if you spend any time in the studygram community on instagram you've probably come across images like these and while they are super pretty to look at when it comes to notetaking i really believe form should follow function our main goal should be to take notes in a way that allows us to absorb and retain as much information as possible of course if you have the time to jazz it up then by all means but that should not be your top priority and you definitely should not feel bad about yourself just because your notes don't look as pretty as the ones you see online today we are going back to the basics i want to share with you my favorite note-taking method as well as the tools that i use to make the process more fun and engaging i want to start by telling you a little bit about my favorite note-taking method which is rooted in the cornell method this is such a popular note-taking technique that many of your textbooks are actually presented in this format if you're not familiar with what the cornell method looks like let me show you you're going to take a blank piece of paper and draw a giant eye across the page already you can see that your page is now divided into several sections starting from the top you're going to write your date as well as your title and you want to make this nice and big and legible then moving down to the main component in this right middle section this is where you're going to record your lecture notes as well as any diagrams or graphs or images that your teacher shares in class now if the diagram is a little bit more complex or involved i like to draw a box around it just to remind myself that i need to come back and fill in any gaps now there are a couple of good rules of thumb to use here the first is to take your notes in an outline format using bullet points this just makes your notes a little bit more readable next i would encourage you to use shorthand or abbreviations where possible because the goal here is to capture as much information as you can in real time and finally make sure to leave yourself enough white space this gives your notes room to breathe but it also allows you to come back and add in any information if you need to without cluttering your notes as soon as you can after class go ahead and review your notes and extract out all the main ideas into this left column keep it really short and concise but you do want to give yourself a couple of trigger words or question prompts and the idea here is to give yourself just enough information to help trigger what you wrote down in the lecture after that consolidate all of your notes and create a couple of sentence summary at the bottom when you come and look at this you're able to capture all of the main ideas from this page so what makes the cornell method so awesome well for one it breaks up your page into meaningful sections so that can help draw your eye to the important parts this is actually rooted in a memory enhancement strategy called the method of loci which taps into our brain's ability to use spatial contacts to remember information based on their location if i can recall where something is on a page then that can help provide cues to me during the learning process additionally the cornell method provides a great opportunity for us to go through the five hours of note-taking and those are record reduce recite reflect and review and let me walk you through each of these record is pretty self-explanatory this is where you're going to be capturing notes in your lecture in real time next we're going to reduce and this is where we're going to extract all those main ideas into trigger words or question prompts the recite part is where you can cover up your lecture notes and now based solely on the triggers that you have come up with you are going to recall as much information as possible reflect is where we are going to consolidate and summarize and finally we're going to rinse and repeat in the review process when you set up your notes like this you are required to take multiple passes through your notes and this results in incremental studying which will save you a ton of time down the road because you won't be cramming right before your exam so that was a rundown of the basic cornell method along with its many benefits but you guys know me i love to give you a couple of additional tips to help further boost the effectiveness of an already amazing note-taking method the first tip i have for you is around diagramming and this is especially useful when you have diagrams that are more complex or involved and what i like to do is during lecture just as we talked about i would copy down the diagram just like my teacher has it and then when i get home i will draw a blank version i will copy it down but leave it unlabeled i'll then take a sticky note and cover up the original diagram i'll give it a title just so i know what it is but then i can practice filling in the blank diagram without having the answer right in front of me the next tip here is to have you create a legend of symbols that you can use throughout all of your note-taking i would urge you to create maybe three to five don't overdo it because then it can become overwhelming so here are the ones i like to use i like to use a star to represent anytime there is an important takeaway i like to use this don't symbol to represent cases where i need to slow down and be careful because maybe there is a tricky piece of information and lastly this is my favorite one i use an exclamation mark to represent cases where i need to take further action so as an example if i'm in class and my teacher is sharing some vocabulary terms but i don't have the time to define everything in the moment i will make sure i go home and create flashcards for these words so i can study them after the fact tip number three is around color coding and there are several ways you can do this the first is you can just have different colors designate different types of material so maybe vocabulary words important points or key formulas you can also say you know you want certain colors to represent certain subjects that you are taking and this is really great when you have one notebook hold your notes for multiple classes again just like with our symbols i don't want to overdo this um i know some students like to use all colors of the rainbow on every page of notes and while that can be really pretty to look at when it comes to studying it can actually be quite distracting because your eye won't know where to go for the important pieces of information next i want to take you through some of my favorite tools that make the note-taking process just a little bit more interactive and engaging the first is this notebook from hamlin our sponsor of today's video hamlin brands is a family-owned company that has been creating exceptional school and office supplies for over 154 years hamlet's mission is to provide the best quality notebooks that help every student be more noteworthy so let me just jump right into the star of the show which is inside this notebook with their proprietary optic paper this paper is made in finland it's super smooth and high quality i have used markers on highlighters and pens and i have had no issues with bleed through or ghosting this lets me write on the front and back of each and every page which really extends the life of this notebook and as you can see here it is quite sturdy every one of their notebooks features this double wire binding along with a hard cover that makes it much less prone to your normal wear and tear inside the notebook you'll get this awesome page of tabs they come in two sizes big and small i personally like to use the big tabs to separate out different units within one class so i can flip to the unit we're working on very quickly the small tabs come in handy when i need to call out a due date maybe a homework assignment or a project due date and finally one really unique feature of hamlin products is their scripty app and i want to take you through the high level functionalities of this app as it relates to their notebooks on your phone you'll go into the scripcy app and you're going to go into the scan feature hover your phone over your notes and make sure they go over those markers if you have more than one page of notes you can click this plus icon but for us we'll just take this one and i'll click ok at this point your notes will be pending and once it's finished you can go into the pending and you can give your notes a new name i'll call it time value of money you can also move your notes around and i'm going to add it into my corporate finance folder so now if you open up your notes you'll see it reflected in that folder there it is time value of money i'll open up my financial modeling notes to show you a couple things you can do the first is you can click this pencil icon and you can move your pages around reorganize you can also add in a supplemental image to your notes okay so there you see it reflected next you can upload your notes you can do it over email or you can share it with your friends with this feature is really convenient lastly there is a really cool feature i want to share with you and that's searching your notes so come back to the home screen click the search function and where handwritten notes is selected you are going to type in a keyword so i'll type in financial modeling and at this point if you search the app is going to recognize and pull up all of your notes that include these keywords if you open them up what's so cool is the app actually recognizes where they show up and will highlight every instance for you this is really great if you want to search a lot of notes for a keyword very quickly another product that is practically a household name at this point are sticky notes and i've already shown you one way that i like to use it in my note taking but what's so great about sticky notes is that they come in all shapes and colors and sizes and they are multi-functional as always everything i mentioned in this video will be linked in the description box below along with a promo code you can use for 20 off all hamlin products note-taking really is a trial and error process which fonts colors and style work best for you and for which subject is really a matter of personalization and experimentation but guys just have fun with it and once you figure out what works best for you it's going to pay off indefinitely if you like this video give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends do remember to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell thank you guys so much for watching and i'll see you soon bye