Why Your Notes Aren't Helping You Learn

Comments · 87

• 8L

  @8Livers · 2 months ago

  My liver failed; I had to have a liver transplant, and after being told I had limited time left on this earth, I decided to keep a journal. What began with, “I’m going to beat this thing.” became a tome about tests, reminders, fears, and new insights about life. <br>That journal travelled with me through a year and a half of my survival odyssey.<br>Now I journal everything and find it one of the most exciting discoveries of my health scare.

  225

• RE

  @ReikensEolys · 1 month ago

  Thanks ! I&apos;m almost surprised that no one&apos;s trying to sell me an app or a training course. Finally, some common sense.

  70

• LI

  @lil-rose · 2 months ago

  When I was in school and suddenly started studying to get good scores and get into a good college, I came up with a study method that I was surprised to find not many people use. I will explain it here as a step-by-step:<br><br>1. Summarize the topic/contents you want to study and memorize. The best methods to summarize, for me, are concept maps, definitions kept as short as possible, annotating formulas, and even drawings. Now you have your &quot;base summary&quot;. Of course, you need to make it by hand on paper, using your own colors and symbology.<br><br>2. Choose one of the topics (one definition, or one concept map) and write it down again, copying it from your &quot;base summary&quot;<br><br>3. Do the same with the next, and the next, until you finish all your notes, or a good chunk of them.<br><br>4. Now, from the beginning, try to do the same copying, but WITHOUT looking at any of your notes. You need to force your mind to remember. The first time will be difficult, so if you get stuck and really don&apos;t remember the topic, go back to your base summary and copy it again.<br><br>5. Repeate step 4 until you are able to remember by yourself many times.<br><br>This method worked for me in college, too. I had very good grades, and I learned a lot, things that I still remember today and use at work.<br><br>The only downside I find with this method is that it wastes a lot of paper, but believe me, it&apos;s well worth it.

  158

• KE

  @kenpollard7266 · 2 months ago

  Thank you for the video. You explained something I discovered but never quite understood. &nbsp;Some four decades ago, when I was in college, I took notes. Good notes, I thought. But I was always writing frantically, trying to keep up with the professor&apos;s lecture. I earned decent grades. One day, it occurred to me that I seldom referenced my notes. Maybe I should stop taking them, concentrate more on what was being said at the time. This failed. I noticed my quiz and test scores dropping a bit almost immediately. So, back to taking notes. &nbsp;The act of taking notes was the important part to me, not the having of the notes later on. Your video explained in better words what I had discovered, but couldn&apos;t quite pin down. &nbsp;&apos;Summarizing on the fly&apos; was the mental exercise I needed -- and still use. &nbsp;Good stuff!<br><br>I also believe the concept that, for me at least, writing by hand, being slower than my typing speed, was a useful component in my retention of the information. &nbsp;Forcing me to summarize on the fly rather than taking dictation.

  18

• YO

  @youneshamzehie3706 · 2 months ago (edited)

  Hello,<br><br>I am so glad there are creators like you who make videos that promote reading and, ultimately, help us understand books better.<br><br>As an Iranian viewer, what stood out to me about your channel is your focus on how to read better and comprehend deeper. You don&apos;t just limit yourself to personal topics like &quot;the top 10 books I&apos;ve read&quot; and things of that nature. While others do that, as a non-native English speaker, I must say your videos feel much more universal. You don&apos;t just rely on English linguistic structures; instead, you look at the subject as a whole so that anyone can understand it.<br><br>Lastly, your videos have been a huge help to me. Whenever I watch them, they bring me a special sense of peace. Thank you for your eloquent, calm, and meaningful insights.<br><br>Best regards from Iran!

  72

• YO

  @yota973 · 2 months ago

  I&apos;m late-diagnosed AuDHD, and I&apos;m not good at multi-tasking in the first place. I maintained my grades by focusing on listening instead of taking notes. Quality intake is important, which leads to quality summary.

  3

• VI

  @Vincetorix · 2 months ago

  The last part of the video, where you talk about the &quot;setting and forgetting&quot; of information in notetaking apps, made me think about something that a lot of students struggle with, and that is that recognition is easily mistaken for understanding. Students will passively read something and recognize what&apos;s in the text, but will then fail to recall it during a test because they haven&apos;t spent any time actively interacting with those ideas and processing them.

  5

• HO

  @HollyOly · 2 months ago

  The hardest part is knowing what is worth writing down. The apps are great if you can take down all the information and take the time to distill those notes even further. Do that process enough times, and you’ll start to intuitively know what’s worth noting in the first place. (Not that I can prove it, since I’m bad about Step #2)

  29

• KY

  @kylelo5986 · 2 months ago

  I find that my favorite notes are the ones where I document my notetaking processes. When I try answering the how and why I am taking notes on some topic, I gain an insight as to what I want to learn and how I can best communicate those ideas to the medium I&apos;m using. I think everyone should have multiple ways to record their knowledge/information because there is no perfect medium to record information.

  11

• ZE

  @zenith3515 · 2 months ago

  I wish he would release far more content! Always excited to see his new videos.

  3

• GU

  @GusMXRacing · 2 months ago

  I do this since grade school. I&apos;m not very high IQ but somehow I&apos;m very mentally skilled about learning in this way. I simply followed the advice by the teacher to not copy paste the summary assignments and it helped my development hard up to doing well in college mathematics.

  5

• NI

  @NimbusTheAgeless · 2 months ago

  I feel this when I do notecards. Sometimes I can recite a card perfectly but the greater meaning around the card is a bit lost on me. So I have to reread or watch a video to remember what the card is suppose to reminding me of, and sometimes I make new cards to help with that.

  5