The smart notes approach offers a deliberate writing practice because it provides immediate feedback when writing by testing our understanding. These clusters can serve as starting points for new ideas to write about. More links ultimately lead to the emergence of idea clusters. The more notes one adds to the system the more links can be made. And as a series of notes is just the rearrangement of notes you already have in your slip-box, all you really have to do is have a pen in your hand when you read.īecause of the many small steps that make up the smart note taking workflow it could benefit from a compounding effect. To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft to get a good draft written, you only have to turn a series of notes into a continuous text. The key idea of the smart notes system is about having a set of clearly defined, interconnected writing tasks with intermediate writing output (i.e., notes) that offer immediate feedback and that can be flexibly performed. While structured planning is useful in professional practice, academic writing requires more flexibility than planning.Ī clear workflow as described in the book based on the German sociologist Luhmann's concept of the Zettelkasten promises to provide such a system that is at the same time clearly defined but also offers flexibility to let insights emerge. It is probably because of this cyclical process that productivity systems such as GTD have never really caught on in academia. I feel this is especially the case for writing qualitative papers, where once you get to writing the discussion section you have to already rewrite the introduction and background sections. It breaks down the amorphous task of writing a book or paper into many smaller steps (or notes).īy breaking the writing down and clearly defining intermediate steps, writing becomes more interesting and motivating.Īt the same time though academic writing cannot be sequenced into a linear process because one has to constantly jump between the parts. Like breathing, it is vital to what we do, but because we do it constantly, it escapes our attention."Īhrens argues that this everyday writing is crucial for other long form types of writing. And maybe that is the reason why we rarely think about this writing, the everyday writing, the note-taking and draft-making. "Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work. He argues that the most important part of writing, the one that we do not pay much attention to, is the everyday writing of notes, drafts, and jots. However, the fact that Ahrens shifts the writing focus just a tiny little bit makes this book interesting. At first, Ahrens' book "How to Take Smart Notes" appears to be just another self-help book for writers.
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