Note-taking is an incredibly powerful tool for learning.
记笔记是一种非常强大的学习工具。
Notes extend your memories. I’ve explained before how writing can be seen as an external enhancement of your brain, allowing you to think more complicated thoughts and solve harder problems. Notes you keep, therefore, act to expand your memory.
笔记是记忆的延伸。我之前已经解释过，写作可以被视为大脑的外部增强，让你能够思考更复杂的想法、解决更难的问题。因此，写下的笔记可以扩展你的记忆。
Notes enhance your focus. The act of taking notes ensures your mind isn’t wandering. Even better, notes can facilitate deeper processing of the material, which has been shown to improve memory than when you pay attention only to the superficial details.
笔记可以提高注意力。记笔记的行为本身确保你的思维没有游离。更好的是，笔记可以促进对材料的深度加工，研究已经证明这比仅关注表面细节更有助于记忆。
Unfortunately, note-taking is often easier and more natural when you’re listening to something, than when you’re reading.
不幸的是，当你阅读时，记笔记通常比听时更难也更不自然。
Taking notes while listening is generally easier because, while listening, your hands and eyes are free to jot down notes. On the other hand, switching away to take notes while reading inevitably interrupts the reading flow.
一般来说，边听边记笔记更容易，因为在听的时候，你的手和眼睛是自由的，可以随时记下笔记。另一方面，阅读时切换去记笔记不可避免地会打断阅读的进程。
This interruption leads to a trade-off. Too few notes and you give up the powerful cognitive enhancements that note-taking provides. Too many notes and your reading speed slows to a crawl.
这种中断导致必须要进行权衡。笔记太少，你就放弃了笔记提供的强大认知增强。笔记太多，你的阅读速度会变得非常缓慢。
What should you do?
应该怎么做呢？
I’d like to explain my thinking process of taking notes while reading. Follow these steps and you can find the right way to take notes for your situation.
我想说明一下我阅读时记笔记的思考过程。按照以下步骤，你可以找到适合自己情况的正确记笔记方式。
The starting point of any note-taking technique has to be the purpose of whatever you’re trying to read. Why are you reading it in the first place? Why are you trying to take notes? What are you hoping to achieve?
任何笔记技巧的起点都必须是你阅读的目的。你为什么要读它？为什么要记笔记？希望实现什么目标？
These questions matter greatly, because different purposes are better served by different methods.
这些问题的回答非常重要，因为不同的目的需要不同的方法来实现。
Consider two different situations. In one, you’re studying from a textbook. You want to take notes because the textbook is too long to easily review, and you want to prepare for an upcoming test based on the material it contains.
考虑两种不同的情况。在一种情况下，你正在读一本教科书。做笔记是因为这本教材太长了，不容易复习，而且你想要根据书里的内容准备即将到来的考试。
In the second situation, you’re a journalist, doing research to write a piece. You’ll go back to your sources when you write the final article, so your goal with taking notes is to make this job easier on yourself later.
在第二种情况下，你是一名记者，正在进行研究以撰写一篇文章。在最终写文章时，你需要回到信息源，因此记笔记是为了让自己以后的工作更轻松。
In my experience, these two situations suggest different note-taking techniques, which I’ll go into shortly.
根据我的经验，这两种情况需要采用不同的笔记技巧，我稍后会详细介绍。
Before that, start by asking yourself why you are reading what you’re reading. In particular, ask yourself:
在此之前，先问问自己为什么要读正在阅读的内容。特别是，问问自己：
What am I trying to remember? (Alternatively: What do I think I’m going to forget?)
我试图记住什么？（或者说：我认为我会忘记什么？）
How am I going to use this information? (e.g. on a test, cited in an essay, as background for deeper thinking, etc.)
我将如何使用这些信息？（例如在考试中，在论文中引用，作为深入思考的背景等等。）
What do I plan to do with the notes later? Will you be studying off of them extensively? Keeping them in your records, just in case, but otherwise not looking at them again? Or maybe you’re just taking notes to stay focused, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll look through them after?
我打算以后怎么使用这些笔记呢？你会深入地学习它们吗？将它们保存在你的记录中，以防万一，但再也不打开？或者只是为了保持专注而做笔记，之后很可能不会再看？
Think about your answers to these questions as we go through the next steps.
在接下来的步骤中，请考虑你对这些问题的回答。
The first purpose of notes should be to enhance your concentration on what you read. This is especially true when taking notes from written material, because, in most cases, you’ll be able to go back and read the original source in case your notes were incomplete.
记笔记的第一个目的应该是增强你对所读内容的专注力。在针对书面材料做笔记时尤其如此，因为在大多数情况下，如果你的笔记不完整，都可以回去阅读原文。
You want your notes to do the following:
你希望自己的笔记达到以下几个目的：
Make it easier for you to concentrate on reading. A small amount of note-taking can prevent your mind from wandering.
更容易集中精力阅读。少量记笔记可以防止你的思绪游离。
Focus your mind on the right level of information. Are you trying to meticulously store details from a text? Or are you trying to get the gist of the argument put forth by the author? How you take notes also reinforces what you pay attention to.
将注意力集中在正确的信息层次上。你在试图详细地记录文本中的细节吗？还是试图理解作者提出的论点主旨？做笔记的方式也会强化你所关注的内容。
Create a document that you can reference later to review, study or find information. Notes can also serve as a cheat-sheet for finding things you later forgot.
创建一个文档，以便日后参考、复习或查找信息。笔记也可以作为一份以后查找遗忘信息的备忘单。
A few strategies I do to take notes while reading that helps with this are:
我有一些阅读时做笔记的策略，对此很有帮助，包括：
Jot notes in the margin. These aren’t particularly searchable (if the book is text, not Kindle), but they allow me to reiterate the main idea, so I can convince myself I understood it.
在页边空白处记笔记。虽然这些笔记（如果是纸质书而不是Kindle）不太容易搜索，但它们可以让我再阐述一遍主要思想，以便确信自己理解了它。
Keep a small notepad on the side, take breaks each section to jot down the main ideas. This, again, helps force me to focus on what are the higher-level ideas.
在旁边放一个小笔记本，每读完一个部分就休息一下，记下该部分的主要思想。这样做可以帮助我集中精力关注更高层次的思想。
Creating flashcards. In the rarer situations where memorization of details is important, then a simple strategy can be to just create flashcards while you take notes. If I’m learning a language, anatomy or am given long lists of details I need to master, this can be better than trying to write them down and transfer them to flashcards later.
创建闪卡。在比较少见的情况下，如果记忆细节很重要，那么一个简单的策略就是在记笔记的同时创建闪卡。如果我正在学习一门语言、解剖学或需要掌握一长串细节，这比将它们写下来稍后再转移到闪卡上更好。
The important thing to keep in mind is that text, unlike live lectures, is usually searchable later. So your notes, to be effective, should strive to enhance your focus first, and only secondarily, be a document that is pretty and easy to review.
最重要的是，与现场讲座不同，文本日后通常可以搜索。因此，为了有效，笔记应该首先致力于增强你的注意力，其次才是文档的美观性和易复习性。
If you expect to have to study the same material multiple times to fully master it (say it’s for an exam) then, you can save time by integrating your note-taking and retrieval practice efforts.
如果你预计需要反复学习同一材料才能完全掌握（比如为了考试），那么可以把记笔记与检索练习结合起来从而节省时间。
Retrieval practice is a well-supported practice that greatly enhances your memory compared to simple review. This technique is simply to try to recall as much as you can from the text, either by having prompted questions and answers, or just writing as much as you can on a blank page.
检索练习是一种得到广泛支持的做法，与简单的复习相比，它能极大地提高记忆。技巧就是尽可能地回忆文本中的内容，无论是通过提示问题和答案，还是在空白页上尽可能多地写来实现。
Retrieval works far better than review, where you look at the notes you wrote down multiple times. This is because review merely aids recognition, which isn’t very useful for most practical applications. Retrieval, in contrast, practices your ability to summon up memories when you need them—exactly the ability you need for tests and real-life situations.
复习只是反反复复地查看写下的笔记，而检索比这有效得多。这是因为复习仅有助于再认，而对于大多数实际应用来说，这并不是很有用。相比之下，检索锻炼了你在需要时唤醒记忆的能力——这正是你在考试和实际生活中所需要的能力。
Therefore, if you expect to study the material multiple times, it may be in your benefit to use the Question Book Method. This method simply encourages you to take your notes as questions, rather than as statements. Then, when you review your notes, you can answer those questions instead of just reading the information—aiding retrieval and making your studying time more efficient.
因此，如果你预计会反复学习同一材料，使用“问题书”法可能会有帮助。这种方法提倡将笔记写成问题，而不是陈述句。然后，在复习笔记时，就可以回答这些问题，而不仅仅是阅读信息，这有助于检索并使学习时间更加高效。
Side note: One trap students can fall into when using this method is copying down a bunch of irrelevant details as questions, and missing the big picture. A good way to avoid this is to limit yourself to one or two questions per section, thus forcing you to restate the main idea. If you really do have to memorize the details, flashcards with spaced repetition, is a better tool.
附注：使用这种方法时，学生可能掉进一个陷阱，即将大量无关的细节当作问题抄下来，而忽略了大局。避免这种情况的一个好办法是每部分限制自己只能有一到两个问题，这样可以迫使你重新阐述主要思想。如果真的必须要记住细节，那么间隔重复地使用闪卡是更好的工具。
Sometimes the goal of notes isn’t to facilitate your memory, inside your brain, at all. Rather, the goal is to create an easily-searchable document that can help you find things you thought were important later.
有时候，笔记的目的并不是为了促进大脑的记忆；相反，目的是创建一个易于搜索的文档，以帮助你日后找到认为重要的东西。
I use this with writing all the time. I take notes, not so much to help me pay attention or memorize the facts, but to serve as anchors to find later if I’m looking for a quote, factoid or reference.
我在写作时一直这样做。我会做笔记，不是为了帮助我集中注意力或记忆事实，而是作为日后查找引文、小知识或参考资料的锚点。
Digital note-taking systems like Evernote, make this easiest. Although, even the simple note-taking features on Kindle can work quite well. If I know I’m reading a biography and I need examples of the person doing something specific, I might highlight and tag any of those examples with a keyword so a simple search will bring up all the relevant passages.
诸如印象笔记之类的数字笔记系统是最方便的，但即使是Kindle上的简单笔记功能也可以很好地发挥作用。如果我知道自己正在阅读一本传记，而我需要这个人做某些特定事情的例子，我可能会高亮或用关键词标记所有这样的例子，从而只用简单搜索，就能找到所有相关段落。
Similarly, if you’re reading something you plan to use for a specific purpose, you can even put little sticky tags on the book to mark passages that refer to that. Say you’re reading a book on marketing, but you’re mostly interested in pulling ideas to try for your own business. You could put these tags on the book so you can easily flip through later if you need inspiration.
类似地，如果你正在阅读某些计划用于特定目的的内容，甚至可以在书上贴上便签，标记那些相关的段落。比如，你正在阅读一本关于市场营销的书，但主要是想从中汲取一些想法，在自己的业务中尝试。你可以在书上贴上这些标签，这样如果以后需要灵感，就可以轻松地翻阅。
A question many students ask me is whether they should take paper or digital notes.
许多学生都会问我一个问题：应该采用纸质笔记还是数字笔记。
For classes where my goal is to study, I tend to prefer paper. There are studies supporting the use of paper versus computer note-taking, although the reasoning behind this might be that it’s harder to copy notes verbatim on paper, so you’re forced to think about the information while taking notes. Provided you aren’t taking verbatim notes, then, whichever option is the most convenient for you.
对于我的目的是学习的课程，我倾向于使用纸质笔记。有研究支持使用纸笔而不是电脑记笔记，尽管这背后的原因可能是在纸上无法逐字逐句记录，因此必须在记笔记时对信息进行思考。只要不是逐字抄录，那么无论哪种，选择对你来说最方便就可以了。
For texts where my goals is to reference later, I tend to prefer digital. Searching digital documents is much, much easier than printed ones.
对于我的目的是稍后参考的文本，我倾向于使用数字化的方式。在数字化文档中搜索要比在纸质文档上容易得多。
The truth is, however, if you follow the above steps, you can find the right answer for your situation based on what makes you feel the most comfortable.
事实上，如果你按照以上步骤去做，就可以根据哪种方式在你所处的情境下最舒服，找到正确答案。
Here’s a quick summary of what to do in order to take notes while reading:
以下是在阅读时记笔记的快速指南：
Figure out your purpose.
确定你的目的。
Choose a technique that maximizes your focus on what is most relevant for your purpose. There’s many different ones (jotting in the margin, separate notes on paper, Question Book Method) for different purposes.
选择一种方法，最大化地关注与你的目的最相关的内容。有许多不同的方法（在边缘记笔记，在纸上分开记录，问题书），适用于不同的目的。
Decide whether to optimize for review or retrieval practice. For docs you don’t plan to extensively study, review is the obvious choice. For texts you need to master perfectly, the Question Book Method (for big idea) or flashcards (for details) saves time.
决定是优化复习还是检索练习。对于不打算深入学习的文档，复习是显而易见的选择。对于需要完美掌握的文本，“问题书”法（针对主旨）或闪卡（针对细节）可以节省时间。
If you do need to go back into the text again and again, create clues in your notes that can help you find what you’re looking for faster.
如果需要反复查看文本，适合在笔记中建立线索，帮助你更快地找到所需内容。
Above all, however, pick a method that you feel most comfortable with. The variety of different ways to take notes exist because there are many different reasons you want to read something and remember it. Experiment with them until you find the way that works best for you!
最重要的是，选择一种你最舒适的方法。存在许多不同的记笔记方式，因为你要阅读某些内容并记住它的原因也是多种多样的。尝试不同的方法，直到找到最适合你的那个！
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