How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing
AI Summary
Tiago Forte summarizes Sönke Ahrens' book How To Take Smart Notes, tracing its core ideas back to sociologist Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten ('slip-box') note-taking system, which Luhmann used to publish 50 books and 600+ articles. The piece extracts principles for turning notes into an interconnected, externalized thinking system rather than a 'graveyard for thoughts,' directly underpinning the linking/backlink philosophy used by tools like Obsidian, Logseq, and Roam Research.
Original excerpt
How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing
I long ago stopped reading books on note-taking. They were always too vague and boring, full of platitudes that had little to do with the world outside academia. I especially avoided “how-to” style books on the subject. They would often list dozens of tips and tricks that had little to do with each other. There was never an overarching system for turning notes into concrete results. But recently I picked up How To Take Smart Notes (affiliate link) by Sönke Ahrens . Ahrens is a Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the University of Duisburg-Essen and also coaches students, academics, and professionals with…
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Tiago Forte summarizes Sönke Ahrens' book How To Take Smart Notes, tracing its core ideas back to sociologist Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten ('slip-box') note-taking system, which Luhmann used to publish 50 books and 600+ articles. The piece extracts principles for turning notes into an interconnecte…
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"How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing" was written by Tiago Forte. It is curated in the Personal Knowledge Management Tools vault on Burn 451, which covers pkm tools & read-later apps.
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