How to Take Smart Notes

What Hacker News says

1. james_rossAug 2026
   The key sentence in this post is when the author says that to understand something, you must actively engage with it. Part of me thinks that saying books don’t work is a bit like saying, say, barbells don’t work. Like barbells, books are passive objects, so expecting them to “work” seems unreasonable. But another part of me agrees that barbells can be designed to be more or less compatible with how human beings grasp and lift them to build strength, and so can books. Having re-read recently “How to Take Smart Notes”, which is all about using the Zettelkasten method to make reading a very diligent and thorough process that ends with every insight from a reading source integrated into your own body of explicit thought outside your brain, another part of me thinks books are fine, and it’s us not putting in the effort to integrate what we read int our existing thoughts that’s the issue. I did not see that book, or books like it such as Novak’s “Learning How To Learn” mentioned, but things like concept maps, activbely created and interactively shared, provide another modality I’ve found very useful for many years. Overall I think it’s not a reasonable expectation for us to remember everything we read in our minds; we need an integrated exocortex, also in writing, that captures what we remember explicitly.
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2. compressedgasApr 2026
   Please credit Sönke Ahrens and his 2017 book _How to Take Smart Notes_ for this system.
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3. komali2Jan 2026
   I strongly recommend "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sonle Ahrens, it gets into how important writing is as a part of the process of thinking and learning.
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4. iLemmingAug 2025
   Org-mode gets immensely underrated, even though it's easily deserves the title of the best possible medium for note-taking. The degree it allows so much flexibility is astonishing, especially with Org-roam and similar alternatives - I no longer even need think how to organize my notes - I write something down, knowing that it never gets lost.

   I've never found organizing notes purely by calendar dates to be ideal - I rarely think "didn't we discuss load testing with Bob sometime last October?" Instead, when I tag Bob and add a 'Load Testing' tag to my note, which automatically gets filed in Org-mode's date-tree outline, I can always find it - whether through Bob, 'Load Testing', or the date itself..

   And because just like in the article - the notes are in plain text, it opens possibilities for easy syncing, version control & backup, and any other automations. Add to that a tons of other features like having executable source blocks where you can pipe data through, or pdf annotations, LaTeX embeddings, incredible LLM integration, spreadsheet-like calculations, publishing machinery, etc.. There's simply no better alternative - for me, if it ain't the pen&paper - it has to be in Org-mode. And I too, tried tons of different approaches before finding Org-mode.

   If getting into Emacs and Org-mode feels too much for you right now, still, do yourself a favor, read this book - "How to take smart notes", ISBN-10: 1542866502.

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5. jz10Jul 2025
   We can't really talk about this topic without mentioning the book "How to Take Smart Notes" by Soenke Ahrens

   One key takeaway is if you want to learn/remember something better, always rewrite things in your own words as both the act of writing AND paraphrasing makes it more sticky

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6. cratermoonMay 2025
   The writing is the work, though. The words on paper (or wherever) are the end product, but they are not the point. See chapter 5 of Ahrens, Sönke. 2017. How to take smart notes: one simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking - for students, academics and nonfiction book writers., for advice on how writing the ideas in your own words is the primary task and improves not only writing, but all intellectual skills, including reading and thinking. C. Wright Mills in his 1952 essay, "“On Intellectual Craftsmanship" says much the same thing. Stating the ideas in your own words is thinking.
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