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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Note Taking Tips?

I'm in my first year of university and trying desperately to come up with the best way to take notes on my mac...

I've been looking into notae and yojimbo (I like the tagging features alot, but dislike that I can't put in pictures and such) but have heard good things about journler and devonthink.

The problem with Notae (which I used today) is everything is in SQL databases which is going to make it difficult. Plus most of these apps REQUIRE you to make a new database file rather than a bunch of text files which it will database and collect, etc. I've also heard wiki's are a great way to take notes but have no clue how to do so on my mac.

So please, if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them. I'm sure there are many like me who also would love to know any suggestions for great apps for us Univeristy kids.

gte910h's picture

I encourage paper, a composition book per class

I'm a big fan of paper in college, especially composition books. Do Everything in the composition books, from the assignments, to note taking to studying for tests (Make a comprehensive list of everything that you'd need to know for the test, make sure you have a way of determining if you know that thing, figure out everything you don't know for the test using the book/notes/professor, then take the test). When you fill a composition book, just start in another one. When you need to turn in an assignment, copy it out of the composition book.

This is coming from a wiki fanatic. It really really is. While I agree with Merlin that the projects of life work great in lots of text files/wiki's, big things, things such as school classes or really big projects or diary's go in bound, written dead trees. If your handwriting is a little messy, go through an online course on Italics (the handwriting style, not the tilted font) really quick. It won't make it pretty, but it will open up and get you going faster on the couple things you don't get.

Also practice a modicum of drawing. This helps put bring multimedia to your notes. You don't have to be good in the slightest, just enough that your freehand drawing will look good enough to get the concept the instructor was talking about: http://snipurl.com/drawsquad As it's written for 10 year olds or so, you get all the basic techniques required to make decent line drawings, in a way that you will be able to follow, and quickly.

With all this paperphilia, I'm still not saying you shouldn't use wiki's. You should. But you should use them with collaboration with other students. Something like pbwiki.com is really quick to setup, and something you can send to classmates to get them to help you get things together (the wiki is hosted, so you don't have to worry about maintaining a server, and its so easy my housing association uses one). You can share info, and type in your notes (while it may seem like a redundant step, by typing in text notes, you are doing near term mental rehersal of the info you just learned. This is shown to increase recall at a later date by a lot).

 
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