Brain Compatible Note Taking

Non-Traditional Note Taking Strategies

Introduction

This brief on note taking strategies introduces some unconventional approaches to note taking. However, these strategies have a solid foundation in brain research and help to maximize your brain’s natural ability to learn and remember.

Purpose

The objective of this material is to give you a glimpse into the reasons why traditional note taking strategies don’t work well and bring you two different, unconventional ways to take notes at school or work.

These new strategies will allow you greater flexibility in capturing key points to trigger memory. And…they allow you to concentrate more on the information being given than on trying to capture it.

Meet Your Brain

Those of you who are up on your biology know that your brain is mostly water, weighs between 44 and 49 ounces, allows your body to function without having to think (subconsciously) and wouldn’t look very appetizing on a plate.

Conventional approaches to learning have separated mind from body and emotion. New brain research indicates that the mind, body and emotions are solidly connected and intertwined to the point where how you feel about a subject or event can have a profound effect on whether or not you learn and/or retain anything.

How The Brain Works

Every brain cell has a main body, an axon and dendrites. Axons grow as a result of stimulation (challenge). Axons then reach out to the dendrites on other cells and can connect chemically to share or transfer information.

When you learn something or an event takes place, the information goes into your brain, is sorted, broken apart and sent out into the brain for storage. It becomes a memory. Funny thing is...it is not necessarily all stored together. So, when you want to access the memory or information (something triggers the brain to recall), the brain attempts to reassemble the memory using as much data as it can immediately retrieve. What it can’t retrieve, it fills in, based on past knowledge or experiences