Note taking is a topic that affects most of us. It's universal, like economics. It is also a topic subject to an infinite set of interpretations. Because of this, you will find a plethora of content on the internet about note taking. With this mini-essay I want to put black on white why, how and where I take notes.
I mainly take notes because I want to learn something. Learning a concept or a topic for me means remembering it to a point where I can explain it with confidence and discuss about it. The discussion might happen with myself or others. I talk about the by-products of writing (reasoning, creating) in another mini-essay.
If I consume content in a topic that I want to learn about, I take "young notes" about it. Young notes are quick notes taken the fastest way possible. The important is the content, not the quality or the form. This helps me in filtering out information that is of no interest or accessory to the medium where I'm consuming the content (YouTube video ceremonies, SEO-oriented blog posts). This is where I stopped most of my life, leaving around a bunch of badly written notes that I never reopened. So, for me this is the hardest part. Being completely honest with you here. The young notes are used to produce a (mini-)essay about the topic in question. The essay needs to have a structure and a point. Essays without head or tail create confusion.
The young notes are more easily taken on a laptop, while the essays I prefer to write them on paper. In my experience, writing on paper gives me better retention.
This is my method of taking notes. I will try to stick with this for one year at least. I need to find the goods and the bads. As of now, the first challenge is to choose the topic: sometimes I get ideas, but they are short-lived and not worth spending the time.