With an open mind and certain strategies in place, you can drastically change your learning experience to have more productive and successful study sessions. Here are a range of strategies you can adapt to save time, boost efficiency, and master task management.
1. Add Tasks Within Your Notes
Taking cohesive notes and staying on top of your key tasks are two essential skills for all students—but have you ever considered combining the two? Trying to churn out all the tasks you have to do before you begin note-taking is often unproductive and can be overwhelming.
Adding tasks to your revision notes as you study gives them further scope and can be a huge time saver. It can help you assess the relevance of what you’re working on in comparison with other tasks, preventing you from getting distracted by small details.
Evernote offers a creative method to achieve this with its integrated tasks feature. To add a task to a document, click the checkbox icon on the left side of the ribbon, or use the keyboard shortcut Alt + T.
Similar methods can be achieved in other software, many of which include checkboxes in their editing palette.
Adding tasks to your notes gives them an extra layer of usefulness. Not only does it broaden your perspective on key priorities—but it also saves you plenty of time by combining the process of task management with note-taking.
2. Add a Mini Contents Section at the Beginning of Note Pages
This method will level up your organization skills and can help if you’re dealing with an overflow of class notes. Making a dedicated “Contents” section at the top of your notes pages gives you an instant understanding of what’s inside, so you don’t have to muddle through all your notes searching for a topic.
This method is easy to incorporate: when finishing writing a notes page on a given lecture, add a header to the top of your document titled Contents, Inside Information, or any other name you find relevant, and then list down the key elements covered in that lecture or class.
Sometimes, having a title like “Lecture 4” isn’t enough to give you an understanding of what’s inside. It’s also difficult to stare at a notes page and immediately know what it’s about.
With a contents section, you’ll gain immediate knowledge of everything covered in that document. This is beneficial in the long run, too—when it comes to revising subjects, you needn’t worry about where to find certain concepts, your contents section will inform you straight away.
3. Mark Down Insights on Your Learning Process as You Write
Having a growth mindset is a crucial part of being a student, and this can be applied to your approache to learning. Marking down insightful discoveries regarding your learning process will transform your learning experience and help you grow fast as a student.
This may be an effective note-taking approach you’ve discovered, an insight into your learning experience, or a unique way of doing things that works for you. It can even be a general personal development tip, such as when you find it best to take a break.
By opening yourself to these insights, you’ll develop a better understanding of yourself and your learning habits, so you can excel in study sessions.
There are various strategies you can use in your note-taking software to emphasize these remarks, helping you to distinguish them from the raw facts in your notes document. Here are some examples:
Pick an Emoji Symbol to Mark Insights
Using an emoji symbol is a unique visual way to represent these insights. Especially if you’re a fast typer, taking notes digitally comes with the expense of having extortionately long note pages. By picking an emoji symbol to mark your insights into growth, you can easily identify them among heaps of written notes.
Use Notion’s Callout Block
The Callout block in Notion is a nice extension of the method above. It helps text stand out, not just with an emoji—it also gives text a neat surrounding border. You can create a Callout block by pressing / to access the commands list and typing “callout”.
4. Use Special Formatting Features to Signify Different Styles of Note-taking
As touched on above, there is more to note-taking than jotting down hard facts. If you want to revolutionize your note-taking and learning methods, there are several practices you can apply, and using special formatting features in note-taking software will help you easily identify these from your standard notes. Here are some effective principles you can apply to your note-taking approach:
Highlight Areas That Require Further Understanding
Working on areas you’re less sure of is the key to earning better exam grades. Instantly knowing which areas require further reviewing as you take notes during class puts you one step ahead when it comes to revision for exams. It also prevents you from revising content you already know.
Selecting a unique highlight color for information that needs reviewing is a great way to make it stand out. This has far more visual appeal than using an asterisk. Evernote provides an array of highlighted colors in the editing ribbon—you can use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + H on selected text to highlight it immediately.
Ask Yourself Questions
Writing down questions about the information you learn is a powerful way to supercharge your learning speed and make your revision sessions more efficient. It provides you with an additional perspective on your work and gives your notes pages a proactive quality rather than a bland one.
You could denote questions using a specific text color, distinguishing them from factual information in your document. Notion and various other applications offer an alternative solution with comments. To add a comment in Notion, select the relevant text and press Ctrl + Shift + M.
5. Make a Short-Term Plan And Stick With It
Assessing your key priorities in the present moment is vital as a student. Especially as exams approach, time is a precious resource, and so having successful study sessions is vital for exam success.
Making a short-term plan at the beginning of every study session detailing what you wish to achieve helps keep you aligned with your priorities. Several study planning apps feature designs that can help with this.
Having a plan that’s easily accessible is crucial for referring back to your intentions, so you can stay on track while studying. You may consider using a sticky note application to provide a simple interface for your plans that’s easy to access.
Utilize These Methods to Revolutionize Your Learning Approaches
Changing the methods behind your studying approach is the key to growing as a student. Utilizing these strategies will help you learn more efficiently, improve your understanding, and develop your personal growth skills overall.
