5 great note taking methods no one talks about

**Q/E/C method**

The Q/E/C method is another study method that Cal Newport talks a lot about in his Straight-A book. Q/E/C stands for Question/Evidence/Conclusion, and the main purpose of this system is to structure all of your lecture into question, evidence and conclusion formats that you can then compile into one big study guide. Besides reducing the amount of unnecessary information transcribed into your notes, the Q/E/C system creates a clear and obvious interrelation between topic, conclusion and the stream of facts and arguments that connect the two. Furthermore, this note-taking system is two-in-one, since, besides helping you organize information while you are reading or attending your lectures, you’re also creating valuable study materials to use during revision.

**Morse Code Method**

The Morse code method is a note-taking method envisioned by Cal Newport and focus mainly on taking advantage of written materials. Whenever you find a sentence that seems to be laying out a main idea, you should draw a dot next to it in the margin; if you then come across an example or explanation that supports that big idea you should draw a dash next to it on the margin. This allows you to record information without breaking your reading momentum so you can then take notes.

The act of taking the dots you’ve written and transforming them into notes is called the processing stage and it basically requires you to paraphrase the main idea in your own words in a bullet point. The author then encourages you to take all of these sentences and review them in the format of a major question: [em fundo branco:] “What is the main question being asked in the article? What is the conclusion the authors point towards?”

**Flow Notes**

Flow notes are very similar to mind maps but they have no rules in terms of structure. Although difficult to review, they allow you to incorporate a large amount of information during your class, because they are a free pass for you to simply throw facts, arguments, topics and dates on the page with no specific order while connecting and linking these ideas as you hear them. Flow notes are great for those who hate transcribing information and prefer to process what they’re hearing into workable sentences or words; it’s an holistic method that works wonders for classes with no clear structure, or discussion with interrelated components that aren’t easily organized via outline or mind map format. In case your class is highly dense on information, making it impossible to compress all of the facts, you can still use flow notes as a hybrid system to comment and annotate original materials and textbooks to create summaries or visual aids for complex chapters or topics.

The sentence method is similar to the outline method as it relies on an expansive vision of your notes, but instead of using indenting and topic formulation, it uses one-liners, one per paragraph, to create a guide for each topic that is easily readable, workable and memorable. The other major difference is that while the outline technique uses indentation to hierarchize the importance of different segments of the topic, by avoiding indenting the sentence method considers every sentence of equal value, which means that topics with a high-level of detail or information can benefit from this system as they force you to memorize details as well as key ideas relating to the topic.

FTC: This video is sponsored by Notion.

[timmynguyen]

I love how I’m watching note taking methods and I’m on my bed doing nothing during quarantine 🤣

[jasperjia]

1. Spilt page method (two column for example)
2. Q/E/C (Question, Evidences, and conclusions) method
3. Morse code method (written materials) -dots for main points
4. Flow notes (Like process)- visual
5. Sentence method

Notion is great! This is not a ad. It organizes my life.

[BaoneTwala]

Thank you for showing this in a notebook. And not iPad or similar. Paper free is great but not everyone can afford it and a lot of students still use paper and the best we can do for now is dream of paper free while we still actually need to improve study methods. So this video makes these methods accessible for a greater majority. Plus it alleviates the idea that we need expensive products in order to be productive.

[sigh_yuri]

that morse code method is gonna save my life

[_dansilverio]

Not the point but they way you hold a pen writing freaked me out 😅


Edit: wow I didn’t think so many people would feel the same
To Mariana I hope this didn’t make you feel bad or uncomfortable I just thought it was different maybe I should’ve chosen my words better

[tzodearf]

Why does the way she holds her pen look like a yoga pose?

[jacquelynnguyen]

1. Split Page - 0:45
2. QEC - 1:33
3. Morse Code - 2:25
4. Flow Notes - 3:20
5. Sentence - 4:24

[sumaiyahalam]

Forever i did flow notes.. and never knew what to call them. I am holistic in my approach!! 😅

[euphoria]

Glad that you’ve included Ali Abdaal’s videos, he really helped me to boost the use of active recall in my studies. Found this video incredibly useful Mariana. Thank you 💕

[kazakukog]

so i relapsed and been in a very shitty mood, didn't study, procrastinated...but tonight i decided to finally open a notebook and now a new video from you? 💕 watching it on my break. just discovered you a while ago, love your videos, been binge watching 💕

[martinanilsson]

super efficient, super effective and unique. So tired of hearing 99% of the other study YouTubers talking about basic knowledge sense such as "do a mindmap" "journal things out" "keep a to-do-list" etc, like, this is such a valid, informational video that finally taught me something new lol so thank you for that Mariana! ^^

[morgansimms]

As encouragement:
I thrived in college with the flow notes and sentence method (depending on the class).
Now I am a teacher and when I lesson plan I use these same methods. :) Good luck note-takers!

[gabzgabz]

Im definitely going to use the Morse code method for future readings! I always hated using highlighters (in my textbooks or readings) but I also disliked taking notes as I read; I felt like it disrupted my flow. This method is so efficient!

[joyrowancasey]

Ali Abdaal shout-out that guy is amazing

[anaveronika]

I'm a law student and I take all my notes with the "flow method" and i honestly cannot imagine a better way to take notes in classes, especialy since so much information is connected and multy level. It's my absolutely favourite method that I've been using since grammar school and It is also really easy to study from them. Love the video

[tqxfwdw]

Wow I'm so happy that Notion is sponsoring you! Good job 💖
Notion does a good job with advertising, because Mariana basically already loved the product, so hearing an actual advertisement from her side is as natural as in the other videos where she talks why she likes it.

[vpb]

I use all of these based on the topic. With the morse code method, I write A (assertion) and R (reasoning) instead next to the lines.
With Pathology and internal medicine, this has been super useful, as these are the most extensive subjects in medicine for me.

[kulttuuriministeri]

I came back to thank you. The q/e/c thing... It has completely changed the way I study. I think I finally found a tool that works for me. I've been looking for over two years now and I can't tell you how good it feels to just understand what I've read.

Thank you so much!

[sambodyknows]

I’ve never heard of Notion before but I love this and I’m DEFINITELY going to use this from now on

[MrWisky]

I discovered notion in one of your videos and it has been life saving this semester. Thank you for making such amazing videos! Keep it up girrrl!!