https://bryanmmathers.com/

https://scription.typepad.com/

Patrick Ng seems to be the inventor of a chronodex visual planning system. His website has half yearly printable planner inserts for Midori's Traveler's Notebooks.

One of his downloadable templates reads:

Chronodex ideas and notations are copyrighted, it is free for personal use, please contact Patrick Ng (patrickng@mac.com) for commercial usage.

Examples of chronodex layouts on his website show his uses which also seem to include some sketchnoting usage as well.

reply to u/mouseVed at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/11xu4vh/what_do_you_guys_think_of_this_note_taking_style/

Looks a tad messy to me, but I'm not the audience for it, you are. Some additional empty space on the page could potentially help. If this style works for you, perhaps take a look at the sketchnotes space. This book might be a good place to start (especially the sections on Visual Direction, Headers, and Layouts:<br /> Mills, Emily. The Art of Visual Notetaking: An Interactive Guide to Visual Communication and Sketchnoting. Illustrated edition. Walter Foster Publishing, 2019.

If you're keen on location as a key to memory and learning, you should also take a look at the idea of the 'method of loci'/memory palaces/songlines. The best modern coverage of this and various methods can be found in:<br /> Kelly, Lynne. Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods from around the World. Pegasus Books, 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZgMpjjgCRA

Combining sketchnotes with Cornell Notes in a fairly straightforward manner.

He mentions anecdotally that teachers who have used custom icons for their subjects see students drawing some of them on their exam papers as mental associative tags. This is the same sort of use that drolleries had in medieval manuscripts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpvEY-2dSdU

In this episode, I explain the memory system I created in order to expand my memory to new heights. I call it the Sirianni Method and with it, you can learn how to create an intentional photographic memory.

Who the hell is the Sirianni this is named for, himself? (In the comments he mentions that "it's my italian grandpa's last name, I always liked it and a while back started naming things after it)

tl;dr: He's reinvented the wheel, but certainly not the best version of it.

What he's describing isn't remotely related to the idea of a photographic memory, so he's over-hyping the results, which is dreadful. If it were a photographic memory, he wouldn't need the spaced-repetition portion of his practice. While he mentions how he's regularly reviewing his cards he doesn't mention any of the last century+ of research and work on spaced repetition. https://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm is a good place to start for some of this.

A lot of what he's doing is based on associative memory, particularly by drawing connections/links to other things he already knows. He's also taking advantage of visual memory by associating his knowledge with a specific picture.

He highlights emotion and memory, but isn't drawing clear connections between his knowledge and any specific emotions that he's tying or associating them to.

"Intentional" seems to be one of the few honest portions of the piece.

Overview of his Sirianni method: pseudo-zettelkasten notes with written links to things he already knows (but without any Luhmann-esque numbering system or explicit links between cards, unless they're hiding in his connections section, which isn't well supported by the video) as well as a mnemonic image and lots of ad hoc spaced repetition.

One would be better off mixing their note taking practice with associative mnemonic methods (method of loci, songlines, memory palaces, sketchnotes, major system, orality, etc.) all well described by Lynne Kelly (amongst hundreds before her who got smaller portions of these practices) in combination with state of the art spaced repetition.

The description of Luhmann's note taking system here is barely passable at best. He certainly didn't invent the system which was based on several hundred years of commonplace book methodology before him. Luhmann also didn't popularize it in any sense (he actually lamented how people were unimpressed by it when he showed them). Popularization was done post-2013 generally by internet hype based on his prolific academic output.

There is nothing new here other than that he thinks he's discovered something new and is repackaging it for the masses with a new name in a flashy video package. There's a long history of hucksters doing this sort of fabulist tale including Kevin Trudeau with Mega Memory in the 1990s and going back to at least the late 1800s with "Professor" Alphonse Loisette and the system he sold for inordinate amounts to the masses including Mark Twain.

Most of these methods have been around for millennia and are all generally useful and well documented though the cultural West has just chosen to forget most of them. A week's worth of research and reading on these topics would have resulted in a much stronger "system" more quickly.

Beyond this, providing a fuller range of specific options and sub-options in these areas so that individuals could pick and choose the specifics which work best for them might have been a better way to go.

Content research: D- Production value: A+

{syndication link](https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10ehrbd/comment/j4u495q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49C8jQIsvs

Video about the Double-Bubble Map: https://youtu.be/Hm4En13TDjs

The double-bubble map is a tool for thought for comparing and contrasting ideas. Albert Rosenberg indicates that construction of opposites is one of the most reliable ways for generating ideas. (35:50)

Bluma Zeigarnik - open tasks tend to occupy short-term memory.

I love his compounding interest graphic with the steps moving up to the right with the quote: "Even groundbreaking paradigm shifts are most often the consequence of many small moves in the right direction instead of one big idea." This could be an awesome t-shirt or motivational poster.

Watched this up to about 36 minutes on 2022-08-10 and finished on 2022-08-22.

I haven't delved into McPherson's work yet, but it's in my pile. She's one of the few people who've written about both note taking and memory, so I'm intrigued. I take it you like her perspective? Does she delve into any science-backed methods or is she coming from a more experiential perspective?

Is anyone practicing sketchnotes like patterns in their notes?

I've noticed that u/khimtan has a more visual stye of note taking with respect to their cards, but is anyone else doing this sort of visualization-based type of note taking in the vein of sketchnotes or r/sketchnoting? I've read books by Mike Rohde and Emily Mills and tinkered around in the space, but haven't actively added it to my practice tacitly. For those who do, do you have any suggestions/tips? I suspect that even simple drollery-esque images on cards would help with the memory/recall aspects. This may go even further for those with more visual-based modes of thinking and memory.

For those interested in more, as well as some intro videos, here are some of my digital notes: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=sketchnotes

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wc63sw/is_anyone_practicing_sketchnotes_like_patterns_in/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3dbH2c3l0M

Templater scripts: - My Clippings: https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater/discussions/296 - Extract highlights to create mini-summary draft: https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater/discussions/294

This could be interesting to attempt on a book.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/06/20/inside-notebooks/

There are a number of books which feature the sketchbooks and notebooks of famous writers, researchers and artists. However, most of their work is presented as art in and of itself. Rarely are the messiest and ugliest pages pictured. Most of the layouts in these books are laid out as art. Frequently missing are the structural parts and interviews with the original authors talking about their process. How do they actually use these notebooks in practice? How do ideas move from their heads into the notebooks and from there into their practical work? The notebooks only capture raw ideas as a scaffolding for extending the user's brain and thinking, but it doesn't capture the intangible ideas and portions of process which are still trapped within their brains. To be able to evaluate these portions, the author needs to talk or write about those missing portions of the process otherwise the way they create genius is wholly missing. A viewer of such notebooks would be no closer to creating genius for themselves by attempting to follow the same patterns without these additional structures. It's like the indigenous peoples who talk with rocks as part of their cultural practice—so much of what is happening is missing from the description of "talking with rocks" that most people wouldn't even know where to begin, but for the initiated, the process would be imminently crystal clear.

Which of these books actually delves into the process and does interviews as well?

This article actually lays out the notebooks as their own form of art rather than centering the idea of creative process as a means of helping others to follow these same patterns. We need the book that does for the art and design area what Sönke Ahrens' book How to Take Smart Notes does for the note taking space. It's interesting to see Niklas Luhmann's collection of 90,000 index cards, but without knowing how he used them and what purpose they served, the enterprise is lost. Similarly the depiction of Roland Barthes' index cards in Roland Barthes has a similar function. Showing them is not equivalent to actually understanding them.

link to: https://hypothes.is/a/3SOmoMcMEey8n9dSUWhPJw

Given the benefits of gesturing, teachers can improve their pedagogy simply by encouraging their students to move their hands while explaining things or working on problems.

Studies with elementary school children have shown that if they gesture while solving math problems led them to discover and understand new concepts and problem solving strategies.

link this with prior idea of handwriting out annotations/notes as well as drawing and sketchnoting ideas from lectures

Students reviewing over Cornell notes also be encouraged to use their hands while answering their written review questions.

People are more likely to remember points from talks that are accompanied by gestures. This effect apparently increases with time.

What does the effect of time have on increased lengths? Does it continue to increase and then decrease at some point? Anecdotally I often recall quotes and instances from movies based on movements that I make.

What effects, if any, are seen in studies of mirror-neurons and those with impairment of them? What memory effects might be seen with those on the autism spectrum who don't have strong mirror-neuron responses? If this is impaired, what might account for their improved memories for some types of material? Which types of material do they have improved memories for?

Is the same true of drawing points from a speech using the ideas of sketchnotes? Is drawing an extension of gestural improvement of memory?

https://twitter.com/grabe/status/1493723795281956867

https://words.jamoe.org/jump-notes/

meh... similar to sketchnotes

It builds on many of these traditions, but there is a rather sizeable movement in the physical world as well as lots online of sketchnotes which might fit the bill for you Roy.

The canonical book/textbook for the space seems to be Sketchnote Handbook, The: the illustrated guide to visual note taking by Mike Rohde.

For a solid overview of the idea in about 30 minutes, I found this to be a useful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evLCAYlx4Kw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiated_initial

I wonder if these still exist in the new spaces of productivity porn in within journaling? Perhaps the application of stickers in peoples' planners sort of serves some of this functionality, though I'd consider them to be more in the drollery family.

Some interesting finds Josh.

Related to some of the bullet journal (aka BuJo) and journaling space you will eventually come across the idea of "morning pages" which is a technique where you spend a block of time (usually in the morning, but ideally just before you want to do your creative thinking work) where you write for a set amount of time or number of pages. The goal of this method (and to some extent bullet journaling) is to clear the cruft and extraneous details out of your head to be able to better prioritize and focus on your creative work. There's a relatively large group of people doing this as a technique, so even knowing the phrase can help one to find the literature.

Tangentially related to this and memory (via our old friend rhetoric), I've been doing some significant research into the commonplace book tradition and general note taking with an eye towards knowledge acquisition, creation, and spaced repetition systems. This has led into research into the areas of the zettelkasten, digital note taking, digital gardens and the like. All fascinating areas which overlap memory via rhetoric. I suspect that many mnemonists in the Renaissance used commonplace books as physical written memory palaces, though I've yet to find anything in my research that directly links them other than the relationship they have in the long tradition of rhetoric in Western culture. Since you mention music and writing lyrics, I recently noted that Eminem has a commonplace technique which he calls "stacking ammo" by which he compiles ideas for his lyrics. His method is certainly less structured than a traditional commonplace book, but the overall form traces back to our friends Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian.

If you delve into some of the Bullet Journal and journaling literature you'll find a subculture of people (YouTube has hundreds of people with entire channels dedicated to the topic) who write into their daily/weekly planners and decorate them with stickers, washi tape, photos, calligraphy, drawings, etc. I've called some of this "productivity porn" before, but if you search commonplace book on Instagram or Pinterest you'll find examples of people whose journals and notes are becoming physical memory palaces where the visuals are likely helping them remember portions of their lives or what they're writing. The stickers and images to some extent are serving the purpose of drolleries seen in Medieval manuscripts as mnemonic devices.

And finally, tangentially related to all of this is another interesting sub-genre of memory and note taking called sketchnotes which combines active listening, writing, and drawing into a mnemonic related note taking activity. I'm actually a bit surprised to find so little on the technique here on the forum. Searching for sketchnotes on social media will provide lots of examples and there are many "What are sketchnotes" short videos on YouTube that will give you an idea of what's going on. Many of these talk about a memory component, but not being mired into the sub-topic of rhetoric, they're usually not using the same framings we would (here on the forum), though the effects one might expect are the same.

Some related richer resources for these areas, to help people from going down the rabbit hole within the performative social media spaces:

• How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking–for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens
  • This touches on note taking within a zettelkasten framing, but is also applicable to the commonplace book tradition
• Sketchnote Handbook, The: the illustrated guide to visual note taking by Mike Rohde
  • This is one of the bibles in the space and gives a solid overview of what, why, how, etc.
• A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden by Maggie Appleton

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Annie Murphy Paul</span> in Opinion | How to Think Outside Your Brain - The New York Times (<time class='dt-published'>09/13/2021 19:58:53</time>)</cite></small>

Moving ideas from our heads into the real world, whether written or potentially using other modalities, can provide a detachment gain, by which we're able to extend those ideas by drawing, sketching, or otherwise using them.

How might we use the idea of detachment gain to better effect in our pedagogy? I've heard anecdotal evidence of the benefit of modality shifts in many spaces including creating sketchnotes.

While some sketchnotes don't make sense to those who weren't present for the original talk, perhaps they're incredibly useful methods for those who are doing the modality shifts from hearing/seeing into writing/drawing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfXE6VCBo3k

This boils down to distilling one's notes down to something smaller.

It dawns on me that in some sense small illustrations and images in a mnemonic like manner are what Dave Winer is doing on his blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YnLFrM7Fs

Good overview of what the marketing on a bag of coffee is trying to tell you.

May be worth doing a quick sketchnotes version of this episode.

This feels related to some of the potential power of sketchnotes.

I'd like the reference to this particular research though.

Visual elements within sketchnotes:

• drawings
• diagrams
• typography
• handwriting
• dividers
• arrows
• bullets
• icons
• containers

Look! It's a sketchnote of the talk Maker Households by Ton Zijlstra.

I ought to create a bank of common icons to keep on hand. Here's something that's a good start.

There are some interesting parallels between these calendar pages and associated images and the general ideas behind sketchnotes.

via: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/medieval-book/using-medieval-book/v/medieval-calendar

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/11/how-to-get-started-with-sketchnotes/

Good basic overview.

How To Do Sketchnoting (Even If You "Can't Draw"!)

a lesson with Emily Mills of the Sketchnote Academy

video

Types of Sketchnotes

• Lecture based
• Experience based

Skills for sketchnotes

• Listening
  • looking for ideas, high level
• Writing
• Drawing

Pairing images and words together to be dynamic and memorable.

One doesn't need to be the greatest artist to do sketchnotes.

memorable >> masterpiece recognizable >> realistic big ideas >> nitty gritty

Basic drawing

Seven building blocks for drawing

• dot
• straight line
• crooked line
• curvy line
• circle
• triangle
• square

Rules

• The fewer elements, the easier
• Rearrange rotate, reorient shapes

People

• standard stick person
• A person
• oval person
• star person

Containers and connectors

Boxes are boring, so add frames or more interesting Use containers to separate information that is different from the rest or to highlight.

• boxes
• frames
• nails/thumbtacks
• star "pow" outline
• box with a shadow

Tell people where to read next

• Create a really clear header
• help people with connectors (dotted lines, arrows, numbering)

Start out small first as it's more intimidating to use bigger formats

Tools

• Sketchone marker (thin point ink, pigment or permanent and not water-based, otherwise bleedover in coloring)
• Tombow dual brush markers for color
  • two grey tones, one lighter and one darker
  • small handful of colors (red, blue, yellow, green)

How to Sketchnote

• Step 1: Header
• Step 2: Layout (top to bottom/left to right is usually more intuitive) Pre-plan this. Think about connectors.
• Step 3: Consistency
  • headers, characters, size of writing,
• Step 4: Refine
  • check spelling
  • whiteout for mess ups (gellyroll white gel pen)
  • ensure connectors are obvious
• Step 5: Guiding shapes (to help flow of information on page)
  • stippling
  • cloud outlines
  • lines in the negative space (also creates contrast)
• Step 6: Coloring in
  • greys first, dark then light
  • highlighting connectors
  • shadows on boxes, ribbons, connectors
  • color should be more of a highlight than a background filler (it's not a coloring book)

Higher contrast notes are better

Resources

• 👉🏻 Find Emily (and her awesome resources!) at https://www.emilyamills.com
• 👉🏻 The Sketchnote Academy free course: https://www.sketchnoteacademy.com
• 👉🏻 The Art of Visual Note taking by Emily Mills

Anecdotal mention here of someone using sketchnotes or doodling as a mnemonic device.

Sketchnotes could be a means of implementing visual method of loci in one's note taking. Like creating a faux memory palace. Also somewhat similar, expecially in the case of the leaf doodle mentioned above, to the idea of drolleries, but in this case, they're not taking advantage of the memory's greater capacity of imagination to make things even more memorable for long term retention.

Sketchnoting forces students to take ideas from a lesson and turn them into their own ideas. It also forces modality shifts.

Reviewing over a lecture after the fact to create sketchnotes is incredibly similar to some of the point and purpose of Cornell Notes.

While watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOHcWhdguIY

Sketchnotes by Chad Moore and Chris Wilson

https://vi.to/hubs/microcamp/pages/chad-moore-and-chris-wilson?v=chad-moore-and-chris-wilson&discussion=hidden&sidebar=hidden

Sketchnotes are ideas not art.

Squiggle birds - take squiggles and give them beaks, eyes, and bird feet. (Idea apparently from Austin Kleon.)

How you might take notes if you'd never been told how to.

• There is no particular app or platform that is the "right" one.

Common elements:

• Headlines and sub headlines are common
  • Elegant text / fancy text
• Icons
• containers - ways of holding information together
  • this can be explicit or via white space
• flow of information (arrows)
• arrangements or layouts of how information is displayed
  • top to bottom, circles, columns, stream of flow of ideas
• people
  • emotions, perhaps using emoji-like faces
• shadows, highlights

Icons

Simple can be better. Complexity may make understanding more difficult.

Examples

A few they pulled off of the web

Sketchnote Selfie

Goal: Create an info rich portrait with character. Portrait, name, info, location, passions, hobbies, interests, social usernames, now section, etc.