Struggling to retain what you read, hear in a lecture or study as a skill? No matter how many note-taking techniques you try?

I get it.

As a lifelong learner with a neurodiverse background, I found most note-taking methods either too rigid or outright ineffective.

I encountered this problem during university.

And many of the most highly-recommended note-taking tactics became even more unhelpful when I started teaching as a professor at Rutgers.

As technologies have evolved, I have found that the landscape for learners has gotten even more confusing.

Sure, many people love using apps to aid their learning. And they even get results from them.

But over the years that I’ve been working as a researcher, writer and host of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast and my YouTube channel, I’ve tested and developed multiple strategies.

I’ve also refined the note-taking strategies I used to use in grad school.

And in this guide, I’ll walk you through my favorite unconventional note-taking methods that consistently help me improve my focus, boost memory, and best of all, actually enjoy the learning process.

Whether you’re trying to keep up with a fast-paced lecture, sitting in a meeting or reading dense books, these flexible strategies will help you take better notes.

Even better, you’ll get more out of the notes you take when using these processes.

Let’s dive in.

A quick note before we dive into the techniques I recommend:

There’s no “perfect” method that works for everyone, every time.

The approaches I’m about to share apply to different kinds of information.

And that’s a huge point about having methods overall:

You need multiple techniques that you can switch between depending on the situation.

That’s why I recommend practicing all of them. This approach will leave you with a flexible framework for taking notes in multiple contexts.

Visual note-taking is exactly what it sounds like, and it has been essential to my goal of learning faster and remembering more.

Instead of scribbling out long, lifeless sentences during lectures, I realized that quick visual representation could be used to represent many concepts and skills I needed to learn.

For example, when studying the International Phonetic Alphabet to improve my language learning skills and understand my linguistics textbooks better, I drew a simple coffee cup next to the “i” symbol.

Here’s the drawing:

Here’s what this quick sketch achieved:

I was rapidly able to remind myself that this “i” makes the vowel sound in beans. Just one image anchored the concept instantly in my memory.

As you can see from my example above, visual notes don’t need to be artistic or detailed.

In fact, the simpler, the better. Usually, I limit the visual notes I take to some simple rules:

This visual note-taking method works across the board, but especially well for:

You don’t need to take your visual notes on cards like you see in my examples.

You can integrate visuals into the margins of your books or reserve one or more pages in your notebook for collecting visual summaries of key ideas.

Some people can look at a chart and instantly understand what it’s meant to convey.

Not me.

I often find even simple graphs visually overwhelming.

But as I learned from Tony Buzan, you can simply copy them from your textbooks in your own hand to process their meaning.

I followed his advice and did that to understand how memory works.

By using multiple colors and engaging more parts of my brain, I’ve never forgotten the forgetting curve and the serial positioning effect I drew out visually by copying it from a textbook:

Ultimately, I never would have believed visual note-taking would help me so much. But it has, and later I found out that this style of note-taking is actually ancient.

As Jamie Kreiner reveals in The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction, copyists would leave doodles for their readers to remind them to keep engaged.

These included funny faces or pictures of monks with alert expressions.

So if you use visual note taking, you’re in good company.

For more reading recommendations like Kreiner’s to help broaden your knowledge about study techniques, check out my full list of books on learning.

Outline note-taking is widely used. You could almost call it a classic approach, though you’re about to discover a few ways I’ve found to make it even better.

I use it frequently when attending lectures or listening to instructional videos by just making a dash beside each point based on keywords.

I also use outline note taking when recording my own thoughts.

For sub-points, I will indent slightly to the right.

It basically winds up looking like this example, which involves simple dashes to outline the larger topic:

Because this kind of note-taking compresses the main point into a single keyword or phrase, you can’t always remember exactly what you meant during the note-taking process.

Fortunately, I have a fix for that.

To avoid being puzzled by notes later when using outline note taking at lectures, I ask the speaker permission to press record on my phone.

Then, listening back, you can expand your basic outline notes later. While getting a complete review of the points you thought were good enough to track during the lecture.

When I was in university, not all professors allowed me to record their talks.

Fortunately, these days it’s very common for just about every lecture to be recorded and even uploaded publicly for the world to view.

But if for any reason, recording is not possible, leave space to one side of the page so you can expand your notes immediately after the session.

Don’t wait. Write your summaries while the ideas are still fresh, even if your working memory is strong.

Also, if you can, go over your notes with classmates or co-workers within an hour or two. This simple activity is one of the most empowering study habits I practiced across my university years.

People ask me by email or in comments if it’s okay for them to type their notes.

According to studies like this one from 2024, you won’t get nearly the same memory benefits from using a computer for note taking.

Why is handwriting better?

We actually have to address two angles: focus and memory.

First, this Scientific American article summarizes studies that show a major difference in brain activity.

You remember and learn more when using your hand due to processing that occurs because real-time note taking by hand is slower.

I know that sounds counterintuitive, but if you think about it, writing requires more focus.

And what we focus on, the brain engages with much more deeply, leading to better memory and comprehension.

I’ve long noticed that I remember more and understand better when writing my study and research notes by hand.

But this form of note taking has also helped me edit my books better.

For example, it’s totally possible to revise books on the computer.

To get better and faster results, however, I print out my drafts, read them with a red pen and take outline notes on sheets of paper.

It’s so much easier to improve an entire book draft this way. Both to better remember the many moving parts, and to increase focus.

Editing on a computer is not only challenging because your brain activity slumps.

You’re also fighting against multiple open tabs and the knowledge that there are infinite entertainments that await you online.

So whether you’re editing an essay for a school assignment or an article for work, get it printed so you can make notes on the draft in ways that will better serve your goal of creating a masterpiece.

SQ3R was developed by the educational psychologist Francis Robinson in the 1940s to help military personnel read better.

The SQ3R acronym stands for:

Unlike passive reading or taking notes without thinking, SQ3R gets you engaging deeply with the materials through this easy-to-follow model.

I find it useful for reducing information overwhelm when used in this exact manner:

In my experience, constantly asking questions strengthens memory because you’re processing the ideas in a deeper way.

And scientists have found that you’re engaging in what’s known as elaborative rehearsal. You strengthen your memory and understanding because questions help you look at the information in more than one way.

Sometimes my questions are simple.

If you scroll back up and look at my card with “Really?” on it and the visual arrow to connect two ideas together, I’m expressing both skepticism and surprise.

Here are some other questions I frequently use while reading and note taking:

There are many more questions you can ask. If you’d like to train your brain and become a question-asking machine, check out my ultimate list of philosophical questions. It’ll help turn you into an SQ3R machine.

As you’ve seen, I combine the question-asking process with my note taking process.

But you can also make quick doodles or sketches that embed questions. Or make sketches of question marks that prompt you to ask the sample questions I’ve shared above.

If you use the method of loci, you can embed questions marks along your mental journeys to trigger your recall.

In fact, one of the earliest memory training books by Peter of Ravenna encouraged its readers to ask lots of questions.

This point was raised again by the Renaissance memory instructor Giordano Bruno. He taught people a means of placing questions on memory wheels.

These “computational” mental tools have a long history, and are worth studying because of how question-focused they were during an era packed with polymaths and autodidacts.

The point is that top learners rarely use any technique in isolation. So to get the most out of SQ3R, pop it into your outline note taking efforts as well.

Flow-based note taking is all about getting your thoughts down without the kinds of filters other methods involve.

Sometimes I think of this approach as “brain dumping.”

For example, here’s a real instance of getting into flow and just letting ideas flow in real time:

In the same section I visually worked out a story idea and even listed the playing cards I had memorized earlier that day.

Although these pages from my private notebook might look chaotic to some, it’s a powerful snapshot of my thinking at that moment.

I carry the kind of notebook you see above at all times. The 90x140mm format fits perfectly in the back pocket of my jeans.

The only rule I follow when using this form of note taking is to not interrupt the flow.

There is one precaution, however:

Try to write cleanly enough that you’ll be able to recognize your own handwriting. I recently had to buy a magnifying glass so I could decode some of the notes I took a bit too quickly.

Since then, I’ve started taking more care that I write legibly. Not for perfection, but for the benefit of my future self.

Even though I’ve started taking greater care, this approach is not the SQ3R, nor does it involve creating a specific outline.

It’s about momentum and staying in the zone.

In my experience, this method works best for:

Can you get the same effect from taking notes in flow on a computer?

Possibly, and sometimes I send myself notes via email, especially when ideas for books I’m writing come up while I’m working on other tasks, like editing videos.

These rapid notes wind up filled with a lot of typos that can be hard to decode later, however.

And we have studies like this showing that cursive handwriting gets much better results for anything involving memory, learning, focus and concentration.

In sum, I stick to handwriting these “brain dump” notes as much as I possibly can.

This might be my most controversial suggestion, but please hear me out.

Doodling while taking notes isn’t about zoning out or expressing frustration with boring topics.

Although some people discourage doodling, my personal experience says otherwise.

As someone with two MAs and a PhD, sketching simple shapes while listening to slow lectures based on dense topics or challenging skills has helped me many times.

For example, when studying music theory and waiting for the teacher to move through ideas I didn’t want to miss, I doodled on the right-hand side of this notebook:

In a way, doodling while paying attention to information is like mind mapping, but without having to create a dedicated mind map.

I find it useful because it helps me focus on the information as it flows in real time without giving in to the need for a dopamine spike.

Doodling also brings powerful memory benefits. As this study found, a group of doodlers who listened to a telephone call remembered 29% more than those who did not.

When it comes to doodles for language learning, the founder of the Fluent Forever app and author of a book with the same title, has talked extensively about making your own index cards. You can hear my conversation about this with Gabriel Wyner on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.

I took his advice to heart and started drawing frequently to help me learn both German and Mandarin.

For example, this simple doodle in one of my language learning notebooks helped me remember a very important German word in no longer than the time it took to create the simple image:

I highly recommend giving doodling as a form of note taking for a variety of learning goals.

That way, you can stick with what you’re studying without feeling the need to seek a dopamine spike quite so often.

So next time, rather than constantly flipping through your computer tabs or getting irritated with a lecturer, keep your hands busy by doodling.

I thought you might find a summary of things not to do helpful.

Obviously, if some of these activities are genuinely helpful for you, feel free to keep up with them.

But for a lot of us, they’re the source of so many issues.

Sometimes we do need to write out quotes verbatim.

For example, I traveled long distances to visit libraries across Europe when I was completing my Mercator Guest Professor Grant in Germany. Many of the books were rare, did not exist in digital format and there was no way I would ever see them again.

Even then, I tried to limit my verbatim notes to index cards and only the most essential quotes.

Far better is to withdraw the key points and review all your notes for a book or article immediately. Then write a summary in your own words so that they context of the specific verbatim quotes stick more firmly in your mind.

I get email from people who love to tell me about their digital tools.

Although I’m happy for them, I’m much more aligned with my fellow writers.

Like the journalist Ezra Klein who told Lex Fridman in this interview about how important it is to the quality of his writing to work with print as much as possible.

As he puts it, print helps him show up and do the work much better than some of his competition. He attributes the success of his podcast to reading from print and preparing his notes in this way.

My experience matches his and I’m confident you’ll enjoy a similar experience when you give your brain more exposure to printed media.

After launching the video about my note-taking methods at the top of this page, one of my frequent commentators said he’s not sure what method is his favorite yet.

I said that actually it’s the combination of many methods that I prefer.

I would suggest that you keep flexible by developing skills with a variety of information capture techniques.

Along these lines, it’s useful to take inspiration from how others take notes.

But rather than copy what they’re doing, seek to “reverse-engineer” why they’re using a particular approach.

You’ll not only develop better research skills. You’ll wind up with your own research style, leading to the uniqueness and success Ezra Klein highlights.

For best results, never make your note-taking a “set and forget” process.

Review them. Think about them. Connect them with notes you’ve taken in the past.

And integrate in topic-appropriate ways.

For example, in a recent Conversations with Close podcast, the magician Peter Samelson suggested photocopying important guidebook pages when learning a process.

Then, in the context of learning a new skill, mark that page up with notes describing the specific steps you need to follow.

This kind of step-by-step note-taking will accelerate your progress.

And that photocopying tip?

Golden.

By making a quick copy, you can be as creatively sloppy with your notes as you wish, and still retain the book’s instructions in its original format.

Likewise if you’re learning from an ebook or PDF, by printing the pages and marking them up physically, you’re integrating your notes at a much deeper level. You’ll enjoy more substantial outcomes as a result.

I’ve been asked many questions about how I take notes over the years.

Here are some of the most frequent, and the most important.

There’s no single “best” approach in my experience.

I suggest rotating through multiple approaches, especially in a way that combines handwriting, visual note-taking and asking questions as you proceed.

The most important point is that you take the initiative to make the note-taking process active.

Combining multiple approaches based on your specific learning goal will give you outstanding results.

As we’ve seen, studies show that handwriting works best for memory, comprehension and focus.

But that doesn’t mean you have to leave typing completely out of the process.

When I wrote my dissertation for my PhD at York University, I typed up many of my notes into an outline.

At the end of the day, it was important that the notes were taken by hand. But it’s not at all the case that typing was entirely excluded from the process that led me to a successful graduation.

This can be a problem, but one thing to consider is that you don’t have to keep all of your notes.

When I’ve moved internationally, I photographed the most important and got rid of the physical versions.

Many of my cards also go into mental storage by using the Memory Palace technique too. There are many that I never photographed but still recall with ease as a result.

But generally I’ve found that using index cards is best because they pack easily into shoe boxes.

You can store thousands of cards inside one closet and label the boxes alphabetically or thematically.

Many people in the Zettelkasten community keep notes in this way. Some invest in wooden cases for their cards, which you might look into if you want to store and organize your knowledge.

This is a real risk.

But you reduce it substantially by constantly questioning and using memory techniques during the note-taking process.

And if you review your notes regularly and write summaries of what you’re learning, you’ll have a backup record.

Chances are, you’ll also wind up like me: Rarely having to look back at your notes because you simply remember them.

Of course, that outcome might make you wonder: If such strong recall is possible, why bother taking notes in the first place?

The answer is that taking notes well helps establish stronger memories.

So even if it’s fairly common to scratch your head when looking at some of your own notes, they don’t all have to be legible. The note-taking process will still have been valuable overall.

For most of us, spaced repetition is the key.

You’ll need to experiment with how long between reviews works best for you.

Myself, when I really want to remember something, I follow a pattern I modified from Dominic O’Brien’s Rule of Five:

Although I don’t follow that pattern slavishly for everything I learn, it’s a general rule of thumb to follow.

It might seem like a lot, but just take it one note at a time. If you let your mind constantly label how much review you have to do, you’re wasting time that could be spent on reviewing.

The list is simple:

Strategically selecting what you’re going to take note of is critically important.

No one can cover everything. In fact, human civilization developed specialization groups precisely so we can “offload” certain aspects of human knowledge to others.

Focus the notes you take on the big insights, patterns, trends and areas you really need to be able to recall.

If you try to cover every single detail, your competition will sail past you.

By the same token, to be a specialist, you want to bring your unique perspective.

That’s why developing your own systematic questioning process is so critical to your success.

I would suggest asking a different question:

How can I make the time to explore as many note-taking approaches as possible so I have a collection of techniques to choose from?

This approach will serve you so much better because there are many different kinds of information to learn. There is no single technique that will cover every single kind.

Taking notes is powerful, but it’s just one part of having a truly holistic learning practice.

To truly remember and apply what you’ve learned, please follow up with the following strategies to strengthen your retention and understanding.

Over the years, as both student, professor and memory expert, I’ve refined each of these powerful processes to help turn the many ways I take notes into memories that last.

Simply rereading notes or using Anki isn’t enough.

To enjoy greater understanding and remember more, you can make ideas stickier by speaking, writing, listening and reading those ideas more often.

Some of my favorite memories during university involved just that, typically covered by attending a variety of discussion groups.

In English 1300, for example, a small cluster of us all walked away with the top grades.

Why?

Because after many of the lectures and tutorials, we met to discuss the material further.

I’ll never forget sitting up in the 7th-floor Grad Lounge of the Ross Building.

Although we didn’t realize we were practicing levels of processing at the time, we practiced everything scientists have discovered works for learning at a deeper level. We:

Later, in grad school, I joined even more advanced study groups.

In one of my favorites, we would each voluntarily read an article to present to the group.

In this way, we exposed each other to additional reading material we would never have time to consider in any other way.

Yet, we could still take notes about the key points, commit them to memory and enjoy the effect of priming our memory for future encounters with those references.

We’ve talked a lot about writing today, and it is proven to hone your focus and boost your memory.

But I didn’t always do it.

And initially, I’m ashamed to say that I hated it.

Especially when one of my grad school professors made me write 300-500 word summaries of the books I read for a directed reading course.

I reconnected with this professor a few years ago, however.

Why? To tell her how much I appreciated the exercise week after week.

Thanks to her requirement, I learned to process the information in my own words, which is incredibly powerful for memory and reading comprehension.

That’s because summarizing your notes in prose forces you to:

If you don’t have a professor assigning summary tasks for you, try it yourself.

Even just the shortest prose summaries of your notes will boost your memory and improve your comprehension.

I often take notes on index cards because they make it easy to:

To store my many cards and harness the power of spaced repetition, I use Leitner boxes.

This approach lets you review your notes progressively over time and ensure that the information gets retained at a much higher level.

And if you think that using cards and boxes like this is too simplistic, rest assured you’ll be in good company.

Both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin used similar approaches to great effect, amongst many other autodidactic personalities.

Effective note-taking skills are discussed everywhere.

But you also need to bring your best critical thinking skills.

Whatever you do, I suggest that you approach note taking as an art, a science and a lifestyle. Make sure that you experiment with multiple styles and track your results.

As you pay attention to what’s happening more consciously, you’ll learn more about what works for you and lean towards your preferences with greater understanding.

But at all times, choose flexibility. Make sure you have on hand what you need whenever you attend a lecture or recording of one so that all your bases are covered.

And above all, remove all stress. So many learners bring so much worry about the game of education that they forget to play it.

This point is important because learning really is a game. It’s one you can win too, provided you put your memory first. And provided you have the mental strength strategies we all need to succeed.

And to help with strengthening your memory, consider learning to use the Memory Palace technique. It’s an ancient version of the Leitner Box that helps you remember more without so much as breaking a sweat.

If you’d like to learn it now, feel free to join my free course:

It gives you a complete set of video tutorials and worksheets that will help you improve your memory.

So what do you say?

Whether you’re a student juggling dense textbooks, or a professional juggling back-to-back meetings, these approaches will transform your notes into meaningful knowledge that stays with you.

And that’s the ultimate point:

Note-taking is not just about notes. It’s about transforming everything you capture into questions, ideas and associations that help usher the target information into long-term memory.

Do any of these note taking technique resonate with you?

Let’s discuss below and keep learning together!

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