Many of us have had such moments when we were students. During class during the day, the teacher was eloquent on the podium, and everyone was writing furiously below. There were all kinds of notes. Everyone felt that they had gained a lot, and they recorded all the most important knowledge points. But when I got home at night, I opened my notes and saw, Oh no, why are there so many important points? What was the reason why I drew so many key points? Or perhaps, I usually record a lot of quotes from famous people and gather arguments, but when it comes time to write an essay, I just don’t know where to start. Is this a note-taking experience that many people are familiar with? At least this is my own deeper note-taking experience.

I often suffer from having too many notes, and I still cannot use them freely after recording them. Sometimes, when I want to use the notes on a specific topic or project, I can’t find them at all. In the vast white mist of memory, I can vaguely see the vague shadow remaining in the distance, proving that this note existed for a short time.

So what is the point of taking notes?

?

The book "Card Note Writing Method: How to Realize Reading to Writing" can be said to answer this question from an all-round perspective.

"Card-style Reading Note Writing Method" is a simple and unique note-taking method summarized by the author Schenk Ahrens from the famous German sociologist Luhmann. Luhmann transformed himself from a winemaker's son in the 1960s to a professor with 58 books and hundreds of articles by putting his notebook box to good use. But people who have such remarkable results emphasize that they never force themselves to do things they don’t like. Compared with other people's pain in writing, Luhmann even said: "I only do easy things. I only write when I immediately know how to write. If I waver for a moment, I will write it. Put one thing aside and move on to something else.” It sounds like writing is a simple and natural thing for him.

What exactly is Luhmann’s Note Card Box? Is there something magical about the way he takes notes?

The author Schenk Ahrens first classified Luhmann’s note card boxes, which are the note results, into two categories: 1. Literature category: collecting literature and briefly describing the content of the literature; 2. Recording category: Collecting and generating ideas about what you read. Write it as briefly as possible in your own language, and add links to your notes to form themes or categories. At the end, an index and number are included to make it easier to see the relationship between the thoughts and other notes. This is Luhmann's notecard method. He made up for the gaps in thinking through a simple and reliable external framework. It sounds simple, so next, how do we make it work well?

Through Luhmann's thinking about the use of card boxes, the author Schenk Ahrens analyzes the bottom-up characteristics of the card box note-taking system, because the advantage of the card box is that it does not have to face There are too many or too few topics, but once too many notes create confusion, it will be difficult to achieve their maximum effect. It only works to its advantage if the goal is to reach the sweet spot of crowding effect, which depends not only on the number of notes but also on their quality and handling.

Therefore, the correct way to open notes is not only to classify, summarize and record, but also to use the characteristics of its own framework to maximize its role. In this regard, the author proposed on the basis of Luhmann's card box method:

·? What are flash notes? Flash Notes can be understood as an inspiration collection station. It collects our thoughts, insights or thoughts that come to us at any time in our daily life. These types of ideas are easily forgotten due to lack of connection, so we need to write them down first.

·? In addition to fleeting inspiration, there are also permanent notes that need to exist all the time. The reason why we often struggle to make full use of arguments and arguments is that we do not use our own language to write down the content that we want to record in short words. Simply recording without thinking about it is easy to forget and make mistakes, so record such ideas together with related books. It turned into exclusive documents and materials, and gradually gathered into its own library.

·? Finally, there are project notes: through recording and collecting temporary inspiration, and then archiving citations and references, they are finally divided into exclusive fields, where you can combine your own Think, re-conceive, diverge, compare related notes to create new sparks, and then record them in your own language to complete the archiving and upgrade of your own knowledge base.

In this way we get an exclusive note card box with a virtuous cycle. There is a wealth of information and related bibliographies, and the recorded information is also records that are inherently interesting or useful to us. At the same time, through your own "translated" notes, you can make your notes come out as if you are talking, so that each piece of collected information can be organized in your own language to form a series of relationships with each other, and then gradually expand and gradually become your own. Language library. New Oriental's famous and excellent teachers give lectures, and they all have witty words. Even boring courses can leave people wanting more. And some powerful speakers can easily say something convincing even if they improvise.

These relevant arguments and abilities that you can pick up at your fingertips are a complete content output connected by memory points that establish your own understanding and connections. Such a simple external structure can ensure that we constantly compare, verify and self-examine the content we record. Slowly and invisibly, this process can also expand our knowledge in reverse. Whether it’s writing or research, you no longer have to worry about a lack of materials and arguments.

Similarly, writing, as a way of presenting results, often requires us to search our own knowledge reserves, input a lot of reading, and conduct repeated thinking and deliberation before finally drawing a conclusion. The card note box allows us to form a good output framework, optimize the perspective of thinking about things, focus on the issues we should be most concerned about, clarify goals and focus on the important parts. With such an endless source of inspiration and arguments at your fingertips, writing naturally becomes a perfect mechanism for positive feedback.

Luhmann's note card box proposed that notes are not just an entry or a category, they can serve a greater purpose. As long as we establish the correct way of use, one project note may also be used for reference in other projects; an inspiration note may be combined with literature notes to burst out more different sparks; multiple categories of literature notes may be put together, and it may A new way of thinking and perspective on problems will be born. If you just take notes without using them, you will only increase your workload for no reason. So if we want to truly understand, it is not enough to take notes. We also need to convert the notes into our own language. By understanding and sorting out the notes and putting them into the library of our brains in categories, they can truly find a home in our knowledge base.

Notes are not just a recording tool, they are our thinking process, the accumulation of reading, feedback on our understanding, and evidence for our ideas. The correct use of our notes is not only a tool to assist our daily life and promote the smooth progress of work, but can even form a positive lifestyle.

I think that what drives a great scholar like Luhmann to write 58 books and hundreds of articles in his busy daily life is not just the magical card box. The help and the way of thinking advocated behind him allowed him to focus on deeply cultivating his field. Similarly, the book "Card Note Writing Method" not only brings us rethinking in the way of note-taking, but also allows us to finally bring together what we know and learn, opening up a larger world to explore.