How to Take Smart Notes

When it comes to activities of the mind (such as thinking, reading, learning, and generating ideas), a good structure is more than a project or a goal: it allows you to move smoothly from one activity to another, without jeopardising your concentration, and without losing sight of the whole project. A good structure - one you can really trust - takes the pain out of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you don't have to work to keep everything together in your head, you can start focusing on what's really important: the content, the topic and the ideas. Once you have set yourself up, you are free to immerse yourself in the flow, that is, the state in which you lose track of time, and simply go on with your work without having to make any effort.

But be careful: giving yourself a work structure does not mean "making a plan" that you have to force yourself to stick to. The aim is to create a workflow that unforeseen problems will not get in the way of, but actually help it move forward. Depending on a plan that can be undermined by the arrival of a new idea, or an exciting discovery, is obviously destructive. On the contrary, we need to be able to create a flexible structure capable of "welcoming" any innovations that we might come across along the way.