I've got all of the final renditions of each sheet I've ever done filed away. It's always quite entertaining showing people my notes, because they're a completely indecipherable mess of words, numbers, cryptograms, symbols, scribbles and colours. Imagine a sort of Chthonian cult literature. It makes me look insane - but I can still go back to ones from years ago and know what it all means.

The second set was always much cleaner, much better organized, and much more deeply ingrained in my brain.

As an aside, when I went to college, my first semester Computer Science teacher was vehemently anti-notetaking in class. He would chastise people who were taking notes either on their laptops, or in notebooks, saying "The slides will be online!" I really struggled that first semester, and found it hard to pay attention, hard to retain the information, hard to even understand what he was talking about, and it took me awhile to realize just how powerful the act of taking notes was.

I used the new notes as a kind of optimized cheat sheet during test preparation - rapidly reviewing theory in my head and cross checking. I would do this for some strategically chosen homework assignments as well - and explore slight modifications to these assignments to see how answers might change.

Many years later - I sometimes refer to the notes to refresh my mind on theory I feel I'm rusty on.

My recall of things I got wrong on the tests is almost visceral, like it was traumatic that I was wrong. I figured this out pretty young and my studying habit was very similar to the methods employed for learning foreign language vocabulary or typing; progressively focus on the things the person still gets wrong.

So I'd read my notes and highlight or copy out only the facts that I found myself being surprised or flummoxed by. I'd go over those a few times, do one more scan of my entire notes, and sit before the test just going over the hard ones again until the instructor started handing out the test.

This is essentially what I always did, but instead of "as soon as I finish" replace "at some long-overdue future time". But the notion of write-only notes was largely identical, with very rare exceptions.

Hilariously, I only kept my notes so long out of poorly surfaced guilt that I was "doing it wrong", compared to some students who seemed to come out of lecture with fancy notes practically ready for prepress...

In high school we had a nice big bonfire and burned our notes at the end of the year. Making smores was probably the best use of old notes!

While I wouldn't use that material directly ever again, I noticed that I would often paraphrase a paraphrase, so to speak, because I would remember some of the material.

Tangentially, this thread shows that people prefer different ways of taking (or not taking notes) usually due to a habit itselfc as opposed to superiority of one method over the other. It reminds me of Dvorak vs qwerty, while technically superior for typing in English, the cost of switching is not worth it for most people out there.

Learning is a function of production or reproduction of knowledge, not consumption. I stand by this regardless of "learning style".

Discussing with classmates, solving problems, reciting out loud, and taking notes are how you learn.

For example see Krashen's ideas on language acquisition https://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html

Now this makes me feel like I hold a contradiction because the way I think about learning a language and learning math are opposite in this way.

Do you or others have any thoughts on this matter? Is it because we evolved some tailored machinery for acquiring language naturally as children, or because they are learnt the same "way", it's just that language is generally just a tremendous amount of associating stuff that it requires 100x more consumption. I guess one could naturally acquire the times tables over time if all combinations of a*b up to 10 come up in conversation enough times, but a general procedure for doing multiplication wouldn't be acquired magically.

In some sense though, I imagine that when you hear something in a foreign language, you are actively making links to sounds or words that you think it may relate to (so in some sense, taking a mental note).

Growing up, I found that listening attentively in class and asking questions had me retain the most. Overly focusing on note-taking actually distracted me and those would usually be my worse day. I still took notes, however, most of the learning happened in the classroom and my notebook was the "textbook" that acted as my reference later.

However for taking notes I still prefer paper. It's really small aesthetic things like the texture of the paper and the no-latency ink. For some reason although taking notes with the digital pen results in better notes the experience of taking the notes is less pleasing to me.

Like I said I optimize for the best note-taking rather than taking the best notes. Once or twice when I was bored, I intentionally created illegible notes by writing in scribbles, or writing over a full sheet as if it was a new sheet.

Even creating illegible notes produced a learning outcome, and in some cases I felt the information stuck more because those notes were different and stimulating.

The only time I use paper is when I don't have the iPad on me and for personal journaling (for which I have a dedicated notebook anyway).

I did consider the Boyue Likebook Muses [0], but figured for longevity the iPad may be the better buy. I did try the reMarkable and was very disappointed in it's price to performance/usability, at least for me. Little things like no backlight at that price point was hard to get over.

[0] https://goodereader.com/blog/product/boyue-likebook-muses-st...

I do the exact same thing, and haven't met anyone else that did it. I thought I was a weirdo all this time! My learning process is (as theorized by me):

1. Hear/see instructor say something

2. Mentally digest and understand it

3. Write down the product of understanding it

I think #2 is the most important step, and the big purpose of step #3 is validating that I actually performed step #2.

I've done the exact same thing for the last 25 years, it took me 10 years of frustration before I found out that I learn & memorize best while writing things down.

Somehow the slowness of writing works 10x better for memorizing then typing.

Children often have a 'photographic memory' until around puberty but in my case it lasted well into my late teens. I recall on a number of tests knowing that I had written the answer down, and even where on the page of notes the answer was. Several times I managed to wrestle the answer out of my brain by finishing the rest of the test and then running the clock down trying to picture the page of notes.

But today I am pretty close to functionally aphantasic. My dominant mental model is that I 'think in shapes'. I don't see the shapes, its more like I feel them. And that suffices for many things like getting replacement parts at the hardware store, or reassembling something I've taken apart. It's only with some difficulty that I can 'picture' an item. It's like I have a mind castle but wear a blindfold.

Anyway, in college I discovered that my recall of things I wrote down was starting to fail. If I wrote down something and lost the notes I was screwed. Todo lists were the first thing I cut out. My odds of remembering to do something by willing myself to remember were far better than having notes getting covered by a book.

Now I have electronic notes and some reminders, but if I lost my phone and my backups, my life would unravel.

incidentally, it drove me nuts using so much paper that only gets used once. I recently got a rocketbook and its prolly saved a couple of trees by now. Its the paper experience and I can wipe it clean with a damp cloth.

On the other hand, I once had a physics professor in college who spent each lecture rigorously proving the theorems and formulas we'd be using in the homework/tests. Only about 5 minutes (at the beginning) were dedicated to solving problems like what we'd be tested on, and then only in response to specific questions from students. We were pretty much on our own, since most were commuter students (this was Cal Poly Pomona) and couldn't easily come to office hours.

At this point you should just use spaced repetition. It's what I did, it has the same effects for a lot less work.

When I was in college laptops were becoming popular and after trying to takes notes on them I found I didn't remember things as well, was getting distracted by chat and emails, and simply couldn't draw quick diagrams (and I usually do a lot of diagrams).

I still think digging through the notes is a waste of time. Mastery of the source material trumps all and has gotten me great grades.

Is it more common for the lecturer to mention something critical that's not in the textbook, or just pass over something more important in the textbook? I think the latter is more common.

But you are correct, writing things down helps commit things to memory, plus there were always some funny doodles to look back on. Too bad I can't doodle anymore in work meetings, it isn't too professional :(

I think this is actually a pretty similar strategy to yours, and definitely one that I've found to be effective.

My completely unresearched theory as to why it's better: since your hands map to so much of your brain and it's function. I think the texture of the paper and the dexterity required to write stimulates your brain more allowing for deeper memories.