Let’s take a minute to revisit a classic study method developed in the 1940s, and bring it up to speed with modern technology to really enhance its versatility. Using this method you’ll be able to seamlessly connect your thinking to the important concepts, create digital flashcards of key terms for yourself, and pull information from past and future notes together.
The Cornell Method
Some of you have probably heard of the ‘Cornell Method’ of note taking before. In the Cornell method, you divide your notes into three sections – notes on the right, a column of ‘cues’ or key terms on the left, and a summary at the bottom. It looks like this:
Part of the reason this method is so widely used is that it encourages you to distill the information twice – once into a series of key terms, and again into a summary at the end. A little mental strain pays dividends for retention, forcing us to actually think about the content we’re studying and prioritize what’s most important. With modern technology however, we can add an additional layer of value to the Cornell method – backlinks. We’ll be using Notion in this example, but I’m sure you could get a similar effect in Obsidian, though formatting the page into the sections of the Cornell system might be a bit trickier. There’s a link to the template at the end of the article.
Zettelkasten – Literature Notes and Concept Notes
In a few previous articles (here, here and here) I’ve discussed my Second Brain system and my methodology – a distinction between ‘Literature Notes’, ‘Concept Notes’, and everything else, inspired by a system known as ‘Zettelkasten’ and Sonke Ahrens’ ‘How to take Smart Notes’. This method blends very well together with that methodology. I’ll quickly summarize what I mean when I say literature note or concept note. A ‘Literature Note’ is where I store my notes from an external source – if I’m taking notes on a book, the literature note is for the book. If it’s a course, the literature note is for the course. Concept notes, on the other hand, handle the knowledge derived from the content – if your course is on Computer Science, ‘Binary’, ‘Algorithm’, or ‘Boolean Expression’ would be concept notes.
As you might have sensed, this meshes well with the Cornell Method, which already encourages the calling out of ‘cues’ or ‘key terms’ in the left-hand column. Now, though, we can use Notion and its system of ‘Backlinks’ to better integrate this knowledge into past, present and future notes, and call on it as we need it. Here’s an example of what my notes look like on a beginner Comp-Sci course I’m taking looks like:
As you can see, the left-hand column is populated with hyperlinks. The reason for this is because each of those concepts is its own note in Notion – you can click it, and go to a new note. In Notion, it’s quite quick to create these new pages – you type ‘@’ and type the term, and you get the option to create a new note or select an existing one – you can even create it with a template. Check out my tutorial here if you’re interested in learning how to make this method seamless, I’ve written an ‘Autohotkey’ script that can do it with the push of a button. This note is where you have the option to collect your knowledge on that concept, but if that sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry, it’s not strictly necessary – even if the note is blank, there’s a very interesting use for these links. What is that? Backlinks! Let’s navigate to ‘Algorithm’.
Within my Algorithm page, you’ll notice I haven’t actually added any information (besides relating it to a few areas and resources, which I discuss in another article), but there are 5 items in ‘Linked to this page’:
- my literature note on a book called ‘Algorithms to Live By’
- my literature note for the computer science note above
- an article idea
- my ‘Shit Compression Engine’ note which is essentially a checklist for when I need to get my shit together
- And finally a concept note for ‘Hill Climbing’, which is an algorithm
Essentially, any other note where I’ve typed ‘@Algorithm’ has linked to this page, and provided a backlink. Better still, if I click on the link to the CS50x note, it will even bring me to the instance where I linked to ‘Algorithm’ in that note. Now, often when studying for an exam or refining my knowledge on a concept I’m interested in, I’ll proceed to fill out the concept note (which itself may link to other concept notes, perhaps types of algorithms) which will, themselves, often have links to other notes. Building these networked notes is a great way to review, and they can be used like ‘cue cards’ for spaced repetition very easily. A quick google search will even bring up tutorials on how to make a proper spaced-repetition system in Notion, which meshes perfectly with this method of note-taking. The backlinks have a way of ‘resurfacing’ old knowledge that you may have otherwise forgotten about – for example, I’m probably going to reread my notes on ‘Algorithms to live by’ after I get a little more expertise on the topic of algorithms generally.
The ‘Cornell Notes System’ template
The ‘Cornell Notes System’ template comes pre-packaged by Notion as premade template, you can find it here.
Works Referenced:
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. 1st edition. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. Amazon Link
