There are lots of good ways to take notes when you’re trying to learn something. Often, a way I find useful is to take them right in the book I’m reading.

I have conversations with my books. I put comments, highlights, mind maps, and whatever in my books. For example, I was working on some material for online learning and was working with the book Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt:

While reviewing the material as I was working out what I want to write, I came across some pages that I had worked on and added to. One of the major chapters here is ‘Learn Deliberately’ which I take very much to heart. Here is what the book looks like at this point:

I was looking for general techniques and recommendations for deliberate learning. Andy certainly approaches this very much in common with the way I do.

I also wanted some material on cognitive biases which was in the chapter labeled ‘Debug Your Mind’. Here’s what the page looked like after I’d taken some notes:

My point here is not necessarily that you should be marking up your books like this. Sometimes you can’t because you don’t own the book, but don’t be afraid to. All that was necessary to work with this book was the book and a couple of colored markers.

I approached these chapters like this:

1. I scanned the chapter quickly noting important information, summaries, diagrams, and so forth. I used a marker to leave a highlight at places I wanted to review in more detail.
2. I went back and read through the chapter more completely, highlighting what I considered to be important points.
3. I went to the front page of the chapter with its facing empty page and drew up a mind map of the chapter as I understood it.
4. As part of the mind map, I added some small drawings to call out key points
5. Using the mind map, I revisited sections of the chapter to make sure I got it right.

A lot of work? Yes ….. and No. It didn’t take too long to go through these chapters, I cam away from the study knowing the material pretty well, and I got the input I wanted for the material I’m working on. All in all, a good effort.

Categories: Learning, Practical Applications
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If you want to write something, you have to be willing to learn something. I’m not talking about grammar or style, though learning these things are important. No, I’m talking about the subject matter you’re writing about.

In order to write well, you have to understand thoroughly. Understand well enough to express yourself casually without misunderstanding at any level. This is easier when you’re speaking because you can look for audience reaction and respond to it, but when you’re writing, what you’ve written has to stand alone, without your help. You can’t look over the shoulder of the person who is reading your piece, what you wrote is on its own.

What sort of subject matter expertise do you need? Certainly, more than the person who is reading what you’re writing. It’s fair to say that you can’t learn too much here, but practical considerations limit how much you CAN learn. Time is limited. Subject material may be limited. Subject matter may be confusing, conflicting, difficult to find, or just downright wrong. How can you tell? Let’s take a moment to consider some practical recommendations for getting what you need.

FIRST and most important for any learning experience is your own motivation. It doesn’t matter what sort of learning environment you’re in. If you’re in high school, college, a training program, or just trying to learn something that interests you, you have to realize that if you fail to learn, you are the one responsible. Teachers, mentors, instructional designers, and others don’t make you learn. They can HELP but they can’t learn for you. You need to be motivated to learn. Ask yourself:

• What’s your goal? What do you want to accomplish?

SECOND how do you learn most effectively? We all have ways we prefer to learn. Some of us are visual, you like to see charts, pictures, diagrams, or some other visual representation. Some of us are tactile, we like to touch and do. We learn best when we can actually get our hands on things. Some of us prefer to use textual modes, getting information faster from books or other written material. There are also those who learn best by using auditory modes for what we need to learn. How do you learn best? Further, no one is purely any one of those styles. The visual mode may dominate, but the tactical mode is a strong second so mixed mode learning will help you get information together faster and more effectively.

Remember the first point, you are responsible for your own learning. If you really WANT to learn, then you need to take responsibility for adapting what’s available to make best use of your modes of learning. Let’s say you’re taking an online course, you have a lot of material to read, but you’re best working in a tactile mode. If you’re really interested in learning, then find ways to actually apply what you’re reading. Get hands on in one way or another, even if it’s nothing more than taking notes.

THIRD you know the goal. You know how you work best. Do you have a plan? How are you going to get from where you are to where you want to be? What do you need to learn? How much time do you have? What resources are available to learn from? A plan doesn’t have to be written down with GANTT charts or PERT charts, but you need to think through what you need to do. It’s the PLANNING far more than the plan that makes you successful. However, to plan, you need to know where you are.

FOURTH, knowing where you are is essential to good learning. The most effective way for me personally has always been the Memory Dump. I’ll start to build a mind map, starting initially with questions about where the information is and what I already know and eventually adding in more and more details. My starting point for Learning was something like this:

I don’t usually build a dump like this with software, but instead put it in my journal, more like this:

It’s messy, informal, and probably not readable by anyone but myself. However, it’s not for anyone else. it’s to help me figure out what I know and help me develop questions that I can use in my reading to help me learn.

Ultimately, if you plan to learn anything, you’ve got to put the time and effort into it and accept responsibility for your own success. As a teacher, mentor, instructor, and trainer, I’ve often heard the old “I didn’t have the time” excuse from people who come to the end of an online course. In most cases though, time wasn’t the problem. There’s an old saying that ‘We make the time to do what we want to do.’ Lack of time is never the issue, it’s lack of motivation.

All of these things are best done as we begin to learn, when motivation is high.

UPDATE: Updated the figure of my notebook to make it more readable

Categories: Learning, The Basics
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Learning is a big topic and one that a lot of disagreement still exists over. Unfortunately, but the time there is general agreement, we’ll already be dead, so to get practical about it, we need to use what we know now as effectively as we can.

I wrote a piece called ‘Learning to Learn‘ that I’ve made available for download. I plan to extend this to talk about Online Learning, but this is a good place to start.

Categories: Learning, Practical Applications, Skills
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