4 Extremely Effective Note Taking Skills That’ll Quickly Boost Your Grades

Are you struggling with note taking whether it’s for school or self-study?

Do you want extremely effective note taking skills that’ll 10X your creativity and your knowledge retention?

If you want that, then you are in the right place because you will get the 4 most effective methods of note taking in this one blog post.

Now do yourself a favor. Print this blog post out and do what it says (or almost everything because there is an affiliate link) and watch your brain instantly change and the inner kid inside become reborn.

If you take this blog post to the extreme level, you’ll become a genius.

Guaranteed.

So let’s get to it.

Here’s the first tip with notes.

1. Write the Notes In Your Own Words

This is key.

If you copy verbatim from a book or from any other source, you are literally screwing yourself over.

Why?

Because it is not written in a way for you to understand the material on your OWN terms.

Let me explain.

When you read or watch something, the material is meant to be interpreted and molded to your learning style and to what you see.

In other words, the purpose of the material is meant to show you what is happening and why it’s happening.

It’s not really saying “Follow me.”

If you interpret it as “follow me” verbatim and not trying to engage your brain as to why it’s happening, you are losing out big time on the material.

Have you ever tried to read a book or listen to a lecture and try to copy everything that is on the board or in the book effortlessly?

If so, did you retain anything?

Exactly.

Now, have you ever tried to read a book or listen to a lecture and while the material was being presented, you were not just blindly following what the instructor or what the author was saying, but you are really questioning what is being said and you are actively trying to piece the material together in your mind?

Did you much more information at those times?

Exactly my point.

Copying verbatim is the devil.

You are not going anywhere with it.

To really grasp any material of any subject and to be able to create the stuff itself, you MUST actively engage your mind with the material and write the notes in your own words that reflects that understanding.

Do you get what I’m saying?

If you don’t, I encourage you to grab a book or go to a lecture (or your next one if you are a student) and don’t directly copy off of the notes, but visualize everything in your mind what is happening and why it’s happening and wrote your notes according to the reality that you see.

No, you are not doing make believe stuff. You are just interpreting what you are reading or listening to and writing everything based off of what you understand.

Comment below with the results of this activity. I’d love to hear from you.

And if you still don’t understand the material, then try this next tip to skyrocket your understanding FAST!

2. Write Down Anything That You Still Don’t Understand AGAIN!

If you didn’t get it the first time, there is ALWAYS a second time to get it right.

How is it so?

You just write it down again and keep doing that until you understand.

I can guarantee you that if you try many times at writing the notes down in your own words, you will eventually find your own unique understanding that matches up with reality and will allow you to manipulate reality to what you want to do.

If for some reason this technique of repeatedly writing the notes over and over again doesn’t work, I want you to watch this video here that explains a bulletproof way of retaining information, whether you are in school or self-studying.

I know this is correct for a fact because I literally crushed calculus with this guy and have used his strategies to become a conceptual thinker and learn pretty much anything in a way that makes me a godly genius.

You can read more about my testimonial for Professor Leonard here and how to be a conceptual thinker here.

So in short, the order that you should follow when it comes to taking notes is:

1. Interpret the information in your own words with your own understanding

2. Write everything down again if you still don’t understand what’s happening

3. Watch Professor Leonard’s video on how to study and do everything that he says

Now if you want a very unique trick to synthesizing the information, I’ll give it to you and it’s one that has worked wonders for me in school and in self-study.

3. Think of Something Off-Topic

Every time that I find a piece of information boring, I try to incorporate some other unrelated thing that I’m thinking about prior to studying.

This thing can be your last vacation, your pet, a funny TV show, etc.

But something completely unrelated to what you are learning.

I’ll give you an example.

When I was studying for Calculus 2 I would always think of any of these things while studying it:

1. Dining in the dining room while on a cruise

2. The back cover of a Florida Keys coupon booklet with a pretty woman on it

3. A show about Canadian border patrol officers

4. Driving in the Florida Keys on a nice sunny day

5. Steph Curry not taking it to the hole in a basketball game

6. An old Miami Dolphins football coach talking about a bad game

I know what you are thinking “You were thinking about those things when you were studying? They’re not even related to math! How did you do it?!”

Here’s the deal.

When you are trying to create something, you go through what’s called an incubation period in which your subconscious mind collects the data in your brain and creates a unique product (your understanding) to help you articulate your knowledge better.

It’s the brain’s way of making sense of the information.

As a result, your mind will associate the knowledge with those far out pieces of experiences and when you study the material, it’s like you are reliving those experiences again and as a result of experiencing those experiences and learning the knowledge at the same time, your retention skyrockets.

Now why is this the case?

It’s because your brain cannot resist going into those experiences and since the mind linked the knowledge to those experiences, the mind is no longer bored receiving that information.

This is the secret of lateral thinking which is thinking outside of the box.

Every person who has created something spectacular used this process to generate those creations. It is the essence of the note taking process.

I learned this in a book called “Advertising Secrets of the Written Word” by Joseph Sugarman which is considered one of the best copywriting books of all time if not the best one.

You can pick up your own copy here on Amazon. Note: It’s about $70.00, but believe me, it’s worth every penny. Get it now. Please.

And also note, I am an affiliate for Amazon, so I will receive a commission off of your purchase through my link. However, the price that you pay will not change.

I hope that you were not disturbed by how I think.

It’s quite weird, but believe me, it works.

That book and Leonard’s videos will get you started and watch your note-taking skills go on FIRE.

And now, if you REALLY retain the information, then you don’t want to miss this next step because it’s how we humans learn anything!

4. Read Over Your Notes Numerous Times

They always say that repetition is the key to all learning.

And so they are correct.

When you repeat and repeat and repeat the material over and over and over again, it becomes a habit. And you know what happens with habits don’t you?

They become a part of our daily life!

You can barely get rid of them!

And that’s a good thing if it’s a good habit!

Now for bad habits, you are gonna have to get rid of them, but for those good habits, oh hell no!

As for how to repeat the information in your head, it all comes down to this:

Just do it.

That’s it.

There is no magic trick.

And just keep pushing and grinding until you get it.

Of course, ask for help if you need to, but if you are doing everything right, you really don’t need help.

And remember this:

Depend on yourself for as much as possible.

Reduce the amount of things that you need other people for.

And you will be set for life.

You’ve taken the first step to self-sufficiency in learning with this blog post.

Don’t stop now.

Please.

You now have the 4 types of note taking methods that will take your intellect to the next level so don’t misuse them.

If you’d like more mind-blowing and insightful content from Join the Island, the greatest blog in the world, input your email in the box below to subscribe and receive blog posts the moment that they are published.

Also comment below with what you got out of this post. It’d be great to see what you accomplished.

May the force be with you pal 🙂

Until next time,

This is Evan signing off.