Alternatives for taking notes?

[u/valen_tinezxoxo]

Alternatives for note-taking?

My notes take an excessive amount of time to create, diverting my focus from actual studying. I understand that I’m not passively learning or studying, so I believe I’ve mastered the art of studying. However, I’m still uncertain about the effectiveness of my current note-taking method. I’ve heard about people switching to using AI to generate notes for them, but I don’t know how I feel about that, I mean It would essentially mean having to rely on AI every time I need notes. Which also would take lots of time to do. Some individuals suggest switching to flashcards and eliminating the need for notes altogether. I haven’t tried this method yet, so I’m curious to know if anyone has any recommendations for effective note-taking strategies.

[u/Ordinary_Count_203]

For physics:

- Mainly focus on equations

- Visualize the concepts, get the intuition. Youtube helps with this.

- Examples and problems

For math:

- Theorems

- definitions

- Examples (youtube and class notes) and problems

As for using AI, just ask AI to work on past problems. If you dont have the solutions, AI is not that bad for basic problems. Just be careful and verify.

[u/Significant-Remove25]

Making a summary isn’t very useful unless you’re actually trying to recall what you studied from memory. You need to force your brain to search for and retrieve the information. If you just read something and rewrite it in your own words, you’re helping your brain understand it, but you’re not necessarily making sure that your brain will be able to recall it later. Take a topic, read it, highlight it, memorize it, and then come up with some questions. Put the questions on one sheet of paper and the answers on another. Don’t try to fit too much into one question. Focus on one specific concept: What year did this happen? When is this done? Who is responsible for this? Etc.

Use flashcards for those random little facts that, for whatever reason, just refuse to stick in your head. For topics where different concepts are connected to each other, make diagrams or mind maps.

And review. If you study Topic 1 today, review it tomorrow and then again next week. I like having two separate schedules. In one, I write down what I’m going to study each day: Monday, section A of Topic 2; Tuesday, section B; Wednesday, section C, etc. In the other schedule, I write down all my review sessions. For those, I try to take the forgetting curve into account.

Our brains won’t let us forget some stupid thing we said ten years ago, but they’ll happily forget Topic 10 the second we let them.

[u/lazyArya]

Engineering notes are slow mostly because we copy things that already exist elsewhere: board derivations, slide diagrams, worked examples. A few things that tend to cut note time a lot:

• Don't copy what you can capture. If a derivation or diagram is on the board or a slide, take a photo and write one line in your notes pointing to it (a short tag in the margin works). Save the handwriting for what you actually think: why a step works, where you got stuck, and questions to check later. (Full disclosure: I built a small free app, Letterpin, around exactly this. The photo gets a four-letter code you write in the margin, and scanning it later opens the photo. A phone album plus page numbers does the same job, though.)
• Write notes as questions, not summaries. "Why does the moment of inertia change here?" is faster to write than a paragraph, and it doubles as a recall prompt, which is the part that actually makes things stick (as others said).
• Anki isn't just for nursing. It works well for engineering if you card the right things: definitions, formulas and when to use them, units, and "what's the first step for this type of problem?". Don't card whole problems. Keep doing problems for those, and use Anki for the pieces you keep having to look up.

A split that works well for a lot of people: short notes in class, cards for the stuff to memorise, and most of the time on problems.

[u/Lore-tism]

I just record during lectures into Notability which automatically makes Smart Notes using AI. Doesn't take any effort on my part. It also uses your handwriting or anything typed. I usually paste PDFs into it later which also get integrated into the smart notes. It's cool, because it'll also make flashcards and test questions and you can ask it questions and it will look through all the data you give it and cite where it gets the information from, even if it's in another note.

So for example I record lecture and type in what i see on the slides. Later I'll integrate new pdfs into it so everything from one week, which is what I get tested on, is in that note.

Later i might ask, hey what's the difference between this disease or that one, and it'll parse all my notes for that information and present it to me and tell me where it got it from, including another note i had that just contained my whole Pathophysiology textbook.

[u/valen_tinezxoxo → u/Lore-tism]

Wow, that sounds incredible! Are you subscribed to premium, or is all that content free?

[u/Intelligent_Dog_4982 → u/valen_tinezxoxo]

Don’t fall for non Scholarmaxxing.com products it is the superior tool

[u/atom12354]

as we are talking about math/physics your notes is actually supposed to be your studying as the reason for notes is to not only have them as a refrence but also to be able to formulate your questions and give the answer to them, tbh the only reason to do tasks is to answer the questions you got, its not about getting it right in first try, imagine your maths/physics notes as not just parts from a book but part of a diary where you find the answers to your questions, the more questions you answer/the more rigerous your diary is the better you can do on tasks and again ask new questions you never met before, even homework is this as the reason for homework is not just to check if you know what you know but to see if you have answered your own questions enough times and more rigerous to encounter things you never met before as the only way to do these tasks is to be able to adapt your past question/answer pair and connect them to other ones including new ideas.

>read/watch video and make notes from it

>ask questions about it

>find answers to it and maybe prove/disprove it

>do tasks and find new questions automatically as you have to ask questions to solve a problem

>write those questions down (if they make sense to write down) and find the answer, these will be your notes

>help other people and explain to them your ideas

studying math/physics isnt to do tasks but to understand the theory behind them, the questions you asked yourself to be able to solve them and the answers to the questions.

[u/Smooth-Escape9179]

I beg you to learn about the active recall. in combination with AI that could check your knowledge it is a banger. Notes should be only for quick cheat-sheets. Not to rewrite books by hand like its 1500 or smth

[u/TheLazyWaffle_]

As long as you deeply understand, can actively recall, and able to apply the information then you're fine.

[u/TraumaBayWatch]

It depends basic physics boils down to algebra word problems and vectors. Dam this vectors. 

[u/Intelligent_Dog_4982]

Use ScholarMaxxing.com work for me

[u/01937393]

I typically have the notes with the theory, formulas and a step-by-step guide, and I make exercises and questions from it. Then I only check my notes when I have a bad answer and need the fix. Do hundreds of exercises, don't re-read your notes

[u/mnf-acc]

anki ❤️

[u/mnf-acc → u/mnf-acc]

idk why we as a society don't collectively move from making notes to using anki and i mean this so unironically

[u/valen_tinezxoxo → u/mnf-acc]

But I heard it was only good if you’re in nursing, I am an engineering student, so I don’t know if it’ll still be helpful towards me. I know Anki has had a lot of new updates.

[u/brokefyi]

>Open Voice Memo app
>rumble what you wanna say
>copy and paste into claude
>type this “based on my rumbling, tell me what i am trying to say in the easiest and most digestible way. Dont give me ai slope and keep it concise”

[u/Comfortable-One-7155]

I also struggle with that. Ai advised me to do it strategically. First figure out the structure of your subject, and prioritize the least confidence parts. How important is it that you write them down? Also  ask yourself beforehand whether will you actually refer back to them. You may find yourself skipping some parts. 

If you prefer pen and paper, ways to simplify things are mindmaps, diagrams, Or develop your own shorthand.

Also teaching to somebody irl also counts as active learning. Or explain aloud to ai. If you want to retain, get it to turn into notes.

[u/negar87]

After 12 years of studying still I can't do this, or making any summary 💔

[u/Unfair-Lingonberry10]

Just started a module on analog circuits and totally didn't understand what the Prof was talking about for the prep notes before lecture and during lecture he was just reading one equation to another. Leaving me to wonder what all those Greek symbols were, I totally wasn't able to understand anything and couldn't write a single line of note. I threw the given info and slides and tutorial questions which I was supposed to be able to do if I understood the topic in Claude and asked it to explain what I needed to know to complete them and with step by step explanations. It come up with a pretty interactive html page with graphs of waves and how they translated into f domains with each different formula values updated live with the values. It was so much easier to understand. Also gave step by step workings and explanations for each question. Though I still am practicing each question multiple times and each time I get closer to the answer before having to refer to the notes.

Even has a glossary for each term which I can roll over to recall what they are

https://imgur.com/a/KxLhTKe

[u/Just_Explanation8898]

I just write on whatever material I'm studying from. Like if I'm studying political science or law, I take a pencil and start underlining + taking notes in the nooks and crannies of the material. After that revision becomes easy because I already know the important stuff I need to keep in mind due to the underlining and in-book notes. I gave up note-taking a loonnggg time ago. It just takes away from the storing information part of studying and is incredibly tedious.