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notion versus obsidian versus rome research versus remnant versus evidence supernodes versus literally every other note-taking application we have been making notes since we could draw on cave
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walls so why do people myself in the past make it so complicated and more interesting to me how can we learn from our notes where do i go but really before you write i just encourage people just because i feel like it and i don't
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post a blog post because it's perfect i post a blog post because it's tomorrow the main point of taking notes is to remember things either in the short term or the long term taking a note doesn't mean we're going to remember it and in the same sense not taking a note doesn't
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mean we're going to forget it a note is just helping you think which brings me to extended cognition one thing that's uncontroversial i think is that the tools we use the technology we use it started to offload a lot of the
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functions of the mind from our brain to our environment and it seems rapidly clear that if something inside the head was play in that role then very often we would regard that as part of cognition
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the hypothesis is that cognition includes everything in our brain and the environmental processes and states so our notes overlooking the nuances and discussion points in extended cognition to avoid repeating myself i think we
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only need to pay attention to the parity principle if we recognize a task recalling something from memory that functions as a process which if done in the brain we would class as cognition then a task outside of the brain that
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does the same thing should also be cognition recalling something from notes so note taking is part of cognition but you don't need notes to remember things you don't need notes to learn and you
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don't need notes to do xyz which is why notes like the environment assist cognition if you're an expert on a topic and you read something simple about the topic you don't need assistance so you
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don't need notes in a similar sense if you don't want to think about something then you don't need assistance thinking about it so you don't need notes most people when consuming content online if you're a novice on a topic and read
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something complex you probably want more assistance and therefore you will want more notes and this relates directly to cognitive load theory so let's let's begin by talking about human cognitive
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architecture sweller's cognitive load theory is built on badly and hitch's research on working memory models which has loads of iterations the idea is that we can only work with a limited amount
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of information at any one time putting a number on it isn't really useful because one chunk for a novice learner is going to be different from one chunk to an expert learner so one doesn't equal one a good example study of this is one from
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chess they set up a chess board with positions and they got masters experts and other regular players to try and remember the positions on the board the played positions in chess were remembered way better by the masters
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than the regular players but when the pieces were put in random positions the masters performed almost identically to the regular players and this is because the experts couldn't identify the chunks of information that they had made in
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their memory so the piece became a chunk if we think of a chess piece as a piece of information and all of those pieces of information as a concept then replace peace with information
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random information is harder to remember sounds pretty obvious and the theory of cognitive load calls information elements and the interaction of the elements built up creates what's called mental load the more information the
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more elements the higher the mental load the more likely you are to get distracted confused frustrated which is where the environment your notes can help for facts like where the piece was on the board numbers references or
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sources or anything like that in the physical sciences verbatim note-taking is pretty good just writing it down as you consume it does the job alternatively you could just google it for learning and understanding a concept
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however that requires deeper processing the levels of processing effect essentially says that deeper processing is better for learning and memory but there is no way to measure depth elaboration or distinctiveness of
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processing so for the purpose of simplicity i'm going to say deep processing requires more conscious thinking if you think less about something you are less likely to learn it note-taking on a laptop may have less
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thinking therefore leading to less learning in the moment of course you could also think less when using paper and pen but that is less likely the encoding process that happens during
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the thinking taking the information and storing it helps with the retention and the learning but it takes time and effort which you don't always have and that is where external storage notes can
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help which is where retrieval practice gets involved simplifying retrieval practice is essentially just remembering things and searching for them in your memory as notes are extended cognition holding
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elements outside of our mind reducing mental load we need to be able to search and retrieve those things easily just like our biological memory the surge of something in our mind is called a memory
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trace this can be made easier with distinctive memories which is known as the distinctiveness effect really original essentially you pay more attention and so you create more cues
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for memory in cognitive load theory this could be the variability effect making the load more beneficial i.e germain load or it could be accretion which is adding new information on pre-existing
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memory stores schema for notes these cues are called metadata date created modified a tag and loads of other different things but if you can remember the queue in your biological memory you don't need to write it down because you
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can already find it so encoding things into our memory using conscious thought deeper processing is storing things which is learning and doing this seems to be easier with paper and pen to start
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with but there is no reason we can't do it with a keyboard it just requires added consideration pen and paper is often slower so demands more thinking deeper processing thinking more about something
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without the speed constraint is a skill modern learners need to learn to develop that requires meta cognitive awareness and intrapersonal skills which aren't taught in educational systems once those
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skills are developed search and editing is far easier on tech than it is on paper which we know as part of extended cognition and retrieval in biological memory speed and clarity of search are
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vital and the organization of notes only becomes difficult if the topic is complex lots of elements that seem random at that point in time thinking back to the chest study the
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random positions were complex for the masters and the regular chess players but the played positions weren't complex to the masters because they had cues and experience chunks of information around
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those positions the elements in the position weren't random to the masters so we can say the regular players or novice learners were hypocognitive of the position they didn't have a name or a chunk for the
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position and if that is a new word to you then you've just experienced hypocognition kinda getting matter this term comes from the meta ignorance research literature which often refers to the dunning-kruger
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when they're for lack of better term incompetent seem to have very little recognition of how incompetent or how poorly they're doing uh that gap has come to be known as the dunning-kruger
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effect but in this case the regular chess players didn't know what they didn't know they were meta ignorant so they didn't know how to organize the information giving them a cue a prompt a
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label can increase their awareness that could lead to conscious thought or deeper thinking and learning which makes organization easier this all points to being an active consumer if we want to
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learn from our notes asking questions challenging assumptions and engaging in more conscious thought to gain awareness around topics to try and challenge meta ignorance so we take notes to reduce
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mental load we use notes to help our thinking and then we evolve notes as we are learning the transient information effect from cognitive load theory suggests that we shouldn't really be using external memory on a long-term basis because it can decrease our
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biological memory and understanding around the topic and actually make it harder to learn so for your own deeper understanding you need to be encoding your notes into your biological memory from your external stores but
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note-taking is simple it's just like drawing on a cave wall you just need to remember where the cave in the drawing is the rest of it is learning a topic for another video the recent release of the building a second brain book by
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thiago forte actually inspired this video and if you're interested to learn more and challenge your meta ignorance around personal knowledge management then i would suggest giving it a read a link in the description below
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