or add reference to existing notes to form connection between related notes.

The notes are organized using numbers. If a new note is relevant, or referred to a an existing note numbered 22 then the related note receives the number 23. If 23 exists then get 22a. For example a note with number 21/3d7a7 follows a note with the number 21/3d7a6.

A bibliographical slip-box or index system that points to one or two notes serving as entry points to a topic or idea. These notes act as an entry point to subjects to which some existing notes belong.

We need to reference a note using keywords from the index system as an entry point to a note in main slip-box. We don't want to choose a keyword that best suits a note. Instead, we select a keyword that represents a situation in which I want to come across this note.

For example, the following text which indicates that people estimate the probability of an event occurring if they can visualize it:

Tversky/Kahneman (1973) showed in an experiment that people are more likely to overestimate the likelihood of an event to happen if they are able to conceive it well and in detail than if it were abstract.

If an economist reading this text and working on decision-making, it tells him to choose a project that is easy to visualize rather than a profitable project. The keyword he will probably choose will therefore be "capital allocation problems", i.e. in which project to invest.

The chosen keyword is therefore out of the initial context and anchored in the economic context. We can retrieve keywords by looking at notes, but these represent already existing or obvious ideas and not new ones.

Good keywords are usually not already mentioned as words in the note.

Once a link is created to the note serving as an overview and entry point to a topic within the index system, continue to create note-to-note links. This involves creating links to another related note by reviewing and comparing old notes with newly created ones.

Albert Rothenberg suggests that the construction of oppositions is the most reliable way of generating new ideas (Rothenberg 1971; 1996; 2015).

Comparing notes is an important skill that allows to visualize differences between apparently similar concepts, or connections between apparently different ideas. The neurobiologist James Zull states that understanding something is done by comparing our existing related knowledge. Focusing on a subject means scanning different information for our brain and comparing with them (Zull 2002). And this will increases the chances of creating new notes.

On some occasions we make decisions based on our intuition without any explicit reason and intuition is not a replacement of rationality or knowledge but rather is the result of our acquired experiences and knowledge based on which we make decisions (cf . Ahrens 2014).

In order to make decision based on intuition we need a testing space such as an environment consist of open-minded experts and intellectuals to discussed in liberty or our slip-box which will offer the exact same possibility.

A theoretical toolbox helps build a latticework (network) of mental models and these mental models must be combined with our direct and indirect experiences. But we can also learn from other experiences related to our mental models. Using slip-boxes – add and connect notes, emerge new topics/patterns that will build a "lattice of mental models".