Taking notes on personal-development material.

[Max_V]

I have been starting to take notes on everything a while ago for my commonplace book to help me compile my conceptual knowledge and remember it easier.

So during Leo's videos I take a lot of notes which sometimes concludes in me having 14 pages of notes after a 2 hour video. I feel like this is pretty difficult, this 2 hour video can easily turn into 3 to 4 hours because of pausing and taking notes. Also I find it quite hard to discern the absolute most important stuff from things that I already have heard about from other videos or books.

My question to you guys is, how do you take notes -- on Leo's videos in particular -- and how do you get a clear sense of what's important to write down?

Thanks.

[Torkys]

Here are things that I do that make my notes shorter and better

• Focus on his main ideas and center your notes around these ideas. Look up the outline method of note-taking and use bulleted and numbered lists. As you start to do this more and more, the more you will start to notice that Leo's videos are centered around certain ideas.
• Remove the fluff. What you think isn't important and is self-explanatory, just don't write it down.
• In some way highlight some things that are important to you. It may be some food for thought, super-duper important points and insights.
• Go back and add new definitions of / points about a certain thing.
• Review your notes after taking them.
• Copy and paste the link to the video in case you need to watch/review it again
• Explain things using your own words. Quotes can be useful but only if you understand them and if they are important.

Here are some of my notes so you can have a clear idea of what I am talking about:

 

These are notes I took while listening to Advice For High School & College Students - The Keys To Mastering Life:

[Max_V]

@Torkys

Your notes look very good put together. I think I take way too much notes or not the right ones atleast.

How do you do it while watching the videos? Does taking notes increase your watching time by such an incredible amount as mine too?

[Max_V]

@Shiva Thank you, that's actually very helpful, I've never thought of that!

I really love the English language though  , but I will consider.

[Faceless]

I don’t see how taking notes is a good idea. To attend fully demands all your energy. 

Also if you thjnk it’s so necessary to learn from Leo, is it necessary to learn from anyone else. How do you know who has the goods? 

Edited January 4, 2018 by Faceless

[Torkys]

4 hours ago, Max_V said:

How do you do it while watching the videos? Does taking notes increase your watching time by such an incredible amount as mine too?

I started taking notes using a variation of the outline method in school 2 years before it became necessary, so I think this amount of practice may have helped me alot.

I don't usually stop the video while taking notes, usually, Leo just talks about the topic in general after saying a main point/topic. I think taking notes increases my watch time by 15% at max.

As I said earlier, Leo's way of presenting information is almost designed to be taken using bulleted points. A new topic usually starts when he says: "the next one is...", "let's talk about..." and generally saying something that you can't link to any previous thing he said. It would good for you just to look for these. After that, try to stop at the end of every single topic/sub-topic, and write down the essence of what he is saying. Other than that, practice...

Edit: Just took notes on a video and observed myself while doing it, there are some tips:

• Don't write down anything general about the video, the series of videos a video is in if it is in one, or a topic within a video. If something is important in it, it will be mentioned later nonetheless.
• Don't write down double negatives.
• Develop and add words and synonyms to definitions.
• Don't care about the grammar as long as you can understand it later.

After the last one, I stopped writing tips because I got the essence of efficient note taking. It is to record the video in the simplest form possible while containing everything important. Actually, no special note-taking method is needed, if you got this down, you are good to go. My notes being easy to read is just a nice little feature to me.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Torkys

[Max_V]

@Torkys Sounds good, thank you!

[Girzo]

You can always streamline your notes. Just read through them and choose 1-3 insights from each and put it in another note, that's more accessible. A lot of stuff that Leo says repeats, so you will have every valuable insight there after some time anyways. 

And with more practical stuff like meditation tips, you can make another note that you will place higher in hierarchy and thanks to that read it more often.

If it's hard to judge what's important while you watch, then I see no problem in distilling information after you are done with it. And be ok with loosing some value, that's just how it is in nature.

[Max_V]

@Girzo yeah haha, I’d rather be taking too much notes than too little.

guess I have to find some balance here

Edited January 4, 2018 by Max_V

[Jamie Universe]

I usually don't stop the video while taking notes, only if its a big point to write down and if he's already going to something else. But sometimes I notice writing bullet points that are an exact outline of what was said.

Example: - Non-duality is in-communicable because try and imagine explaining what color is to a color blind person 

 

What you should do

 

- Non-duality incommunicable

          - analogy: explaining color to color blind

 

It might not seem like much, but the shorter your bullet points you can make, the more efficient. Though you don't want to do this at the expense of not getting the point acorss.

[Max_V]

@Jamie Universe Very helpful, thankyou!

I’ve been looking into outline note-taking this afternoon and it certainly seems like a very efficient way to take notes. I will experiment with it and see if it fits me

[Ayilton]

I don't recommend stopping the video to take notes... It breaks the flow and all momentum  !  Try do it while the video is on. It's better  ! 

Be in the moment  , don't get trapped by the mechanics of watching the video and taking notes  , the important thing is to make sure are fully engaged and present  ! 

peace guys 

[Max_V]

@Ayilton Good point. 

I’d love to do it this way but often times I can’t fully remember the exact sentence to describe the concept I want to write down best because of everything said afterwards. I will work on this though, might be able to do it when my note taking levels up.

[Matteo]

@Max_V Usually I take notes on videos only when a particular sentence hits me very hard. At that point, I wrote it down. When a video is generally powerful, I like to watch it again after some time. Maybe the second time I watch it, something else resonate with me that didn't resonate the first time, and I wrote it down. I also wrote down practical information or exercises that are shared in videos, so that I can access them later without watching the whole thing again.

I don't think that the goal of taking notes is to memorize as much informations as possible. I like to use notes as a tool for contemplation, so when I take notes, I keep that in mind. On a Leo's video, I might take two or three short notes, and then contemplate one of those on a separate page.

I believe that the point of watching videos is to use them to enhance your capacity for inquiry and self reflection.