I want to show you two note-taking methods here's the first one and here's the second now tell me which one of these two do you think have a better understanding okay so that was obvious but how about this one can you guess one of these two methods is far superior to the other because it uses six note- taking principles that I'm going to teach you in this video to be able to learn Concepts faster and more effectively than the other and also even enjoy the process while doing it okay so the two examples I just showed you this one is by far the superior method for taking handwritten notes on iPad because it uses six powerful techniques to increase learning and retention the first of which is making connections between your ideas by using more lines so my brother Mike and I are both former medical doctors we teach hundreds of students to learn more effectively in study quests which is our learning skills program and one of the single most important things about learning is finding relationships between Concepts right like imagine you're a detective or FBI agent and you're searching for Clues as to where everything is and how it all ties back to the main point so using line connectors are perfect for this because by joining two things in a line we create a physical connection right like a bridge between these ideas and this is just something that two paragraphs or sentences or blocks of text no matter how detailed or wordy they are they can't portray it as clearly oh and by the way in case you're wondering I am using an iPad 2020 this is the 11in model along with an apple pencil number two and for all of the graphics in this video I'm using an app called good notes 6 but you can also use notability Concepts one notes uh free form or any other similar apps like that anyways when you use lines this way to connect your notes it makes your notes similar to what you might know as mind mapping right or concept mapping which was a technique popularized by Tony buzan but to further build off this and make better connections I sometimes also include arrows arrows can show ideas that have a logical flow right this idea leads to this causing this this this and this two-way arrows can show things are reversible so adding an arrow to the connection can clarify what that relationship is if it has some kind of flow to it so after tip one we're going from something like this to this which already makes relationships so much more clear tip number two is to use positioning to organize ideas so the way that we visually represent information has a big impact on how we understand it certain visuals just make sense for our brain when we see them we know what's the main idea and that's what's important I found that a lot of times when I learn and I take a bunch of highlights and notes I feel like wow I'm learning a whole lot you know I'm writing so much down and these ideas must be clicking and it makes sense but then when I look at them afterwards it's like hm what is even important here the point I'm making is to think about which ideas are Central or big picture if those ideas are positioned in the middle then it makes it a lot easier for everything else to Branch off of it right like a ripple effect so with this tip we can move from something that looks like this to something that looks like this with clear organization that makes sense to us tip number three is to be expressive so something I've found valuable is to add flare to my notes to make the important ideas even more expressive right positioning is good for getting the general structure right but expressiveness makes those ideas come to life I want to know which relationships are stronger and which ideas deserve more umph right more emphasis so for this tip play around with things like size because yes size does matter when not taking you can also think about how the ux design of popular websites do this right like your eyes immediately can tell that the headers are more important and the smaller text stuff are less important and so for your notes this can also include stuff like Bolding or underlining to make stuff pop out of the page and the neat thing about using an iPad is to have the ability to change how fat the tip is of the pencil you're using color and highlighting are also really nice ways to further to get expressive and emphasize your ideas I really love the way that you can use color to show contrasting ideas or group similar items items together so I view expressiveness as an extension of positioning to further bring to life the important and Central ideas so after this tip now we're leveling up from something that looks like this to something that looks like this tip number four is to make personal icons if I send you this Emoji you probably know exactly what I mean right or this one or this spicy one without having to do any additional work I know what it means so this is a pretty fun and simple way to create personalized reminders to look for patterns or frequently referenced ideas in your notes for example I got into the habit of adding a little coin symbol next to certain Concepts that are high yield for me they represent valuable information High Roi or return on investment or the important information I also use a classic question mark for Concepts I want to learn more about I want to do more research and ask chat GPT about or ask Mike or like another teacher about right so icons are a useful way to remind you of stuff without having to jeopardize the Integrity of your notes like instead of aggressively circling or highlighting stuff it helps preserve the visual elements like positioning and expressiveness and it doesn't muddy up the relationships but it's memorable enough so that when I see it it points out the stuff that I was looking for cool so after this tip our notes can go from something that looks like this to something that looks like this tip number five is to leave a trail not to lure or bait people into your traps but to remind yourself of where your original thinking came from so what I do is duplicate my current note before I add on more to it this might seem weird but let me explain evaluation requires comparison this is actually a mistake I learned from music production that I transferred over to taking notes I would get deep in the trenches of my mixes and start changing knobs and tweaking sounds and adding layers and layers and effects and stuff like after an hour of mixing music I had no idea if it was even progress and so that's why I started leaving a trail when I produced music I would always render out a stem of the version I had before I started my mix then afterwards so I can ab test them you want to be able to step inside the shoes of your original thinking and see what your mind knew back then then versus what it knows after you learn sometimes we get stuck so long in the weeds and doing some crazy you know out ofbody Einstein maneuvering and end up with something that we think might look better but if we don't leave a trail then we actually don't know if it is better so think of leaving a trail like clues or save files so you can see the progress of your work tip number six is to use pictures to describe ideas it's been shown through various studies that individuals who use both verbal and visual cues to learn new information have a a better understanding and recall of the information compared to those who only use one type of those cues this is because the brain processes visual information and verbal information in different ways and in different parts of our brain something called dual coding Theory what that means is just incorporating visual elements along with text so what that includes is diagrams sketches and other visual elements into your notes it creates a much better mental image of the information you're trying to learn instead of a wall of text right you've probably heard the saying a picture is worth a th000 words so this method can be particularly useful for complex or abstract topics because if information is presented in both formats it's easier to remember because it's stored in two ways as a visual cue and a verbal cue right a YouTube video about not taking like this one which has visual examples to describe what we're talking about will probably stick a lot better than if you just read the transcript without seeing those elements now to be clear here you don't have to have artistic ability to take good notes in fact I have zero artistic ability maybe negative artistic ability when it comes to drawing I mean look at some of this chicken scratch right but that's okay cuz it's completely beside the point we're not trying to become the next van go we just want to learn more effectively ideas are much more important than Artistry and it's really easy to get wrapped up in trying to draw the perfect picture or Trace like a hyper detailed structure trust me I've been there I've wasted tons of time like tracing images of hearts or Anatomy for medical school and stuff or instead I could have just drew a very simple shape to represent that same idea so with this tip notice the difference of moving from something like this to something like this now there's a lot to say about how to actually Implement these strategies into your notes and those skills are what we dive really deep into with study quest which I mentioned earlier is our learning skills program and I'm very excited to announce that enrollment will probably be opening very soon or they might be already open by the time you're watching this video super excited and I'll leave some links in the description to check it out if you're interested but if you're interested in a more detailed guide to now go from 10x to 20x learning efficiency I'd recommend watching this video here on our mind mapping guide where we walk through how to transform your notes into something more clear and Powerful in a step-by-step way