Sönke Ahrens: How to Take Smart Notes

Sönke Ahrens is the creator of Take Smart Notes, a project dedicated to helping students, academics and nonfiction writers get more done – ideally with more fun and less effort. He has spent years researching and experimenting with different note-taking systems and his settled on a methodology called Zettlekasten.

Sönke is a writer, coach, and academic — and also the author of the bestselling book, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers*.

In this conversation, Sönke and I discuss how to move past the practice of simply reading and highlighting by beginning to seek meaning. We explore how you might create a system for doing this and how external scaffolding can help. Plus, we explain what notes might look like and how you can use them for an ongoing conversation with yourself — and perhaps others.

Key Points

Move past details and look for meaning.
As we become familiar with something, we may start believing we understand it.
Real thinking requires external scaffolding.
It’s not so much about saving information, but in making connections between the information.
Your notes need not be long or numerous, but should spark (and continue) future conversations with yourself.

Resources Mentioned

Interview Notes

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