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How to Take Smart Notes

Author: Sönke Ahrens

The consummate academic personality of mine urged me to pick this up. As someone who constantly reads books and immerses himself in journal articles, I always feel like I’m missing something in the end.

I read, good ideas trigger in my brain, a few stick and I’m disappointed I can’t remember the rest. I’m always going back to books to mine those ideas again.

This book is more than just a note taking technique–it’s an entire learning system.

It will take discipline to put it in place (I’m still working on it) and I want to revisit in a year to see how I’m doing. However, Ahrens fills the gap on why so much learning is lost or forgotten.

The section on the mere-exposure effect and doing the hard work of making connections is priceless. It was a concept explained to me years ago, but this gives the idea practical execution.

While this book revolves around building a Zettelkasten (German word for slip-box or card index) in a paper or digital form, it’s the ancillary information that brings it all together.

From a personal standpoint, this was exactly what I needed.

Bringing the World Together

Our brains are hard-wired for tragedy, panic and all things negative. It’s our biological programming–the thing that saved us in the wilderness.

Heard rustling in the bushes?

Don’t wait to find out if it’s a predator or the wind, just run.

Another name for it is our “fight or flight” response mechanism.

The problem is our brain cannot separate a tiger about to maul us to death from being freaked out about a spider in the house. If it stresses you, it activates.

Useful, but really hard to work around in a time of mass panic. We want to be informed, but we’re attracted to the immediate and the stressful.

When you take a step back from the noise, you can see some incredible things happening.

People are connecting to each other more than ever. We’re connecting online and at the table.

We’re reaching out to those cold contacts to see how they’re doing and stretching our social networks as far as we can take them. We’re also learning which ones to avoid.

We also have every top medical researcher in the world working non-stop to come up with solutions and… here’s the big one… sharing this information with each other. The developments happening are accelerating and we’re no longer wondering if, but when.

Amidst the outcomes that will happen as a result of what we’re facing now, we may see some strong, positive ones.

This may bring us together in a small way and that’s a good step to take.

A Lesson from the Hermit of Maine

The last hermit, that we know about, may provide us with a pearl of wisdom during this time.

While he refuses to claim any worldly wisdom, enlightenment, or any form of transcendence, a person who willingly isolates themselves from society is the perfect source of wisdom. Of course, you can also read up on the many spiritual seekers who also willingly retreated from the world to provide comfort.

Back to our hermit.

When asked what he did for most of his days, he tells us most of his time was spent sitting and thinking. He read the occasional book, played the occasional video game and went on walks, but most of his days was to just sit.

How did that not get boring?

He replied that boredom is a word we invented because of our perceived need to always be doing something.

If we can get it out of our head that we need to do something, or need to be somewhere, perhaps we can eliminate the boredom in our days. It’s a challenge, but it’s worth examining.

After all, are you in a rush to be anywhere now?

A Monster Calls

Author: Patrick Ness

I love Ness’ writing and enjoy his books, but this one… this one… was perfection all the way through.

The writing, artwork, pacing–everything.

I’ve gushed over books and declared my undying love for some, but this one is on the highest pedestal. It says it’s young adult, but that is just the entry audience.

This book is for everyone.

It deals with loss, grief and the stages one goes through before acceptance. I couldn’t stop reading it and by the time I got to the last sentence, there were tears in my eyes.

Yes, this book brought me to tears.

For me, as everyone brings their own experience to a novel, this book hit me multiple levels. It targeted my own grief, while also pulling at my heart strings for the protagonist. I wanted to reach through the book and let him know the monster who calls him is the same monster that calls us all.

Some books keep you hooked because they skim you across the water at a rapid pace. Others pull you beneath the surface where you see a whole new world.

This one pulls you to the bottom of the lake until you drown in it.

All Fiction is a Necessary Lie

If you want to spread a lie quickly, mix in a bit of truth.

Fiction has a lot to teach us about ourselves and the world around us. Reading it provides us insight into a world behind the author’s hand, guiding us into their imagination and discovering something new.

In-between the scenes, dialogue and extraordinary measures characters go through to accomplish their goal, there are glimmers of a mirror to force us to reflect. The reason fiction resonates with us is because it opens up something inside of ourselves.

We know what we’re reading is a lie, but the truth of what we’re reading is what part of us opens… or closes. We get drawn into work because of our own latent desires.

Goosebump books, by R.L. Stine, hook young readers because the world of Goosebumps is perfect. There’s no divorced parents, gruesome torture or even death. Young people feel safe entering that world and feel comfortable getting sucked into the scary, or horror, part of it. A Goosebumps book is a hug from your parents after having a nightmare.

Fantasy books hook young adults, specifically the outliers, most. It’s an appeal to escape to another world where your sense of wonder, weirdness and call to be more powerful than the nerd you are beckons the reader. Eventually, many of those readers find their place in the world and those fantasy books don’t hold the same sway they once did.

My students are hooked on the Gone series this year. Mystery, adventure, wonder, action, suspense, thriller… it was all there for them. I had a hard time getting through the first hundred pages because I couldn’t stop thinking about the babies and young children (I eventually put that part of my brain to rest and blasted through the rest).

We don’t remember books for what lies the author told, but for what truths were illuminated in our reading of it.

Fiction is necessary because its lie is what brings you to the truth.

Groundhog Day

With nowhere to go and nothing to anticipate, groundhog day can feel like the most appropriate term.

Except this is the name we also gave to our daily grind of morning rush-work-home. Now, we’ve opened ourselves up to a greater possibility of what an endless cycle of repetition can mean.

It’s during this time, we have to look for those moments that stick out from the norm. It’s a time to pay attention to the details that often go overlooked in our day.

It’s a time to do something different, to seek something more, to strive for something greater.

Or, it can be seen as a time to stand back.
Relax.
Enjoy the stream of life.
Take a break from the usual programming.
Recharge.
Reset.
Reconnect.

And when this groundhog day is over, one question we must ask is:

What will I do differently now?

Starsight Book Review

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Writing a sequel is tricky.

There’s an expectation setup from the first book, which readers take with them as the starting point for the second. It’s a nervousness about whether this second one is going to be “as good,” which can lead to disappointment.

This is compounded by the fact Sanderson writes his first books as a complete package, making you feel you’ve already gotten your fill by the end.

Skyward was a ton of fun and addictive to read, which made me a bit nervous. However, within ten pages, I remembered this is being written by a master author who plans his books as a series and not one-off attachments.

Starsight does not disappoint in any way. It gets right into it, then veers the story in a different direction afterward. I was happy with this sudden pivot because had it not done that, it would’ve been nothing more than a drawn out vapor trail of the first.

The ending was curious–not unexpected, but a little surprising. It sets the expectation the third will move in a much different way than the first two. I’m already excited to read it.

Is There Anything You Need?

It’s the number one question I hear people asking during this time.

I’ve always had an overly optimistic view of humanity and many times, this blind faith has been put to the test. However, now, when everyone is feeling the effects of what’s happening, I’m feeling validated.

We’re still arguing, squabbling, being stupid and going a little stir crazy… but we’re proving that we care about each other.

It’s nice to see many of us stepping up any way we can.

Escape Into Writing

After reading this advice from Dean Wesley Smith for writers to use this time to escape the real world into writing, I’m struck by its true simplicity.

Writing is just one conduit that can carry a person into another realm, albeit a powerful one. It sparks the imagination, discipline and creativity of a person into one giant thought bubble release.

When a writer gets into the “zone,” (or flow, or whatever else you want to call it), they live in their new world. The environment around them melts away as their focus is drawn to the landscape of the words in front of them.

Rather, their imagination being told through the medium of words. The skill of the writer will determine how well those words can sing and resonate with a reader.

However, there are many other escapes during this time and we would all be served by losing ourselves in one. Just be careful as there’s a difference between escape and numbing.

Binge watching shows, excessive video game playing, addiction to social media–these aren’t escapes. They’re numbing effects.

They provide temporary entertainment, and some may stay with you for a bit, but they pale in comparison to your own creative endeavours.

Escape into something that involves creation.

It’s more satisfying and there’s something to show for it in the end.

Low Drip Dopamine Diet

For curiosity sake, I designed a quiz for my students last year where they had to figure out how much coffee I drink in a day.

It was a unit on measurement, so I provided them the dimensions of my mug, told them how many cups of it I typically drank, then had them calculate and do the conversion. I honestly didn’t know, but was curious.

The result: 2.1 litres a day!

No wonder I always felt groggy and perpetually spun out. My body had built up such a high tolerance to caffeine, that only the most extreme amounts had an effect–and it was a negative one.

I’ve discovered the same issue with digital distractions. The carefully designed addiction qualities of our connected world keeps us hooked until we’re constantly checking and don’t even know why.

Our dopamine neurotransmitters (reward sensors in the brain) are overwhelmed and built such a tolerance, it’s possibly to spend entire days indulging in junk (distractions and food) with only a small feeling of elation.

Without a need to be on any device right now, I figure this would be a good time for a low drip dopamine diet.

For me, this means limiting my digital distractions to three times a day and limiting each bout to fifteen minutes. It also means cutting out snacking between meals and my biggest nemesis: snacking before bed.

This is something similar to the digital minimalism experiment I participated in a while back, which had many positive outcomes. However, the critical error I made was not re-introducing technologies back in a meaningful way.

My avenue this time is to scale back severely, without cutting out what I deem is necessary. It’s goal this time is to find reward in the boring and mundane.

It’s those slow drip activities that lead to meaningful progress towards greater outcomes in life. Those things like exercise, eating healthy, deep concentration, contemplation and yes, even writing.

Time to sensitize those transmitters once again.