How to Take Notes Productively (Notion Template Included)

but this noticing method completely fails the resurface test in the after phase i would need to purposely dig through this one long document to find the note that i need when i need it you know if someone told me 10 years ago that i would one day make a video on the boring depressingly tedious soul-sucking topic of note-taking i'd say sounds about right let's get started hi friends welcome back to the channel in this video i'm going to first share the three components of effective note-taking systems then move on to how i currently structure my personal notes in notion before finally walking you through a specific template starting with what

makes a good note-taking system in my humble opinion the less friction you experience during the process the more effective the note-taking system and if you break it down they're really just three components to the note-taking process before during and after in the before phase it's about how easy it is to start taking the note do you need to click multiple times to open up a blank page and wait five to ten seconds for the application to load are you unable to take notes on the go when you're in a car or bus because you don't have a suitable mobile app in the doing phase it's about how quickly you're able to get your thoughts down on paper or on whatever medium that you're using do you have to change the default formatting every time before you can actually start typing do you have to manually highlight or bold important words throughout the process it sounds obvious but all this slows down the speed at which you're able to get your content down right in the after phase it's about how you can resurface relevant notes when the situation calls for it and this is actually the hardest part and it's this part that made me realize the default note taking system i was taught back in the day is pretty ineffective for example i used to exclusively take notes on word documents so let's put this to the test in the before phase it's easy to create a new document using the shortcut. new okay cool check in the doing phase it's a little awkward because in order to record the date and topic for each note i would have to manually uh copy paste and make changes i guess i can live with that but this note taken method completely fails the resurface test in the after phase as you can see i take my notes in reverse chronological order so i input my most recent notes up top and the topics are extremely diverse right i could be writing down highlights from a coffee chat that i had summaries from books and articles that i read and maybe even video ideas after watching the latest upload from ali abdul and the reason why this fails the resurface test is that i would need to purposely dig through this one long document to find the note that i need when i need it and this is assuming i would even remember i took a note about that in the first place like for example it wasn't until i scrolled all the way down for this video did i remember that i took notes about youtube seo back in june 2020 and this is something i could have used recently

two things before i jump over to my notion setup first this amazing video is still not being sponsored by notion for some reason and second as long as you have those three boxes checked before during and after the application you use doesn't really matter notion for me has the features that do a really good job of decreasing friction when i take notes essentially my note taking system is made up of a back end and a front end the back end is just five different notebooks that together cover all aspects of my personal life i call this a back end because it's sort of like the infrastructure i set this up once and don't really touch it again the front end represents a different projects that i'm working on for example if i'm looking to rent a new apartment the notes that i take and planning i do would be for that project or if i'm taking notes for a podcast book an article that'll be another project and i call this a front end because i'm interacting with these on a daily basis in my notion setup the backend the notebooks are just notion databases and the front end the projects are just notion pages let's just walk through a specific example so this is the back end of my note-taking setup if you watch thomas frank this will look familiar yes i basically stole his notebook structure and added some jeff sue magic to it in all seriousness huge thank you to thomasfrank i'll link his video down below now if i go to my platforms notebook here this is just a repository of notes i take on what type of content i should output on the different platforms you'll see for example youtube instagram clubhouse and this is just a list of notes right with some labels on the right hand side here the first one is notes i took while watching vanessa lau's video on her youtube strategy a couple properties here so the platform she was talking about youtube so i'll obviously select youtube for status i choose resurface because after completing the note i know i want to refer back to her advice later on if it's something i know i don't have to come back to i would just select archive now to quickly summarize all notes begin with the open status here and after completing it you choose to either resurface it or forget about it and then there's the url created in updated properties but nothing too fancy here for the note itself you can see i have three different sections i like to use the call feature up top to highlight the one key takeaway after taking the note and you can do this by typing forward slash callout uh the action items i need to take immediately after taking the note and the notes themselves so for this specific example as i'm watching the video i'll be taking the notes here then determining whether there are any action items before finally summarizing the one key takeaway up top as you can see my note taken workflow goes from bottom up but i know when i revisit this i'll be naturally reading top down so this setup makes sense does that make sense let's pause right here and see how this stacks up to the before during and after tests i talked about earlier on let's say i were listening in on a clubhouse room and i got an idea for my own next clubhouse event i could simply start a new note by clicking the down arrow here choosing the template that i've created beforehand give that a title clubhouse idea just invite elon musk easy and choose a platform clubhouse status open no url i can start typing the notes so the friction is pretty low for the before and during phases thanks to the template feature but what about after this still doesn't solve the issue of resurfacing relevant notes when i need them and this is where the front end comes in notion i have a notion page dedicated to content strategy and this is where i break down the different platforms i create content for i visit this overview page every other day to remind myself what i need to do next and you might notice on the right hand side here you see the exact same notes from the platforms notebook we just went over vanessa allows advice the clubhouse idea and i did this by using the link database feature if i type in for slash linked database and search for the platforms notebook that we just went over you'll see the backend database pop up here now this by itself may not be very useful but look what happens when i click into youtube page here we have the same platforms database on the right but only the notes related to all platforms and youtube are visible this means as i work on my youtube plan i can quickly and easily reference notes i've taken in the past for youtube the way to do this is still use the link database feature so for slash linked database search for platforms database and add a view here choose a list let's name this youtube last updated click create in the three dots here you want to choose filter add a filter group here uh the first one is where s platform contains all platforms or platform contains youtube obviously add another filter where the status is not archived because we only want to see open and resurface click out and then choose sort add a sort uh i like to have updated descending so i see the most recently updated note up top here and boom there you have it and if i'm already on my youtube page and i wanted to take a note i wouldn't have to navigate back to the back end i will simply click new here the youtube label is already pre-populated i can click the template that i've made beforehand the status gets updated to open and i can start typing youtube is so fun that i lost my voice by the way it's totally okay to have multiple open status notes at the same time what i like to do is to actually create a view for open notes specifically so i know which ones i still need to complete and again after completion you want to change the status to resurface or archive depending on what you want to do with it

after as usual i've created a template for you all to use right away some quick instructions i've just created one notebook here and you can duplicate as many as you need within this notebook i've also already created a template a note template with the properties and headers that i went through in this video now onto the front end portion i've created one project here as an example for my projects i like to have a call out at the very top here that reminds me what the ultimate objective of this project is and i like to have three sections on the left here uh first what the top of mind items i have again for this project the immediate action items i need to take and finally quick links to other pages that might be relevant or related to this project and after i've completed the action items i'll usually just highlight them and drag it to the archive page down there interestingly enough i do not use notion at all to take notes from my day job so if you want to know why and see how i have that note-taking system set up please comment down below and i'll make a video on that topic as well see you on the next video and in the meantime have a great one