Summary

1. 📚 Second Edition Overview: This is the second, revised and expanded edition of the book. The first edition was titled "Como Fazer Anotações Inteligentes. Uma Técnica Simples para Impulsionar a Escrita, Aprendizado e Pensamento - para Estudantes, Acadêmicos e Escritores de Livros de Não Ficção".

2. 🖋️ Key Focus: The book emphasizes the importance of organizing ideas and notes for effective writing. It's a guide for students, academics, and knowledge professionals to enhance their writing, learning, and long-term knowledge retention.

3. 🧠 Smart Notes Methodology: It introduces the concept of Smart Notes, based on psychological insights and the proven Zettelkasten note-taking technique, offering a comprehensive guide in English for the first time.

4. 🎯 Target Audience: The book is particularly useful for students and academics in social sciences and humanities, non-fiction writers, and anyone engaged in reading, thinking, and writing.

5. ⏳ Time Efficiency: Focuses on saving time spent searching for notes, quotes, or references, allowing more time for thinking, understanding, and developing new ideas in writing.

6. 👤 Author's Background: Written by Dr. Sönke Ahrens, a writer and researcher in education and social sciences, known for the award-winning book "Experimento e Exploração: Formas de Revelação do Mundo" (Springer).

7. 🌍 Global Reach: Since its initial release, "Como Fazer Anotações Inteligentes" has sold over 10,000 copies and has been translated into seven languages.

Step 1. Get comfortable. Get a pen.

Step 2. Four questions before you read and during. Goal to find answer.

2:26 Q1. What's the point? (Vad diskuteras?)

i.e.: What is the issue or question that drives this book? What area is it in? Why is being written?

2:30 Q2 Why did they bother? (Varför diskuteras det?)

i.e. Motivation. What do they want to you think or believe?

2:49 Q3 What are they trying to prove? (Vad försöker de övertyga dig om?)

i.e. Thesis. What they are trying to convince you to believe, what they are trying to get you to share.

2:55 Q4 How are they trying to prove it? (Hur försöker de övertyga dig om det?)

i.e. Evidence, arguments in favor

Step 3. Interrogate the text.

Detective looking for clues, find answer to the four questions

• Read blurb
• Read inside jacket copy or back cover
• First and last paragraph of the book
• First and last paragraph of each chapter
• First and last paragraph of the section working on for current day/week
• Review what you have found: What should you expect to find when you study this further?

Step 4. Fast read.

Overall movement and architecture of work.

Mark with pen. Draw horizontal line at break in text, e.g. when author says that "Now we are finished with this question."

5:15 Step 5. Slow, careful read.

Go through text paragraph by paragraph, annotate with pen, trying to find answers to the four questions.

Annotate:

• Structural clues: introduction, thesis, outline of the argument
• Write numbers in the margins.
• Mark key passages. Write a descriptive word or two next to each paragraph for future reference. If unable write a question mark and go on.
• Question marks in margin when confused and point out what confuses you (e.g. by circling och underlining words).

7:14 Step 6. Write a short summary.

10 minutes after finished reading. Do not postpone.

In book or on sticky note.