Although you may think that no one needs to take lecture notes these days, this is still a very important skill required for catching up with work and studies. Modern technological “helpers” reduce our working abilities and make us much lazier.

People rely on various gadgets and apps. However, taking notes remains a very helpful skill that will assist you very well in the process of your studies and will boost your academic success a lot. 

If you want to know what the best ways to take notes are, keep reading until the very end and find out how to increase your working capacity and speed the progress of your studies up. 

1. Record on a dictaphone

Sometimes, the process of studying goes very quickly. If you do not have the best writing skills and cannot make notes quickly, recording your lessons or lectures can be a great option for you. This way, you can be sure that you won’t miss anything important.

While being at home, you are free to listen to your lecture as many times as you need it paying attention to the most important details. One of the shortcomings of this method is that it works if you have a good listening memory.

If you remember things much better when you hear them, then it would work perfectly for you. However, if you recall things better while using your visual memory, you may spend much more time on hearing and then writing everything down at home. Otherwise, you risk missing a lot of important information. 

2. Learn how to write abbreviations

It may be a secret for you but you do not have to write the full lecture down. One of the easiest ways to make notes is to shorten your professor’s lectures. Just create some abbreviations of words and use them all the time. 

For example, biotech. instead of biotechnology or chem. instead of chemistry, etc. There are tons of ways to shorten words. Just make sure you understand your notes when reading them afterward.

3. Learn how to catch the core ideas

Once again, when your professor is telling you how to write an essay and you do not catch that information, keep in mind that you don’t have to write everything word-for-word. Many students just fail to note information down and start looking for how to write my paper for cheap all over the Internet. To avoid such a sad result, just learn how to catch the most important information.

Take notes of the core ideas of the entire lesson. It will make everything much easier and faster than trying to write everything word-for-word. Professors hope that students are adult enough to distinguish important information from the less important.

4. Use highlights, underlines, and capitalize your lectures

Learning how to take notes in lectures is impossible if you keep writing plain texts. When you look at it, you see a mess. In such text, it is very difficult to distinguish the core points. Not to get lost in your own records, just highlight, underline, and capitalize the information you really need. 

This way, you will find the core points much easier. Such life hacks help you visualize your lectures.

5. Leave some gaps

Do not write your sentences one by one. Leave some gaps, especially, if you cannot catch up with what your professor says. Those gaps can be filled later when you browse your notes and try to learn them. Ask for the notes of your group mates to fill them in.

6. Type your lectures

If you have forgotten how to use a pen or pencil and are a more typing type of person, try to type your lectures on your laptop or tablet. Some professors would not allow that because the keyboard noise would disturb the lesson.

You can do it on your tablet or smartphone instead of a laptop then. Just turn on the mute mode. You can either type your lectures right in your classes or after them. Just get your writings and type them. Your notes will be more effective and organized if your use apps like Evernote for lecture note-taking. It will also help refresh your knowledge.

7. Try different note-taking styles

Something good and workable for some people may not be good for you at all. Try different styles of taking notes and decide which ones are the best for you. Through attempts and mistakes, learn what works best for you.

8. Share your notes with your friends

If you know some of your class or group mates are good at some subjects, exchange your notes with them. There is nothing wrong with it. Just see what they wrote and let them see what you wrote. This is a sort of exchange with experiences.

9. Prepare a template before lectures

You already know your professors and their styles well. You may know how they dictate, how they build their notes, and what the structure of their lessons is. Create a sort of a template for each professor that would make it easier to fill in the table or chart, for example. 

10. Do not think of grammar and spelling mistakes

Writing notes is not a writing assignment. You do this for you only and no one else. You will not receive any grades for it. The only thing you do it for is to learn the material well. Forget about grammar conventions and do not think about how to spell the words.

No one needs error-free content in your notes. You can improve your mistakes later when reading those notes. However, while taking them, do not even think of whether you write anything wrong. Your task is to write down as much information as possible. Just do it.