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5 Ways to Organize Your Notes

09.08.2021

Keeping your notes organized can be a hassle. From taking notes in school and work meetings to managing your daily task lists, you can probably relate.

It’s essential to take organized notes because research shows that organized notes produce the best recall on tests for example. 

Here are 5 great ways to organize your notes along with the benefits of doing so digitally. 

1 Use a Notetaking System

There are a ton of great systems out there, and a good notetaking system will keep your notes structured and organized. 

Regardless of whether you write your notes in a notebook or on a laptop, you can still take effective notes if you use a notetaking strategy. 

If you’ve never tried a notetaking system to remember important information, Cornell Notes is a great starting point. 

This method is great at helping you to apply what you’ve learned. Students who use Cornell Notes are better able to answer higher-level questions on tests. It is really useful for highlighting similarities and differences between sources and topics. 

The Cornell Method  

The Cornell Method involves dividing your paper into three separate sections:

• One column on the right for notetaking

• One column on the left for questions and keywords

• One section at the bottom (about five to seven lines) to summarize what you learned.

Cornell Notes is fantastic in helping you to remember important information! Studies have shown that students using the Cornell System tend to focus more and their language skills improve, as well as write better compositions.   

It’s safe to say that even if you’re not a student, you’ll gain some benefit from this method! You’re more likely to accurately retrieve content in your notes for the next exam or work conference. This is because of self-testing. For example, with the way the Cornell Method is laid out, students connect keywords and questions with their own notes. Then they re-word them in their own words. This method of self-testing is great for improving recall.  

At the bottom of your page, write a summary of your notes. Why is summarizing important? Students who summarize their notes increase their understanding of the content by nearly 20%!

 This goes a long way in helping you produce the best quality notes possible because summarizing helps you comprehend the material you learn. 

 After your meeting or lecture has concluded, break down the key points in your notes. Then simplify them into a brief paragraph that makes sense to you. This approach has been proven to make the information easier for long-term retention.

Take Digital Notes Using Your Favorite Notetaking System 

No matter which notetaking system you stick to, there are plenty of notetaking apps available. Some of our favorites include GoodNotes, Noteshelf, Notability, and Evernote, which offer great notetaking templates, including Cornell Notes and many others. 

 These apps are really useful for structuring your documents. The templates they include provide a foundation to start on, saving you time as they guide you. When you come back to your notes later you’ll then be able to make sense of them easily.

 Apps like these will help you write even faster compared to having to set up a fresh page every time. Highlight, change the color of text, font style, and more! This brings a variety of colors and fun versus the standard markers in your desk drawer.

Overall, going digital helps your notes be more thorough and organized. For example, you can sort your notes into different notebooks with ease. You can then keep your different subjects separate and combine similar notes to create one cohesive note package.

 We recommend using a tablet and stylus for taking the most effective digital notes. On an iPad with an Apple Pencil, it’s easy to make quick edits on the fly during a class or meeting. This saves you time later when trying to decipher your notes. 

 If you often find yourself trying to make sense of your notes then we recommend you try the Cornell Method. From better memory to improved academic performance, you’ll find a lot of benefits from this method.

2 Organize with an Outline

Incomplete notes can be fatal to learning. In a typical lecture, students fail to capture 40% of the important points presented to them. That creates a tremendous gap in learning that leads to inadequate results in the classroom.

 Outlining can work to improve notetaking quality by helping students better identify gaps in their notes.

Put another way, outlines tell you what information you’re missing so that you can work to correct it. They’re also beneficial in many other ways. Well-structured outlines can help you distinguish between main and supporting ideas, enable you to take more complete notes, and record relevant information more quickly.

 Whether you’re using a notebook, a computer, or a tablet, outlining your notes is one of the most useful ways to organize information. Students benefit from outlines because they provide a useful scaffold for notetaking. 

 Studies show that students collect more information using outlines than conventional notes — and students that take more complete notes perform better on exams. This reinforces the fact that outlines improve exam performance. 

 Not only are outlines significantly effective at producing more notes and improving your memory; they are also great organizers. Unlike cluttered notebook pages, it is far easier to understand and see your notes when they follow a defined outline.

Take Digital Notes Using Outlines

Taking notes in a digital format helps you structure them easily and neatly. Going digital introduces a lot of quality-of-life features to speed up and refine the notetaking process, including the ability to assign colored labels to pages and duplication of content. Plus, when using dedicated notetaking apps, your work is typically saved and synced across your devices via the cloud.

 If you’re someone with messy handwriting, apps with handwriting recognition (HWR) and optical character recognition (OCR), can help you create notes that are neat and tidy. These tools can help you find your text using in-app search tools or convert it to digitized text, keeping your notes tidy and legible even when you need to write in a hurry. 

 Writing notes by hand with the ability to review them on a tablet allows you to be much more flexible. You can illustrate your notes using arrows and lines that connect different ideas from each of your various subtopics and add comments to the side as well. This process saves you both time and improves your memory of the given topic.

 If you have an iPad, there are dozens of outline templates available when using common notetaking apps like Index Card 4 or  Goodnotes.  Most apps can read and duplicate PDFs, allowing for a wide variety of outline options as soon as you find a template that you like.

 Outlines become more efficient, organized, and engaging when going digital. You’ll always have a clear view of what you intend to write in front of you along with features specifically designed to meet your outlining needs.

3 Take Visual Notes 

Drawing improves your memory and recall when taking notes. A study found that participants who were presented with a list of words and asked to either draw or write out each word recalled the drawn words better. 

 Graphic organizers, like tables, charts, graphs, and mind maps, are particularly great for remembering information. They organize your notes in a highly visual way.  

 According to research, graphic organizers are extremely helpful in facilitating the understanding of lecture materials.  They can help students better grasp the relationships between key ideas and concepts by showing those connections in a visual way.

 Drawing to-be-remembered information not only enhances memory but also boosts your academic performance. There are various ways you can draw to remember information, too. 

 For example, one method to try is sketchnoting, where you draw images that represent key concepts. Doodling is known to prevent daydreaming without affecting concentration, resulting in better educational performance.

 Overall visual notes are highly effective for improving memory, comprehension, and focus. Using methods like tables, mind maps, or sketchnotes will likely have great benefits for you. If you’re looking to enhance your performance and note-taking method, then trying any of these visual techniques may be just what you’re looking for.

Going Digital With Visual Notes

If you have an iPad, adding sketches or doodles to your notes can be beneficial. Illustrations can help inspire your creativity, improve engagement, and even help retain your attention during a meeting or class!

 Visually describing your notes using hand-drawn sketches has been proven to help your brain process information more efficiently. This was shown during a study where people who doodled while taking a phone call performed better and recalled 29% more information on a surprise memory test compared to those who did not doodle. 

 There are tons of apps, such as Noteshelf and GoodNotes, designed to enhance your visual notetaking experience. These digital tools allow you to add handwritten notes and sketches to typed documents. This lets you personalize and visualize your notes in a highly efficient way. 

4 Quiz Yourself With Your Notes

Self-testing is a critical learning tool that is often overlooked during exam prep — even by students who practice good study habits.

But self-testing is more than just reviewing notes or previous lectures.  You’ll need specialized tools like guided notes or flashcards to see real success.

This approach can be remarkably effective at improving test scores.  Students who take quizzes before tests have higher exam averages than those who don’t, and self-testing has been proven to raise student academic achievement. In fact, increasing the number of self-testing attempts improves subsequent exam scores, regardless of how well you did on previous self-tests.

Unfortunately, this isn’t true for studying. While studying can help you master a subject, research shows that studying has no effect on delayed recall, but repeated testing produces a hugely positive effect. 

Guided notes and flashcards are a great way to organize your notes because they have one thing in common: self-testing.

Use Guided Notes or Make Good Flashcards  

Guided notes have a positive effect on students, improving the accuracy of notetaking and test scores. They also improve note quality regardless of whether or not other study materials, like lecture slides, are available during a lecture. 

If you’re a student, ask your teacher about using guided notes in the next class! If your teacher doesn’t provide them, post-study tools like flashcards are the best option. You can even use an app like Quizlet to create fill-in-the-blank study tools for fast and easy self-assessment. 

When it comes to flashcards, college students scored higher on exams using them than those who didn’t, proving that repeated retrieval of information is an effective exam preparation strategy. 

Here’s how to create a good flashcard:

1. Either buy a pack of blank flashcards or make your own with some credit card-sized pieces of paper. 

2. Write a question or definition on one side that you are trying to learn.

3. Write the answer on the opposite side.

4. Place the cards in a pack with all the answers facing away from you.

5. Go through the pack one by one, trying to remember the answers to the question/definition on the front side.

Switch to Digital with your Flashcards or Guided Notes 

If you have an iPad, index card apps like Cardflow and Index Card are fantastic options! They have great features for keeping your notes organized, so you don’t have to lug around messy flashcards all day. You can find some other great recommendations right here. Some of these flashcard apps incorporate features such as spaced training and repeated retrieval - essential for remembering. 

When it comes to the best apps for guided notes, give Google Docs, Microsoft OneNote, or Notability a try. They are all great options for creating content-rich guided notes. You can easily integrate a variety of media sources such as images, embedded videos, and other cloud-based files. These are great for supplementing your guided notes sheet and making it a lot more interactive.

Guided notes and index card apps are great for learning and improving recall in general. They are proven to be beneficial for everyone using them. Whichever one you pick to self-test, you’ll start to notice the benefits very quickly.

5 Keep Your Notes In One Place

The cornerstone to organized notes is keeping them all in one place. Once you have found a notetaking system that works for you, take the time to reorganize your workspace.  

 Why?  Because clutter is a huge distraction that can affect your ability to focus. Keeping your notes organized and together saves you time looking everywhere for them. This is a problem both in school and in the workforce.  Information workers, individuals who work exclusively with information, regularly lose up to two hours a week searching for lost digital documents.  

 On its own, clutter causes a lot of stress.  This leads to procrastination, which increases office clutter, which leads to even more stress!  It’s a vicious cycle, which is why keeping everything orderly is a must.  

Some people use a bunch of notebooks to separate things, but that only adds more clutter. For the average office worker or student who needs to find their study notes, this can be chaotic. 

Say no to all those separate notebooks! Instead, sort your notes by subject in a single big notebook or three-ring binder. This lets you easily take pages out, if needed, based on the topic you’re studying. You can also use color labels or dividers to find specific topics.

Keep Your Notes Together Digitally 

Binders and folders can be bulky and are prone to wear and tear. Even composition or spiral notebooks have limited space, and your notes cannot be reorganized. But if you have a digital device, you can create one folder for each class and make sure to regularly sort your notes into the corresponding location.

With an iPad, it’s super easy to organize your notes into segments while keeping them together on the same device. 

 Better yet, look into getting a cloud storage account with Dropbox or Google Drive. Saving all your notes into organized folders in the cloud is by far the most secure and convenient way to keep your notes tidy. 

 Notetaking apps like GoodNotes and Noteshelf can help you organize your work more efficiently by incorporating familiar analog features such as tabs, colorful bookmarks, highlighters, and more. Each adds its own unique touch while keeping your notes optimized. No need to frantically search for where those other notebooks or sticky notes are!

 Mixing notes digitally and on paper can get tedious and overwhelming, so it’s best to find and stick with a system that works best for you!

Better Digital Notetaking with Paperlike

At the end of the day, keeping your notes simple and organized is a simple way to have a less chaotic life.

 Handwritten notes are better than typing on a laptop. Tablets like an iPad combined with a stylus like an Apple Pencil are the best combo for notetaking.

 But writing on a glassy iPad surface can get annoying when your Apple Pencil is sliding all over the screen while you write. 

That’s why Paperlike is a must! Our screen protector for iPad improves notetaking on your iPad by adding increased friction and stroke resistance to your display.

It’s what makes the iPad feel just like taking notes on a real piece of paper and that makes it the perfect companion for getting into digital notetakers everywhere! 

Pick up a Paperlike today and start organizing!