How to Take Notes: 5 Rules for Creating Beautiful Notes

The other day, I participated in a company training session.

Here is my tweet from that time☟

Thanks to my daily output on note, I was able to quickly take notes on the lecturer's content.

Output means
expressing information you have input
outside of your brain to the outside world.

Text, sound, pictures, etc...
There are various ways to output.

And, how vividly you can express the input information
in a short period of time
is also considered important.

This time,
I will talk about one method of output.

Regarding how to take notes,
based on the experience I have cultivated on my note,
”5 Rules for Creating Beautiful Notes” I will share them with you.

I would be happy if you could use them as a reference.

Well then, let's get started.

✔ Habit Supporter shogo style
5 Rules for Creating Beautiful Notes

Now, I will immediately
explain the
”5 Rules for Creating Beautiful Notes” that I recommend.

1. Align the start of your writing
2. Keep it on one sheet of paper
3. Create margins
4. Use shapes
5. Use numbers

I take notes based on the five rules above.

I will explain them one by one.

When taking notes, appearance is important.

This is because if they are disorganized,
you won't feel inspired
to look back at them again.

The purpose of taking notes is to 'review' them.

To increase your motivation to review,
always align the start of your writing.

As much as possible, try to summarize
the information you have input
onto a single sheet of paper.

To put it another way,
keep it to 'one theme' per 'one sheet of paper'.

For example,
when taking notes about dieting.

Diet methods, diet foods,
diet equipment, etc...
Do not summarize everything on one sheet of paper.

One sheet for diet methods.
One sheet for diet foods.
One sheet for diet equipment.

As shown above,
please write your notes
with one theme per sheet.

*If the food or equipment is a means of a diet method, it is okay to group them together.

If you find yourself thinking, 'There will be blank space depending on the theme 😥',
that is perfectly fine.

Please embrace the blank space.

I will explain more about blank space next.

When taking notes,
be bold and leave plenty of blank space.

There is no need to cram your writing
by narrowing the spacing between sentences.

There are two reasons to leave margins.

1. To add extra information
2. For better aesthetics

Especially when adding information for point 1,
if there is no margin,
you will have to write it elsewhere,
which will ultimately make it look worse.

Do not be afraid of empty space,
and make sure to leave enough room when taking notes.

Squares, circles, arrows, etc...
Please actively use shapes.

Shapes are the most useful tools
for intuitive understanding.

If you enclose items in circles or squares,
you can recognize them as important points.

If you express things with arrows,
you will be able to understand "from A to B" clearly.

Underlining is also effective.

To improve the appearance,
make full use of shapes to make note-taking
easy and fun.

Numbers are essential
when taking notes.

Prioritizing things, simplifying content,
and ease of note-taking—
utilizing numbers is full of benefits.

When listening to a lecturer, many lecturers
divide their talk into three or five points.

This is because the numbers three and five
are the numbers that
are easiest for people to remember
when listening to a talk.

That is why, if a speaker says
"I will talk about this in three parts"
during a lecture,
you should actively classify your notesinto those three numbers.

✔ Reference Example

I will
introduce a reference example of note-taking.

The note above was
created by following the "5 Rules."

As you can see by checking the reference example,
it is clean, clear, and easy to understand the theme.

The content is neither lacking nor
excessive in terms of volume.

Because I added a little ingenuity to how I take notes
and wrote them beautifully,
the theme has become easier to understand.

As a result, it leads to ease of output
and allows for smooth article creation.

The article created from the
above notes is here ☟

I hope you will
find it helpful.

* * * * *

How was it?

I have introduced
the "5 Rules" for note-taking by
habit supporter shogo.

If you feel that this was helpful,
I would be very happy.
And above all,

if it makes you think,
"I want to try taking notes!"
then my goal is achieved.

Many people who worry that they "don't want to take notes"
tend to give up
because they consider their own "lack of ability to organize" or
"neatness of handwriting."

To help resolve such worries even a little,
I strongly hope that you will use the five rules introduced here
as a reference and try taking notes.

There is no one who can do it perfectly
from the very beginning.

Please work on it
little by little, step by step.

If you do that, your mindset will naturally change to
"This is fun!" "This is interesting!"
or "I want to do this again."

Let's enjoy a wonderful
"note-taking life."

Well then, until next time.
Goodbye.