but not in terms of pros and cons, but in terms of relevant or irrelevant.

Helmut D. Sachs puts it like this: “By learning, retaining, and building on the retained basics, we are creating a rich web of associated information. The more we know, the more information (hooks) we have to connect new information to, the easier we can form long-term memories. […] Learning becomes fun. We have entered a virtuous circle of learnin

Only if the work itself becomes rewarding can the dynamic of motivation and reward become self-sustainable and propel the whole process forward (DePasque and Tricomi, 2015).

What all these category-confusing approaches have in common is that the benefit of note-taking decreases with the number of notes you keep. More notes will make it more difficult to retrieve the right ones and bring related ones together in a playful way.

The ability to use one’s own understanding is a challenge, not a given. Luhmann

Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words.

Learning requires effort, because we have to think to understand and we need to actively retrieve old knowledge to convince our brains to connect it with new ideas as cues. To understand how groundbreaking this idea is, it helps to remember how

Unfortunately, the most common way people organise their writing is by making plans. Although planning is almost universally recommended by study guides, it’s the equivalent of putting oneself on rails.

By explicitly writing down how something connects or leads to something else, we force ourselves to clarify and distinguish ideas from each other.