Just imagine if you could recall the content of all the Bible talks you have ever heard!

If you were able to attend all of your ecclesia’s exhortations, lectures and Bible classes you may have sat through about two hours of talks per week. Even if you only managed to attend realistically 80% and also attended one Bible School a year, you would still be sitting through about 95 hours of talks per year. Some of those talks will be gripping, and you will remember bits, probably the dramatic or emotional bits, years later. However, many talks, though full of excellent material, will scarcely be remembered a week later — unless you are a savant! In fact, you will be fortunate to have remembered 50% after 20 minutes! We humans just don’t have good memories and are highly variable in what we remember.

There is a saying, purported to be a Chinese proverb, “The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory”. That is, taking notes is a great aid to memory.

Better than that proverb is God’s instruction to the kings to write out their own personal copy of the law (Deuteronomy 17:18-20):

“And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy (duplicate) of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear Yahweh his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel”.

The benefits of taking notes

As with the kings, there is a real benefit in making a habit of taking your own notes during talks. It helps to do two things:

1. Engage with the speaker and his subject because you have to listen actively, and
2. Make sense of what is being said because you have to think about what you are writing down.

Making your own notes helps transfer what you learn intellectually into your heart (Proverbs 3: 1, 3; also Proverbs 7:1, 3):

“My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments … write them upon the table on thine heart”¹.

Your note-taking habit may also have benefits for others. Your example might encourage others to focus on the talk and take notes too. The speaker will be encouraged by seeing you taking notes and it might even enhance his delivery!

I have found that notes I have taken many years ago (even though I had to decipher terrible spelling!) have been helpful later in my own study, or when preparing talks. Reviewing notes is a powerful way of reinforcing memory². The more frequent you do so the more likely you are to retain the information.

What medium should I make notes on?

What should I use to take notes on? Paper, of course, because it would be very distracting to have people clacking away on devices during talks, though tablet touch screens are quite quiet!³ “eWriter” note-taking apps that use a stylus on a tablet are getting smarter and quicker but are currently probably not as great an experience as paper⁴.

The paper format I have ended up using (and I have tried just about every size of notebook available) is A5, lined paper, with a spiral binding and perforated at the top (Figure 1). This format sits comfortably on a wide margin Bible and the pages can be flipped over to keep the same A5 ‘footprint’ while in use.

Figure 1

I number the pages to keep them in order when removed. Where there is more than one speaker presenting (e.g., at a Bible School), I prefix the page number with a letter to identify a study topic or speaker. The perforations at the top of the pages enable sheets to be neatly removed, collated, and stapled together later. Just don’t double side with different topics!

In the end, it is not the mode of note-taking that is important so much as the thought process that goes along with it. One of the things that memory theorists can agree on is that the way in which you process something in the first place heavily determines whether you will remember it.

Deep processing promotes memory.

But what do you do with all those notes?

How can all those notes collected over time ever be retrieved to be useful?

Most of us will have books on the Truth on our bookshelves ordered according to the sequence of the “books of the Bible”. I file my notes next to the book of the Bible they relate to so they are easy to retrieve. I have other books on themes (e.g., the atonement, family life, living the Truth), or on Bible characters, and my notes related to these get filed next to those books. It makes sense!

If you don’t have lots of books or not much bookshelf space, then a simple concertina file with alphabetic labels will do just fine. Or, if you prefer to store material electronically, then you could scan your notes to one of the cloud-based storage services such as OneNote, Evernote, or Google Drive etcetera.

So, what sort of notes should I take?

A speaker typically says 2-3 words per second, but our brains can assimilate 6-8 words per second. This is why we have difficulty concentrating during a talk; our minds want to be thinking about other things at the same time! But when we take notes, we can only write 0.3 to 0.4 words per second — much slower than the speaker. Put these two things together, and it makes sense not only to take notes to keep focused but also to abbreviate (or summarise) what is presented rather than writing down everything word-for-word. While full notes might capture all the information, it requires less thought and is less likely to be retained (other than on the paper)⁵.

Most of us learn primarily through seeing (about 75%) and hearing (about 13%). That combination accounts for about 88% of all we perceive (touch is about 6% and smell and taste about 3% each). Others of us learn best through “hands-on” experiences. Sitting through a talk can be a bit of a challenge for those who learn by moving and doing because they can be easily distracted (and distract others). That’s another good reason to make a habit of taking notes, because you are moving, writing, and touching pen and paper.

Because we are all slow at writing and different in the way we learn, it makes sense for us to think of taking notes in different ways. Many systems for taking notes have been proposed over time, but in the end, they boil down to two main types:

1. Linear
2. Mapping

Linear note-take methods might be best for those of us who are mainly “listening” learners. Mapping methods might work best for those of us who are “seeing and doing” learners.

The speaker can help you take notes

Let the speaker help you take notes! How does that work? Well, some speakers tell you what they are going to say, say it, and then conclude by telling you what they have said. They recognise that you, the audience, need to have a road map of the journey they are taking you on before starting. This helps your note-taking by giving you a ‘heads-up’ on how to structure your notes. It is particularly helpful for those using mapping methods which work best when the speaker’s material is well organised.

But not all speakers will outline the structure of their talk, so you need to be concentrating to get the flow of thought and connections between subtopics or concepts. That is why note-taking will help you to get something from any talk and enable you to discuss it with others after the class.

So, what do these two methods look like?

Linear methods of notetaking

The main topic becomes the heading for the notes for linear methods (Figure 2). Beneath this, you list the first subtopic, then the first key point, second key point… and so on down the page. Some like to have a reasonably wide margin on the left side of the page and list the subtopics there with the notes to the right side of the margin (Figure 3). Others like to have columns across the page.

Figure 2 & Figure 3

Whatever system you prefer, the structure is essentially linear. This system doesn’t easily enable inter-relationships between subtopics to be indicated, except perhaps when notes are in columns. However, the linear method of notetaking is good for when the speaker’s presentation is not particularly well organised.

There is a trick to making this method effective. Taking notes verbatim is counterproductive as you spend all your time trying to get down what the speaker is saying rather than thinking about what has been said and summarising that in your own words. The trick, then, is to outline the main points and listen for relationships between ideas rather than just the key ideas.

Because you are likely to write more using linear methods (and very few know shorthand these days!) you should learn to abbreviate, for example:

Gen, Ex, &, @, e.g., v., ?, esp.

And use symbols where possible:

=, <, >, ∞, ←, →, ∴

You can devise your own set of abbreviations and symbols.

Mapping methods of notetaking

At first glance, the mapping style of notes (sometimes called ‘mind-maps’) look very different and complicated (Figure 4).

Figure 4

But they are great for those who like information presented visually and they are effective for showing inter-relationships between subtopics or concepts. They are also great for those who have an artistic flair, like using colour, or drawing pictures (Figure 5)⁶. Some research indicates that drawing as a method to help retain new information, is better than re-writing notes, visualisation exercises, or passively looking at images⁷.

Figure 5

With mapping methods, you start by putting the title of the talk in the centre of the page and circling it or putting it in a box. From there you move around the centre from top right with radiating branches to the key subtopics. A subtopic may have one or more of its own subbranches with a key phrases or quotes, etcetera.

You can show inter-relationships by linking concepts using lines, colours, or highlighting. You can also add diagrams and sketches. In Figure 4, I went back after making the notes to highlight faithful (yellow) versus sinful (red) actions, warnings (orange) and acts of God or God-centred thinking (blue). The process of doing this reinforced the key messages of the talk. Of course, you could also do this with notes taken with linear methods.

These maps are great for seeing the big picture without too many words. Some speakers use mind maps as the notes for their talk, because they allow flexibility in the flow of thought and presentation, especially if they want to show inter-relationships between ideas. All the mapping methods require good comprehension and concentration skills.

Cornell note

We have only discussed notetaking during typical Bible study classes. If you are a school or university student, then you are more likely to be taking notes so that you can revise for exams. It pays off to have good quality notes that capture the most relevant parts of a lecture to revise, regardless of memories that may have formed during the note-taking process.

One well-known system of notetaking advocated for students is “Cornell notes”⁸. The system was devised way back in the 1940s by a professor at Cornell University. He advocated this technique in his best-selling book, “How to Study in College”⁹, and it is a systematic method for condensing and organising notes.

In this system, the page is divided into three main areas (Figure 6); two columns, one on the right for note-taking (using short sentences, abbreviations, lists and leaving space between main points) that is twice as wide as the left-hand “key ideas” column which is left for main ideas, key words, diagrams, questions and study prompts. At the bottom of each page some 5 to 7 lines are left for adding a summary of top-level main ideas. When reviewing the topic, the note-taking column can be covered, and keys ideas column used to prompt reflection.

Figure 6

Cornell Notes can be improved by a technique called “sketch noting”, which just brings more visual elements (sketches) in addition to word notes¹⁰.

But, in the end, whatmatters most is that you find a system that works for your learning style.

Why not mark straight into the Bible margin?

Condensing your notes as “Bible-marking” is also an excellent way of reinforcing what you have learnt. We might call that “note-making”.

Margins are precious ‘real-estate’ in your Bibles. You really only want to put in your margins things that won’t change with time. You will never have enough room for all the “facts”, which may not be facts on further investigation. They can be stored elsewhere, checked, and retrieved later when needed. Some put personal application and exhortation in their margins, but the application to you will probably change for different stages of your life. However, Bible principles don’t change and these are definitely good to note in your Bible margins.

But you need time to digest the facts, principles, and exhortation heard in a talk, or from your personal study, and to condense them to a pithy principle to mark in. Other than perhaps some cross-references not already in the marginal references, or Bible echoes, it would be better to take notes, review them, and extract out what is really useful for marking in your margin. If you need to mark directly into your margin, perhaps use a fine-pointed pencil.