How to take notes

Imagine three sides of paper, written fast, both margins used. A year later the person who wrote it reads it back and gets almost nothing: planet names spelled wrong, two dates with no note of what they belong to, a long copied sentence nobody can explain any more. What is missing is the one sentence that made them go cold at the time.

This happens for a simple reason. Nobody writes as fast as anybody talks. So the moment you try to copy what is said, you are in a race you cannot win, and the whole hour goes on running it. Worse, copying and thinking cannot both happen at full strength. While your hand is busy, you are not weighing anything, so the question you should have asked slides past.

Copying word for word is not note-taking at all. It is a way of being present at your own reading without attending it, which is why the busiest page is so often the emptiest.

So the essay says your page in the room has one job: helping you think. Storing a record can wait an hour. Four things go on the page. Claims, meaning sentences you could disagree with, written short, with the speaker's initials beside them. Reasons, the "because" behind a claim, because a reason can be checked and a claim can only be believed. Dates and numbers, exactly. And your own reactions down one side: where you felt relief, where you stopped listening, where he said it twice.

Three things stay off the page while you are still sitting there: your own conclusions, anything about a relative you would not say to their face, and the whole text of a frightening sentence.

Then, at the moment something lands, put the pen down and ask about it.