How to Take Faster Notes - College Info Geek

I want to show you something cool that I can do on my Mac here. So I get a lot of email, and for a lot of these emails, I have to type the exact same responses. But instead of typing the same words over and over and over again, I have this cool little Chrome extension called Georgess that lets me bind templates to little keywords that I can type. So if somebody emails me and say they want me to do something, and I just don't have the time to do it, instead of typing out a long apology and an explanation, I can just type the word busy, hit tab, and the entire response will pop out in less than a second. Over the past few months, I've been steadily developing more and more templates as the need arises, and according to the app's statistics, it's already saved me over 5 hours of typing, which isn't too shabby. But what if you're using paper? Well, on paper, we have shorthand writing systems. These are systems that vastly cut down on the characters or strokes needed to express ideas. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, and it's an art that basically every journalist had to learn before the widespread availability of these little devices. The origins of shorthand date back to the 4th century BC in ancient Greece, though even before that, scribes in ancient Egypt developed two different writing systems, the hieratic and later the demotic, which let them write much more quickly than they could using complicated hieroglyphics. Fast forward to the past couple of centuries, and two systems became dominant in the shorthand sphere, the Pittman shorthand method and the Gregg shorthand method. Both these systems are phonetic, that is, their alphabets aren't one-to-one approximations for Latin characters, rather they're symbols designed to express how words sound when they're being spoken. Masters of these two systems have been known to be able to write at 200 words per minute or more, which means they can write basically anything word for word as it's said, but the problem here is that both of these systems are incredibly difficult to learn, they take a lot of time and practice, and as a student, I'm betting you probably don't have that time to dedicate to learning one of them. For example, here is, as best as I can write it with 10 minutes of practice, the statement written in Gregg shorthand. Now I'd wager it'd take you a bit of time to figure out how to read that, let alone be able to write it proficiently. So on one side of the problem, writing in Gregg or Pittman shorthand takes way too long to learn, but on the other side, writing in longhand is painful for your wrist and simply takes too long to do while you're in class. What's the solution? Well actually, I've got two solutions in mind. The first one is to use a simpler shorthand writing system. One option is alphabetic shorthand systems like speedwriting or personal shorthand. Now these are systems that use the standard Latin alphabet you're already familiar with, and while some shorthand purists may turn their noses up at them like snooty aristocratic gentlemen, and while indeed you may not be able to write as fast as you could with Gregg or Pittman, the tradeoff here is that they take far, far less time to learn. Another option is to use a system with characters that do differ from that standard Latin alphabet, but that are easier to learn than the phonetic alphabets of Gregg or Pittman. The most famous example I can think of is called T-Line, which is actually still used by a lot of journalists today, but an even newer example that I came across recently is called Ford Improved Shorthand, which is supposedly designed to be able to be learned within 15 minutes. So here's that same statement from before, but now written in Ford. And I have to say that while it took me probably 10 minutes to puzzle out how to write it in Gregg, it was really, really easy to write it in Ford, and I found myself being able to memorize the new characters after writing them just once or twice. The other solution is to create what amounts to your own shorthand system. And this is an idea I've had kicking around in my brain for a long, long time, and it's actually why I made this video in the first place, because if you're the only one who's going to review your notes and no one else is going to need to look at them, then why not write them in the most efficient way you can for you? With that being said, let's get into one of the experiments that I've been doing in recent weeks with my notes. So let's take three words, allegation, procrastination, and litigation. All these three words end with the suffix shun, which in my mind sounds a bit like shin. So we could just draw a picture of a shin with a foot. Now let's circle the shin, and then we could simplify that drawing down, and then simplify it once more until we have a two-stroke symbol that resembles a shin. Now I can add that as the suffix instead of writing shun, which is six strokes, and this one is two, so now we have a reduction of four strokes. If we want to do another example, let's take the suffix able. When I think of able, I think of somebody who is strong and able to do things, so let's take a big, beefy arm, draw that, and then simplify that once again, and now we have yet another two-stroke symbol. Now going beyond those two examples that I made up, I just want to give you a list of good targets in your notes for developing potential symbols, and one target is prefixes and suffixes, and I'm actually going to link to a big list of these in the article for this video. Another idea is function words, essentially the words that make sentences coherent, like with, and, because, or, greater than, less than, those kind of things. These words don't really carry a whole lot of information about the concepts within them, so they're prime targets for shortening. So that rounds out all the ideas I had about shorthand right now, but I did want to leave you with one final tip before we round out the video, and that is that shorthand isn't the only way to condense the amount of notes you have to take, and also to cut down on the amount of carpal tunnel you suffer from. In fact, you can draw diagrams, you can use arrows to connect concepts and ideas, and you can find other ways to jot down the things you're learning in class without having to write them out fully. And as always, if you've already done your own experiments or have any tips I didn't mention here, I would love to hear about them down in the comments, so let your knowledge flow forth from your brain, and if you enjoyed this video, as always, give it a like to support this channel, and I will see you in next week's video. Thanks for watching. Hey there guys, thanks so much for watching this video. Now if you want to get new tips on being a more effective student every single week, you can click that big red subscribe button right there. Also I wrote an entire book on how to earn better grades, and if you want to get a free copy, you can click the picture of the book and I'll send you one, and if you want to read the article for this video and find all the links to things I mentioned, you can click the orange button right there. Last week's video we talked about resources for getting cheaper prices on the textbooks you have to buy, so check it out if you missed it, and if you want to connect, I'm Tom Frankly on Instagram and Twitter, or you can leave a comment down below.