example of research note cards

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How to Write a Research Paper: Note Cards

–

Back from the library and ready to go

Read your sources and take notes.

After you've gathered your sources, begin reading and taking notes.

Use 3 x 5 index cards, one fact or idea per card. This way related ideas from different sources can be easily grouped together or rearranged.
On each index card, be sure to note the source, including the volume number (if there is one) and the page number. If you wind up using that idea in your paper, you will have the information about the source ready to put in your footnote or endnote.
If you copy something directly from a book without putting it in your own words, put quotation marks around it so that you know it is an exact quotation. This will help you to avoid plagiarism . (For more, see What is Plagiarism? ).
Before you sit down to write your rough draft, organize your note cards by subtopic (you can write headings on the cards) and make an outline.

Check out the differences between these two note cards for a research paper on baseball:

Good note card:

WB, 2, p.133

Many Americans could name every major league player, his batting average, and other accomplishments.

(What batting records were set?)

Bad note card:

Ty Cobb (Detroit Tigers) outfielder one of the great all-time players. Another star was Honus Wagner, a bowlegged shortstop.

"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."

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The Note Card System

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When you are faced with starting a research paper, the most important part of researching and beginning to write is organizing the information and your thoughts. If you are not organized, it will take considerably more time to write the paper.

To make it easy on yourself, you can use an index card system as you gather information. With this method, you categorize the information you find by topic. For each topic, you could have any number of cards from several different sources. Later, as you write your paper, each card topic becomes a body paragraph (supporting idea) in your paper.

Researching

As you find interesting facts about your topic during your research, you should write them down. Each sentence or idea that you find should be paraphrased (summarized in your own words), and written on a card. In order to keep your ideas in order, and to remember where you found the ideas, there are four items that you should include on the index card, as you will see below.

Although it may seem tedious to give each note card a topic name, it serves two purposes:

The source title is the name of the book, magazine, website, etc., in which you found the information. In the previous example, the source was given a number , instead of writing out the entire title. You could write out the title on each card, or simply list your sources on a separate sheet of paper, like the example here. Number your sources on this list, and then use the numbers on the note cards to specify which source provided which fact.

Sample Source List

Remember, this is not a complete works cited, bibliography, or reference page. You will need to add the publication information and use the correct citation format (APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, etc.) for the formal works cited page.

Item number three is the paraphrased information that you found. It is helpful to paraphrase , or summarize , your research on the index cards while you are taking notes. If you are consistent in paraphrasing at this stage, then you will be certain not to accidentally plagiarize someone else’s work. You will also have less work to do when you are actually writing the paper. the image of a notecard with a mark on page.

It is important to be accurate with the page numbers on your note cards, as you will need them for citations throughout your research paper. Be sure you know which form of citation your teacher requires. (For information on citing your sources, look at English Works! handouts on MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian Style citations).

Once you have written the information down on the note cards, you only need to go back and organize your cards by topic. Group together all the cards that have the same topic (i.e. all the cards titled: “ Hughes’ Poetry ” should be together). When you finish, you should have your cards in piles, one topic per pile. You can have any number of piles and any number of cards in each pile. The length and detail of your paper will determine how many piles and cards you have.

Your piles may look like:

Make an Outline and Start Writing

Once you have separated your cards into piles, each topic pile should become a body paragraph in your paper. That is the key to this system. If every topic directly supports your thesis statement, then each topic pile should become a supporting idea, body paragraph, or part of a paragraph in your paper.

But before you actually begin writing, you should make an outline of the order you want to present these topics in your paper. (For help making an outline, see the English Works web page on Pre-writing and Outlines ). Once the outline is complete, use your note cards as guides and begin writing.

For further help on writing a research paper, refer to the English Works! web page Process of Doing a Research Paper , Guide to Developing Thesis Statements , and/or Guide to Writing Introductions and Conclusions .

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How To Make Notecards For Research Paper In Most Effective Way

Many supervisors, mentors, and teachers recommend their students and apprentices use research note cards while writing research papers. Notecards could be a great tool to organize your word and elements of research.

Note cards might seem like an old and outdated research method, but they still work. They do more than be a tool for you. Notecards help you organize your thoughts that are beneficial in your research and beyond. Let’s talk about some tips and tricks on how to make notecards for research papers.

Table of Contents

Why And How To Make Notecards For Research Paper?

With research note cards, it is easier to track your citations. When citing a source in your dissertation, you can write the source’s name on the note card and add the page number where you found the information. This way, you can quickly find the needed information.

Before writing notecards, look at all the information to write your research document. Once you know basic ideas, gather the main points of your research. Preferably, a 3″ x5″ note card would do your bidding.

Also, notecards look fantastic, and even if they’re scattered around the room, they would add an aesthetic touch to your room rather than making it look messy. Writing notecards will help you stay organized and write a research paper fast .

Steps Towards Writing Notecards For Research

Here are steps to write perfect notecards for your research paper.

Get Yourself a Pack Of Fresh, Nice Smelling Notecards

When you think of how to make notecards for a research paper, the first thing that will pop up in your mind is: Where are the research note cards? For a dissertation, we will need a lot of them. Try to get some extra. That way, even if you grow short, you will have a new bundle to open and save time during your research process.

Gather More Ideas Than You Need

The more is always safe. It will be great to gather as many ideas and sources as possible when you have the best research topic . It is the quality of a great writer to always cite sources . It’s easier than ever to collect sources from the Internet as many as possible. The Internet is like an infinite library. When you have more data, sources, and ideas, you will have more choices to filter out the best. For example, you are writing an outline for your dissertation and adding critical points that you are about to discuss. You have twenty key points written on your notecards. When you reconsider and filter out the best, you will probably have half of them left, which is close to ten.

Shortlist The Sources

You have a lot of ideas and a lot of sources written on your notecards. Could you have a look at them again? Now you see that not all ideas sound impeccable anymore. You can take those notecards out, leaving you with the best of them. How easier was it with notecards? Imagine if you were doing this filtration process without notecards. You would have to write a whole new draft for this.

Use A Full Notecard For Each Idea

Remember we talked about getting extra notecards? Now you understand why. Every notecard must be devoted to a single idea. Using a separate note card for each citation, source, or quote would be best. Using one card for more than one idea will cause leaving out essential details. It will also confuse you and make you double-minded. Whatever the page number is, making index cards would always help. Whether you’re researching a 10-page research document or writing a thesis for a research paper , every notecard must consist of a single idea, be it your own words or some text from a resource.

Write Down The Quotes

In the history of research, quoting and paraphrasing can be great tools to make your paper authentic and reliable. Please use separate notecards to include quotes. A direct statement in quotation marks or creating a bunch of them can make your research look more authentic. Note cards will help you remember where or when you will use them.

Label and Number The Note cards

Labeling and numbering note cards help you avoid trouble and confusion. Imagine the mess if your notecards suddenly fall out of your table and get scattered. It would be like having all your work wasted. You will need hours to reorganize them. Labeling and giving numbers will help you sort them and use them at the exact moment you are going to need them. If your note cards are all labeled and aligned, they can tell you a lot about how to organize your research paper as well.

Include Every Attribute / Aspect

A notecard must include every aspect of the source or citation you will use. Let’s create an outline of those factors. A notecard will typically include these necessary points:

Name of The Author
The Topic / Title of The Citation
The Book / Paper that is cited
Exact Number Of The Page
Other contributors
Editions / Versions / Volume
Date of Publication

Let us discuss one trick that will help you beyond writing research papers . It will help you in real life too. Whenever you do or say anything, ask yourself first:

Is it necessary?

The same goes for note cards. Only include what’s necessary.

Don’t Use Abbreviations Or Acronyms

When we are talking about how to make notecards for a research paper, our writers will disapprove of using abbreviations or acronyms. One abbreviation might have more than one meaning. The same goes for acronyms. This can lead to confusion. Staying accurate is the ultimate goal.

Now you can see that creating note cards for your dissertation is not rocket science if you have the right guide and Academic writing service . We also learned that note cards are not as old as some might say, and they can help you get the best out of your research. However, if you still need clarification about how to make notecards for a research paper, wait to lose your heart. You can contact us , and we can provide valuable insights we have learned while writing research over the years.

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SCC Research Guides

Organizing Your Research

Research Note Cards

You may have used Research Note Cards in the past to help your organize information for a research paper. Research Note Cards have you write out quotes or paraphrased information on a note card and include information such as the topic of the source and where you found the source.

There are five parts to Research Note Cards:

This is going to be the main idea from your research assignment that your quote will connect to. Creating and organizing your information will make it easier to focus your research and complete your assignment.
This will be the name of the source that your information is from.
This will be either the quote or your paraphrased sentence(s) from the source. What evidence in this source did you find that will support your thesis statement?
This is the page number that you found the quote on. If your source does not have page numbers (like an internet source)you can either leave this blank of include the section of the online source that you found this information in.
Include the complete citation for your source on the back of the note card.

*Note: It is important to only put one quote or paraphrase per note card.

In the top left corner of the note card is the topic that the quote relates to in the research paper.

Underneath the topic in the top left corner of the note card is an abbreviated name of the source this quote came from.

In the center of the note card is the quote/paraphrased information from the source.

In the bottom right corner of the note card is the page number the information came from.

On the back of the note card is the full citation for the source.

*Note: Keep in mind, your note card might not be organized the exact same way as the example. That is okay, as long as you make sure you have all the information needed listed on the note card.

Because the quotes and paraphrases are on their own note card, you can group and reorder them in the way you want them to appear in your research paper.

Use the topic at the top of each note card to group cards by subject.
Put the groups in the order they should appear in your paper to support your thesis.
Within each group of note cards, order the note cards in the way they'll appear in each paragraph of your paper.
Think about the order information needs to be presented in order to build a case for your thesis.

Once everything is organized by topic and in order, you will have created a map or guide to follow when writing your paper. It may also allow you to spot holes in your reasoning or evidence -- you can then return to your sources (or find additional sources) to fill in the needed information.

Work Cited

"The Note Card System." Gallaudet University , 2021, www.gallaudet.edu/tutorial-and-instructional-programs/english-center/the-process-and-type-of-writing/pre-writing-writing-and-revising/the-note-card-system/.

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Types of Note Cards

13.5 Research Process: Making Notes, Synthesizing Information, and Keeping a Research Log

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Employ the methods and technologies commonly used for research and communication within various fields.
Practice and apply strategies such as interpretation, synthesis, response, and critique to compose texts that integrate the writer’s ideas with those from appropriate sources.
Analyze and make informed decisions about intellectual property based on the concepts that motivate them.
Apply citation conventions systematically.

As you conduct research, you will work with a range of “texts” in various forms, including sources and documents from online databases as well as images, audio, and video files from the Internet. You may also work with archival materials and with transcribed and analyzed primary data. Additionally, you will be taking notes and recording quotations from secondary sources as you find materials that shape your understanding of your topic and, at the same time, provide you with facts and perspectives. You also may download articles as PDFs that you then annotate. Like many other students, you may find it challenging to keep so much material organized, accessible, and easy to work with while you write a major research paper. As it does for many of those students, a research log for your ideas and sources will help you keep track of the scope, purpose, and possibilities of any research project.

A research log is essentially a journal in which you collect information, ask questions, and monitor the results. Even if you are completing the annotated bibliography for Writing Process: Informing and Analyzing , keeping a research log is an effective organizational tool. Like Lily Tran’s research log entry, most entries have three parts: a part for notes on secondary sources, a part for connections to the thesis or main points, and a part for your own notes or questions. Record source notes by date, and allow room to add cross-references to other entries.

Summary of Assignment: Research Log

Your assignment is to create a research log similar to the student model. You will use it for the argumentative research project assigned in Writing Process: Integrating Research to record all secondary source information: your notes, complete publication data, relation to thesis, and other information as indicated in the right-hand column of the sample entry.

Another Lens. A somewhat different approach to maintaining a research log is to customize it to your needs or preferences. You can apply shading or color coding to headers, rows, and/or columns in the three-column format (for colors and shading). Or you can add columns to accommodate more information, analysis, synthesis, or commentary, formatting them as you wish. Consider adding a column for questions only or one for connections to other sources. Finally, consider a different visual format , such as one without columns. Another possibility is to record some of your comments and questions so that you have an aural rather than a written record of these.

Writing Center

At this point, or at any other point during the research and writing process, you may find that your school’s writing center can provide extensive assistance. If you are unfamiliar with the writing center, now is a good time to pay your first visit. Writing centers provide free peer tutoring for all types and phases of writing. Discussing your research with a trained writing center tutor can help you clarify, analyze, and connect ideas as well as provide feedback on works in progress.

Quick Launch: Beginning Questions

You may begin your research log with some open pages in which you freewrite, exploring answers to the following questions. Although you generally would do this at the beginning, it is a process to which you likely will return as you find more information about your topic and as your focus changes, as it may during the course of your research.

What information have I found so far?
What do I still need to find?
Where am I most likely to find it?

These are beginning questions. Like Lily Tran, however, you will come across general questions or issues that a quick note or freewrite may help you resolve. The key to this section is to revisit it regularly. Written answers to these and other self-generated questions in your log clarify your tasks as you go along, helping you articulate ideas and examine supporting evidence critically. As you move further into the process, consider answering the following questions in your freewrite:

What evidence looks as though it best supports my thesis?
What evidence challenges my working thesis?
How is my thesis changing from where it started?

Creating the Research Log

As you gather source material for your argumentative research paper, keep in mind that the research is intended to support original thinking. That is, you are not writing an informational report in which you simply supply facts to readers. Instead, you are writing to support a thesis that shows original thinking, and you are collecting and incorporating research into your paper to support that thinking. Therefore, a research log, whether digital or handwritten, is a great way to keep track of your thinking as well as your notes and bibliographic information.

In the model below, Lily Tran records the correct MLA bibliographic citation for the source. Then, she records a note and includes the in-text citation here to avoid having to retrieve this information later. Perhaps most important, Tran records why she noted this information—how it supports her thesis: The human race must turn to sustainable food systems that provide healthy diets with minimal environmental impact, starting now . Finally, she makes a note to herself about an additional visual to include in the final paper to reinforce the point regarding the current pressure on food systems. And she connects the information to other information she finds, thus cross-referencing and establishing a possible synthesis. Use a format similar to that in Table 13.4 to begin your own research log.


6/06/2021 It has been estimated, for example, that by 2050, milk production will increase 58 percent and meat production 73 percent (Chai).	Shows the pressure being put on food systems that will cause the need for more sustainable systems	Maybe include a graph showing the rising pressure on food systems. Connects to similar predictions about produce and vegan diets. See Lynch et al.
Chai, Bingil Clark, et al. “Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets.” , vol. 11, no. 15, 2019, . Accessed 6 Dec. 2020.

Types of Research Notes

Taking good notes will make the research process easier by enabling you to locate and remember sources and use them effectively. While some research projects requiring only a few sources may seem easily tracked, research projects requiring more than a few sources are more effectively managed when you take good bibliographic and informational notes. As you gather evidence for your argumentative research paper, follow the descriptions and the electronic model to record your notes. You can combine these with your research log, or you can use the research log for secondary sources and your own note-taking system for primary sources if a division of this kind is helpful. Either way, be sure to include all necessary information.

Bibliographic Notes

These identify the source you are using. When you locate a useful source, record the information necessary to find that source again. It is important to do this as you find each source, even before taking notes from it. If you create bibliographic notes as you go along, then you can easily arrange them in alphabetical order later to prepare the reference list required at the end of formal academic papers. If your instructor requires you to use MLA formatting for your essay, be sure to record the following information:

Title of source
Title of container (larger work in which source is included)
Other contributors
Publication date

When using MLA style with online sources, also record the following information:

Date of original publication
Date of access
DOI (A DOI, or digital object identifier, is a series of digits and letters that leads to the location of an online source. Articles in journals are often assigned DOIs to ensure that the source can be located, even if the URL changes. If your source is listed with a DOI, use that instead of a URL.)

It is important to understand which documentation style your instructor will require you to use. Check the Handbook for MLA Documentation and Format and APA Documentation and Format styles . In addition, you can check the style guide information provided by the Purdue Online Writing Lab .

Informational Notes

These notes record the relevant information found in your sources. When writing your essay, you will work from these notes, so be sure they contain all the information you need from every source you intend to use. Also try to focus your notes on your research question so that their relevance is clear when you read them later. To avoid confusion, work with separate entries for each piece of information recorded. At the top of each entry, identify the source through brief bibliographic identification (author and title), and note the page numbers on which the information appears. Also helpful is to add personal notes, including ideas for possible use of the information or cross-references to other information. As noted in Writing Process: Integrating Research , you will be using a variety of formats when borrowing from sources. Below is a quick review of these formats in terms of note-taking processes. By clarifying whether you are quoting directly, paraphrasing, or summarizing during these stages, you can record information accurately and thus take steps to avoid plagiarism.

Direct Quotations, Paraphrases, and Summaries

A direct quotation is an exact duplication of the author’s words as they appear in the original source. In your notes, put quotation marks around direct quotations so that you remember these words are the author’s, not yours. One advantage of copying exact quotations is that it allows you to decide later whether to include a quotation, paraphrase, or summary. ln general, though, use direct quotations only when the author’s words are particularly lively or persuasive.

A paraphrase is a restatement of the author’s words in your own words. Paraphrase to simplify or clarify the original author’s point. In your notes, use paraphrases when you need to record details but not exact words.

A summary is a brief condensation or distillation of the main point and most important details of the original source. Write a summary in your own words, with facts and ideas accurately represented. A summary is useful when specific details in the source are unimportant or irrelevant to your research question. You may find you can summarize several paragraphs or even an entire article or chapter in just a few sentences without losing useful information. It is a good idea to note when your entry contains a summary to remind you later that it omits detailed information. See Writing Process Integrating Research for more detailed information and examples of quotations, paraphrases, and summaries and when to use them.

Other Systems for Organizing Research Logs and Digital Note-Taking

Students often become frustrated and at times overwhelmed by the quantity of materials to be managed in the research process. If this is your first time working with both primary and secondary sources, finding ways to keep all of the information in one place and well organized is essential.

Because gathering primary evidence may be a relatively new practice, this section is designed to help you navigate the process. As mentioned earlier, information gathered in fieldwork is not cataloged, organized, indexed, or shelved for your convenience. Obtaining it requires diligence, energy, and planning. Online resources can assist you with keeping a research log. Your college library may have subscriptions to tools such as Todoist or EndNote. Consult with a librarian to find out whether you have access to any of these. If not, use something like the template shown in Figure 13.8 , or another like it, as a template for creating your own research notes and organizational tool. You will need to have a record of all field research data as well as the research log for all secondary sources.

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9 Organizing Research: Taking and Keeping Effective Notes

Once you’ve located the right primary and secondary sources, it’s time to glean all the information you can from them. In this chapter, you’ll first get some tips on taking and organizing notes. The second part addresses how to approach the sort of intermediary assignments (such as book reviews) that are often part of a history course.

Honing your own strategy for organizing your primary and secondary research is a pathway to less stress and better paper success. Moreover, if you can find the method that helps you best organize your notes, these methods can be applied to research you do for any of your classes.

Before the personal computing revolution, most historians labored through archives and primary documents and wrote down their notes on index cards, and then found innovative ways to organize them for their purposes. When doing secondary research, historians often utilized (and many still do) pen and paper for taking notes on secondary sources. With the advent of digital photography and useful note-taking tools like OneNote, some of these older methods have been phased out – though some persist. And, most importantly, once you start using some of the newer techniques below, you may find that you are a little “old school,” and might opt to integrate some of the older techniques with newer technology.

Whether you choose to use a low-tech method of taking and organizing your notes or an app that will help you organize your research, here are a few pointers for good note-taking.

Principles of note-taking

If you are going low-tech, choose a method that prevents a loss of any notes. Perhaps use one spiral notebook, or an accordion folder, that will keep everything for your project in one space. If you end up taking notes away from your notebook or folder, replace them—or tape them onto blank pages if you are using a notebook—as soon as possible.
If you are going high-tech, pick one application and stick with it. Using a cloud-based app, including one that you can download to your smart phone, will allow you to keep adding to your notes even if you find yourself with time to take notes unexpectedly.
When taking notes, whether you’re using 3X5 note cards or using an app described below, write down the author and a shortened title for the publication, along with the page number on EVERY card. We can’t emphasize this point enough; writing down the bibliographic information the first time and repeatedly will save you loads of time later when you are writing your paper and must cite all key information.
Include keywords or “tags” that capture why you thought to take down this information in a consistent place on each note card (and when using the apps described below). If you are writing a paper about why Martin Luther King, Jr., became a successful Civil Rights movement leader, for example, you may have a few theories as you read his speeches or how those around him described his leadership. Those theories—religious beliefs, choice of lieutenants, understanding of Gandhi—might become the tags you put on each note card.
Note-taking applications can help organize tags for you, but if you are going low tech, a good idea is to put tags on the left side of a note card, and bibliographic info on the right side.

Organizing research- applications that can help

Using images in research.

If you are in an archive: make your first picture one that includes the formal collection name, the box number, the folder name and call numbe r and anything else that would help you relocate this information if you or someone else needed to. Do this BEFORE you start taking photos of what is in the folder.
If you are photographing a book or something you may need to return to the library: take a picture of all the front matter (the title page, the page behind the title with all the publication information, maybe even the table of contents).

Once you have recorded where you find it, resist the urge to rename these photographs. By renaming them, they may be re-ordered and you might forget where you found them. Instead, use tags for your own purposes, and carefully name and date the folder into which the photographs were automatically sorted. There is one free, open-source program, Tropy , which is designed to help organize photos taken in archives, as well as tag, annotate, and organize them. It was developed and is supported by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is free to download, and you can find it here: https://tropy.org/ ; it is not, however, cloud-based, so you should back up your photos. In other cases, if an archive doesn’t allow photography (this is highly unlikely if you’ve made the trip to the archive), you might have a laptop on hand so that you can transcribe crucial documents.

Using note or project-organizing apps

When you have the time to sit down and begin taking notes on your primary sources, you can annotate your photos in Tropy. Alternatively, OneNote, which is cloud-based, can serve as a way to organize your research. OneNote allows you to create separate “Notebooks” for various projects, but this doesn’t preclude you from searching for terms or tags across projects if the need ever arises. Within each project you can start new tabs, say, for each different collection that you have documents from, or you can start new tabs for different themes that you are investigating. Just as in Tropy, as you go through taking notes on your documents you can create your own “tags” and place them wherever you want in the notes.

Another powerful, free tool to help organize research, especially secondary research though not exclusively, is Zotero found @ https://www.zotero.org/ . Once downloaded, you can begin to save sources (and their URL) that you find on the internet to Zotero. You can create main folders for each major project that you have and then subfolders for various themes if you would like. Just like the other software mentioned, you can create notes and tags about each source, and Zotero can also be used to create bibliographies in the precise format that you will be using. Obviously, this function is super useful when doing a long-term, expansive project like a thesis or dissertation.

How History is Made: A Student’s Guide to Reading, Writing, and Thinking in the Discipline Copyright © 2022 by Stephanie Cole; Kimberly Breuer; Scott W. Palmer; and Brandon Blakeslee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Do Research: A Step-By-Step Guide: 4a. Take Notes

Get Started
1a. Select a Topic
1b. Develop Research Questions
1c. Identify Keywords
1d. Find Background Information
1e. Refine a Topic
2a. Search Strategies
2d. Articles
2e. Videos & Images
2f. Databases
2g. Websites
2h. Grey Literature
2i. Open Access Materials
3a. Evaluate Sources
3b. Primary vs. Secondary
3c. Types of Periodicals
4a. Take Notes
4b. Outline the Paper
4c. Incorporate Source Material
5a. Avoid Plagiarism
5b. Zotero & MyBib
5c. MLA Formatting
5d. MLA Citation Examples
5e. APA Formatting
5f. APA Citation Examples
5g. Annotated Bibliographies

Note Taking in Bibliographic Management Tools

We encourage students to use bibliographic citation management tools (such as Zotero, EasyBib and RefWorks) to keep track of their research citations. Each service includes a note-taking function. Find more information about citation management tools here . Whether or not you're using one of these, the tips below will help you.

Tips for Taking Notes Electronically

Try using a bibliographic citation management tool to keep track of your sources and to take notes.
As you add sources, put them in the format you're using (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.).
Group sources by publication type (i.e., book, article, website).
Number each source within the publication type group.
For websites, include the URL information and the date you accessed each site.
Next to each idea, include the source number from the Works Cited file and the page number from the source. See the examples below. Note that #A5 and #B2 refer to article source 5 and book source 2 from the Works Cited file.

#A5 p.35: 76.69% of the hyperlinks selected from homepage are for articles and the catalog #B2 p.76: online library guides evolved from the paper pathfinders of the 1960s

When done taking notes, assign keywords or sub-topic headings to each idea, quote or summary.
Use the copy and paste feature to group keywords or sub-topic ideas together.
Back up your master list and note files frequently!

Tips for Taking Notes by Hand

Use index cards to keep notes and track sources used in your paper.
Include the citation (i.e., author, title, publisher, date, page numbers, etc.) in the format you're using. It will be easier to organize the sources alphabetically when creating the Works Cited page.
Number the source cards.
Use only one side to record a single idea, fact or quote from one source. It will be easier to rearrange them later when it comes time to organize your paper.
Include a heading or key words at the top of the card.
Include the Work Cited source card number.
Include the page number where you found the information.
Use abbreviations, acronyms, or incomplete sentences to record information to speed up the notetaking process.
Write down only the information that answers your research questions.
Use symbols, diagrams, charts or drawings to simplify and visualize ideas.

Forms of Notetaking

Use one of these notetaking forms to capture information:

Summarize : Capture the main ideas of the source succinctly by restating them in your own words.
Paraphrase : Restate the author's ideas in your own words.
Quote : Copy the quotation exactly as it appears in the original source. Put quotation marks around the text and note the name of the person you are quoting.

Example of a Work Cited Card

Example notecard.

<< Previous: Step 4: Write
Next: 4b. Outline the Paper >>
Last Updated: Jun 26, 2024 1:37 PM
URL: https://libguides.elmira.edu/research

Making Note Cards

Ask these questions:

How do I do it?

1. Write the subtopic heading of the note at the top of each note card. (see Tip Sheet 11: Creating Subtopic Headings )

2. Write only one main point on a note card

3. Only write information directly related to your Statement of Purpose. (see Tip Sheet 9: Writing a Statement of Purpose )

4. Write only essential words, abbreviate when possible.

5. Be accurate: double check direct quotes and statistics.

6. Identify direct quotes with quotation marks and the person's name.

7. Bracket your own words [ ] when you add them into a quote.

8. Use ellipsis points (...) where you leave out non-essential words from a quote.

9. Distinguish between 'fact' and 'opinion'.

10. Include the source's number on the card (see Tip Sheet 4: Making Source Cards )

11. Write the page number of the source after the note.

12. Use the word 'over' to indicate information on the back of the card.

Sample note card:

Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.

Conferences and Talks
Exploring models of electronic wastes governance in the United States and Mexico: Recycling, risk and environmental justice
The Collaborative Resource Governance Lab (CoReGovLab)
Water Conflicts in Mexico: A Multi-Method Approach
Past projects
Publications and scholarly output
Research Interests
Higher education and academia
Public administration, public policy and public management research
Research-oriented blog posts
Stuff about research methods
Research trajectory
Publications
Developing a Writing Practice
Outlining Papers
Publishing strategies
Writing a book manuscript
Writing a research paper, book chapter or dissertation/thesis chapter
Everything Notebook
Literature Reviews
Note-Taking Techniques
Organization and Time Management
Planning Methods and Approaches
Qualitative Methods, Qualitative Research, Qualitative Analysis
Reading Notes of Books
Reading Strategies
Teaching Public Policy, Public Administration and Public Management
My Reading Notes of Books on How to Write a Doctoral Dissertation/How to Conduct PhD Research
Writing a Thesis (Undergraduate or Masters) or a Dissertation (PhD)
Reading strategies for undergraduates
Social Media in Academia
Resources for Job Seekers in the Academic Market
Writing Groups and Retreats
Regional Development (Fall 2015)
State and Local Government (Fall 2015)
Public Policy Analysis (Fall 2016)
Regional Development (Fall 2016)
Public Policy Analysis (Fall 2018)
Public Policy Analysis (Fall 2019)
Public Policy Analysis (Spring 2016)
POLI 351 Environmental Policy and Politics (Summer Session 2011)
POLI 352 Comparative Politics of Public Policy (Term 2)
POLI 375A Global Environmental Politics (Term 2)
POLI 350A Public Policy (Term 2)
POLI 351 Environmental Policy and Politics (Term 1)
POLI 332 Latin American Environmental Politics (Term 2, Spring 2012)
POLI 350A Public Policy (Term 1, Sep-Dec 2011)
POLI 375A Global Environmental Politics (Term 1, Sep-Dec 2011)

Note-taking techniques I: The index card method

I graduated with my PhD years ago and I’ve been a professor for a pretty long time, so I thought that maybe I needed to settle down and clarify my ideas of the process I follow to take notes. In this series, I will share my processes to take notes using different methods. The very first method I use is the Index Cards Method. Other authors have referred to the process Niklas Luhman followed ( Zettelkasten ). Hawk Sugano has shared his Pile of Index Cards (PoIC) method as well. Mine isn’t all that sophisticated, and since I combine my very analog Everything Notebook and notes in index cards with digital synthetic notes , memorandums , Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dumps , and Evernote , I don’t know that my system would be extraordinarily systematic. But here goes more or less how it works.

People have asked me if you could digitize (or make analogous) all my processes. Of course. What I call synthetic notes (summaries of articles, books) can be done in traditional index cards. And the reverse, you can digitally store these in Evernote. Make sure to note page number pic.twitter.com/6MyK9MWtyU — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 26, 2018

I produce at least 5 different types of index cards, which are more or less the same categories other folks have all agreed upon. Here are some resources on taking notes in index cards that I found useful as I was trying to make sense of my own system.

1. The Direct Quotations Index Card I use index cards to write direct quotations (with page number and full bibliographic reference) from articles, books and book chapters I find useful. This card is the analog equivalent of my Synthetic Note method .

I am more used to writing index cards of books than of articles. I usually write important quotations but other times I summarize chapters or the entire book. pic.twitter.com/tMUdmyabR3 — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

2. The Bibliographic Reference Index Card It’s rare that I do this one anymore because I have been using Mendeley and EndNote as reference managers for more than 15 years, but this was my study method and strategy to conduct research before: I would write the full bibliographic reference in a 3″x5″ index card. Then I would write a small paragraph on the back summarizing the entire book, or at least, the main idea behind it.

This is an example of “bibliographic index card” – it’s basically the full citation plus keywords. It is VERY rare that I use an index card purely for bibliographic data as I use Mendeley, but it’s still worth discussing. pic.twitter.com/w5MZ6fTfMZ — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2018

3. The One Idea Index Card I find that these are useful for when you’re studying for an exam, testing your ability to recall, or when you’re giving a talk without reading a set of Power Point slides (e.g. when you’re leading a seminar, using each card as a theme for the seminar). I also use them to remind me of key authors who discuss particular themes and topics.

Some people use the 3"x5" index cards to write one major idea (theme) and a couple of sentences about it, like I do: pic.twitter.com/kDiDFgBjDZ — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 28, 2018

As I said on Twitter, this is very rare for me to do, and I usually combine my own types.

Some people recommend writing JUST ONE IDEA/quotation per index card. I don’t do this. I use 1 index card per article, and per book chapter. If a book has 9 chapters I write one for each chapter (more of chapter is very dense). Note this paper by @rioconpiedras on nonhuman agency pic.twitter.com/IFbCMpNB28 — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

4. The Summary Index Card This type of index card is a summary of a particular journal article, or book chapter, more than of an entire book.

I also write index cards of journal articles, particularly when I feel that they’re particularly powerful or relevant to my research. As you can see, this index card shows my notes of this article rather than direct quotations. pic.twitter.com/XTUHzmQdpJ — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

5. The Combined (or Content) Index Card

As its name indicates, the Content Index Card is a combination type of index card that includes direct quotations, draft notes and ideas, conceptual diagrams, etc. that are all associated with the main article, book chapter or book discussed in the index card. I use larger (5″ x 8″) index cards for those cases.

This is what some people call a “combined” or “content” index card. Note I included direct quotations (with page #s ) from Debbané and @rkeil ’s paper but I *also* write my own thoughts (e.g. “this paper converses with @andrewbiro and his social construction of scale paper” pic.twitter.com/dgkhh9lgpB — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

There are obvious questions that people ask me, so I’ll try to answer them here.

1. Can you do digital index cards? For sure. You can either do combinations as I do (physical index cards, then row entry in a Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump row), or all digital (either in Evernote or simply in Excel, or synthetic notes or memorandums in Word or Scrivener as you may choose).

You can do digital or analog, or a combination, whatever suits you best. I combine, because I find that as I write on an index card, by hand, new ideas come to me. When I read full books, I write copious synthetic notes and then write a row entry in my Excel Dump. pic.twitter.com/IRCZSzgBls — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 26, 2018

When I designed my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump, I made sure to include a column with the Quotation and another with the Page Number. This is important because as we know, plagiarism is bad, terrible citation practice, and can lead to degree termination/career ending! pic.twitter.com/VDGgjAjZ2z — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 26, 2018

2. How do you store and classify index cards? I usually have boxes that fit my index cards, and add a plastic tab with the reference in Author (Date) format. Other people use different classification systems (by keyword, by topic, by author). I just recommend that the process be consistent across.

If you like the index card by hand method you may want to use plastic tabs and label each index card and store them in a box pic.twitter.com/QxNy1HW7Gr — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

3. When should I use memorandums and synthetic notes and Excel Dumps, when should I write in my Everything Notebook, when should I craft index cards?

This question has such a personal preference type of answer.

If I'm on a plane to Santiago, 8 hours by plane, my laptop battery lasts 3 hours, no chargers on plane – if I want to be awake and work on the plane, I need to write by hand, either in my Everything Notebook or on index cards. Also, if I feel mentally blocked, I write index cards — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

I'm always stressed and under pressure to write, submit, revise and publish papers, but I have slowly come to the realization that it's better to let my thinking simmer and evolve, and mull ideas over, and writing by hand helps me do exactly that. So, yes, I do write index cards. — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

Can all this process be digital? Sure thing. Even a combination can work. You could scan your index cards into an optical character recognition thingie and store the digital content into Evernote, tag it and easily search through your bank of notes. Or you could simply type them. — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

4. What size of index card should I use? This is again, a personal preference as I note in my tweet below.

I have index cards in 3 sizes: 3”x5” (for quick ideas, but could be used as bibliographic reference cards), 4”x6” (for quotations from journal articles and summaries), and 5”x8” (for full books or very dense articles and book chapters) pic.twitter.com/L9qZYStZa2 — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 27, 2018

I do teach my students the Index Card Method of Note-Taking because I believe it is important to learn the old-school techniques, but also because I find that it helps me, and I strongly believe that if it helps ME, then it may also help THEM. In subsequent blog posts I’ll share some of my note-taking techniques when using my Everything Notebook, and other types of media.

You may be interested in my other posts on taking notes, which you can access by clicking on this link .

You can share this blog post on the following social networks by clicking on their icon.

Posted in academia , writing .

Tagged with index cards , note-taking , taking notes .

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 28, 2018

2 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post .

I’m going to try this method. How do you store different sized cards? How do you find what you are looking for? Do you put tabs on them all?

Dear Dr @RaulPacheco-Vega. I would like to appreciate you for the frequent advice and for sharing useful material. To be honest, I bought index cards while I was working on my PhD but I never used them. I think it was because I was unfamiliar. After going through this blog post, I am thinking of getting them and I am hoping to share my experience soon

About Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD

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Organizing Your Research: Research Note Cards

Research note cards.

Research Source Table
Research Outlines
Recommended Resources
Ask a Librarian

There are five parts to Research Note Cards:

This is going to be the main idea from your research assignment that your quote will connect to. Creating and organizing your information will make it easier to focus your research and complete your assignment.
This will be the name of the source that your information is from.
This will be either the quote or your paraphrased sentence(s) from the source. What evidence in this source did you find that will support your thesis statement?
This is the page number that you found the quote on. If your source does not have page numbers (like an internet source)you can either leave this blank of include the section of the online source that you found this information in.
Include the complete citation for your source (whether it be MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) on the back of the note card.

*Note: It is important to only put one quote or paraphrase per note card.

Example Note Card

In the top left corner of the note card is the topic that the quote relates to in the research paper.

Underneath the topic in the top left corner of the note card is an abbreviated name of the source this quote came from.

In the center of the note card is the quote/paraphrased information from the source.

In the bottom right corner of the note card is the page number the information came from.

On the back of the note card is the full citation for the source.

*Note: Keep in mind, your note card might not be organized the exact same way as the example. That is okay, as long as you make sure you have all the information needed listed on the note card.

Because the quotes and paraphrases are on their own note card, you can group and reorder them in the way you want them to appear in your research paper.

Use the topic at the top of each note card to group cards by subject.
Put the groups in the order they should appear in your paper to support your thesis.
Within each group of note cards, order the note cards in the way they'll appear in each paragraph of your paper.
Think about the order information needs to be presented in order to build a case for your thesis.

Work Cited

<< Previous: Home
Next: Research Source Table >>
Last Updated: Jun 21, 2023 10:48 AM
URL: https://uscupstate.libguides.com/researchorganization

The note card system

The note card system organizes research notes on 3×5 inch or 5×7 inch index cards. The system has been a staple for researchers for decades and is still recommended by researchers and instructors as a great way to organize your research notes. However, even if you do not use actual index cards, the method of organizing and sorting notes still proves useful.

“Good notes and critical reading lead you to more sources, inspire new ideas, and pave the way toward sound conclusions. Knowing how to take good notes saves you headaches down the road, as you’ll know when and whom to cite and have clear ideas about the relationships that exist between your documents.” — William Cronon

The Research Note Card

So how do you turn an index card into a research note card? Well, it so happens that there are simple rules to follow:

One Source Per Card

Clearly identify the source or document from which you take the note. Relating each note to a single source helps you later when it comes time to cite your sources.

One Item Per Card

Try to limit your note to a specific idea or quotation. Concise notes make it easier to rely on the note cards to create outlines and organize your writing.

Label Each Card

Keywords make it easy to track the content of your note cards. When it is time to write, the key words give you ideas on how to group and organize your cards.

Write a Complete Note

Make it clear whether a note is paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting directly, or recording your own thoughts and analysis. Taking this action greatly reduces the chances of unintentional plagiarism. Additionally, full notes helps you gather your thoughts as you write.

Use Quotation Marks When Quoting

Just in case it wasn’t already clear: use quotation marks to protect against plagiarism. This is by far the easiest what to know when the text you see came from you or from someone else.

The Source Card

Source cards are all about looking ahead. In this case, looking ahead to when it is time to write and cite sources. Recording bibliographical data before you start taking notes helps avoid plagiarism and saves time when it is time to compile a bibliography.

Making Note Cards Better

Ilaro is a database for note cards. Ilaro works to combine the best parts of the note card system with the intuitiveness and power of iOS. In addition to providing note cards and source cards, Ilaro improves the note card system with additions such as cards for both authors and subjects.

The Author Card

Author cards let you see, at a glance, the sources that person has authored or edited. Ilaro’s author card also allows you to see which subjects you have related to that author.

The card displays the relationships across all your notes in all of your projects. If you select a project, then the card displays the relationships just within the selected project. If you select more than one project, then the Ilaro author card will generate and display the combined data for every selected project!

The Subject Card

Future Ilaro development will enhance research workflows by adding key features for organizing note cards and moving your research to the writing process.

More About the Note Card System and Research Note-Taking

The Craft of Research by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th Edition by Kate L. Turabian.

The Study Guides and Strategies Website . The Learning Historical Research website by historian William Cronon. Purdue Online Writing Lab .

The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read, Watch, and Listen To

Below, I am going to explain my adapted version of the notecard system. The structure, like the system, is not sequential, so click the links and jump around if you wish. And there are a lot of pictures and examples throughout, so don’t let the scroll bar deceive you—it’s not that long.

Who Needs The Notecard System? — my answer to, who should implement the notecard system? Who shouldn’t?
Note-taking Principles — the 5 core principles underlying my note-taking process.
The Notecard System — how I capture stories, ideas, and research I come across when I read books and articles, listen to podcasts, and watch documentaries and YouTube videos.
Frequently Asked Questions — answers to the questions I frequently get asked.
Other People Who You Use The Notecard System — resources to read about and learn from other people who use the notecard system.
Conclusion — a closing argument for The Notecard System and what you get out of it.

I. Who Needs The Notecard System?

“The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.” — Goethe

In Game 1 of the 2018 Eastern Conference NBA finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Boston Celtics 108-83. After the game, Cavaliers’ star Lebron James was asked about a stretch where the Celtics scored seven straight points. What happened there? the reported asked

What happened? James repeated back to the reporter . He pauses, seems like he might dismiss the banal question, then perfectly recalls, “The first possession, we ran them down all the way to 2 [seconds] on the shot clock. [The Celtics’] Marcus Morris missed a jump shot. He followed it up, they got a dunk. We came back down, we ran a set for Jordan Clarkson. He came off and missed it. They rebounded it. We came back on the defensive end, and we got a stop. They took it out on the sideline. Jason Tatum took the ball out, threw it to Marcus Smart in the short corner, he made a three. We come down, miss another shot. And then Tatum came down and went ninety-four feet, did a Eurostep and made a right-hand layup. [We called a] timeout.” The other reporters in the room laugh. “There you go,” James says.

“People always say of great athletes that they have a sixth sense,” Malcolm Gladwell says in Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon .

“But it’s not a sixth sense. It’s memory.” Gladwell then analogizes James’ exacting memory to Simon’s. In the way James has precise recall of basketball game situations, Simon has it of sounds and songs. “Simon’s memory is prodigious,” Gladwell says. “There were thousands of songs in his head. And thousands more bits of songs—components—which appeared to have been broken down and stacked like cordwood in his imagination.”

The archive of situations James has in his memory function as reference points to decipher new but analogous game situations, to enable intelligent decisions, to facilitate anticipation.

For Simon, those reference points facilitate his creative output. He cultivates an archive of sounds he likes that become the building blocks for his own songs. As Gladwell says, for Simon, “songwriting is the rearrangement and reconstruction of those pleasurable sounds.”

Simon’s musicianship is a function of the library of musical components in his head. Everything he creates is largely an amalgamation of bits from his musical memories. Simon recognizes this to be his gift: “I seem to have a very exact memory of things that I’ve heard—liked and disliked—but very exact,” he says.

If you are like Lebron James or Paul Simon, if you were born with a gift for recall, you might not need a note-taking system.

But if you are like the rest of us, you should have a notetaking system. You should capture the things you might want to later recall. You should cultivate an external memory bank, a library of components you can rearrange and reconstruct to your liking and needing.

Whether you write screenplays or emails, design sneakers or powerpoints, arrange music or spreadsheets—you create things. You use your brain to bring things into existence. To bring things into existence, your brain rearranges and reconstructs the material available to it.

And improving the quality and quantity of material available to your brain when you sit down to create something—that is why we implement The Notecard System.

II. Note-taking Principles

A lot of people ask Ryan how he produces so much output.

My dad has a custom apparel business, and I worked in the factory growing up. While he produces some 60,000 items of decorated apparel each year, no one asks him how he does it. How he does it isa warehouse of garments and fabrics and spools of thread and rolls of cad-cut film and thermo film that get pulled and pieced together by skilled embroidery and press operators and then cleaned and trimmed and ironed and inspected and folded and boxed then shipped.

Ryan’s production is a function of a similar process.

He has a warehouse of notecards with ideas and stories and quotes and facts and bits of research, which get pulled and pieced together then proofread and revised and trimmed and inspected and packaged and then shipped. If you develop a process and commit to that process, Ryan says, books come out the other side. They aren’t feats of genius or works of magic or flashes of inspiration. They’re products of process. They’re products of The Notecard System.

Which brings me to the first principle of my notecard system:

Do Not Copy and Paste

Mitch Hedberg joked that he kept his pen and paper on the other side of the room. Then when he had an idea for a joke—if he couldn’t convince himself to get up and go get the pen and paper, the joke must not be good enough.

If you can’t talk yourself into using your energy to write or type something out, it’s probably not worth capturing.

The novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler said he avoided reading books written by someone who didn’t “take the pains” to write out the words. (It used to be common for writers to dictate into a recorder then have an assistant transcribe those words.)

“You have to have that mechanical resistance,” Chandler wrote in a 1949 letter to actor/writer Alex Barris. “When you have to use your energy to put those words down, you are more apt to make them count.”

When you don’t have that mechanical resistance, when you give yourself the freedom to copy and paste, you’re not discerning. You capture anything and everything that strikes you at first glance. It’d be like if you stored everything you underline in a book you read. Anyone who has gone back through what they underlined in a book they read knows you don’t want to capture everything you underline.

When I get an email from someone who has taken thousands of notes but can’t seem to put them to use, I ask if they are copy-and-pasters. They almost always are. So their Evernote or Roam or Notion database is unwieldy. There may be some quality insights in there, but they’re lost among all the crap they copy and pasted.

Be discerning. Take the pains to write things out.

Use Time As A Filter

When I finish a book, I put it back on the shelf for a week or two. After a week or two, when I have a block of time, I grab the book and a stack of 4×6 notecards.

The reason to wait a week or two? Time is a great filter. Even with a really good book—one where I fold over every other page—I might only make 5-10 notecards. With the passage of some time, you find most things that you underline don’t hold up.

The interesting information, you realize, actually isn’t that interesting. The great anecdote, you realize, actually isn’t worth the cognitive energy required to write it out in your own words. So, I move from one folded page to the next, asking myself, is this worth the energy? When the answer is yes, I try to make a notecard as if I might want to later transfer it directly into a piece of writing.

(Quick aside: I hear from people who somehow have their Kindle app and their note-taking app synced up so that everything they underline goes straight into their note-taking app. I think this is a terrible thing to do.)

Take Notes For A Stranger

One of the big lies notetakers tell themselves is, “I will remember why I liked this quote/story/fact/etc.”

The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who was famous for his “slip box” or “zettelkästen” method, called his box of notecards his conversation partner. He made each note card as if someone else were going to read it. Because, he would point out, by the time he came to a card a couple days/weeks/months later, he would be someone else. You may have had the experience where you flip through a book you read and marked up some time ago, and you have no idea what you were liking about something you underlined or what you meant by this or that comment in the margin.

So I make every note card with the assumption that I will later have forgotten just about everything about the book/article/paper/interview from which the note card comes from.

If I am capturing an interesting idea, for instance, I surround it with context—the way it might appear in a paragraph in an article. (much more on this and many examples below).

The note card should be able to communicate a complete thought or idea or story or lesson that an ignorant audience (me) can understand, learn from, or be surprised by.

“One of the most basic presuppositions of communication,” Luhmann writes , “is that the partners can mutually surprise each other.” Which is one of the joys of the notecard system—when you surprise yourself, when you rediscover, when you find the perfect card while you were looking for something else.

Let The Notes Determine The Themes

One of the big breakthroughs for me with this system was to let the notes/categories determine the categories/themes/sections, not the other way around.

So originally I thought, I need a bunch of categories and themes first then I’ll keep my eyes and ears out for things that fit into those topics and themes. What I found was that if something caught my attention but I didn’t have a topic/theme to slide it into, I didn’t write it down.

Now my thinking is, i t caught your attention for a reason – capture it and figure out where it belongs later.

So I’ve got a section in the front of my box of notecards that is the “Waiting Room.” What happens is, over time, I’ll draw a connection between three or four cards and then move those to their own section with a card up front with a kind of index (more on this below).

Regularly Review The Collection

In Getting Things Done , David Allen talks about how when you write something down, you are essentially telling your mind, ‘mind, you don’t have to remember or remind me about this.’ This is very helpful in the context of task management: if you are trying to focus on Task A but Task B is lingering in the cognitive background, if you write down when/where/how you will complete Task B, Task B tends to disappear from the cognitive background (in other words, your mind stops trying to remind you of Task B because it trusts it doesn’t have to).

In the context of knowledge management, this is less helpful. In the context of the notecard system, you write something on a notecard because you want to remember it. But when you write something on a notecard, I have found, you are essentially saying, ‘mind, you don’t have to remember this.’

If the “Take Notes For A Stranger” principal above is a branch on a tree that represents an assumption that I don’t have as good a memory as I think I do, this principal is a stick that stems off of that branch.

At least once a week, I sift through all my notecards before I write my Sunday newsletter. And every time, I find cards I have no recollection of making. So I’ve come to agree with the following.

Randall Stutman, an executive advisor and prolific note-taker, says, “collecting insights is just the preamble to what really matters: reviewing, with some level of consistency, those insights. You have to routinely make those insights available to yourself.”

“Wisdom is only wisdom if you can act on it,” Randall says . “In the review process, you’re making those insights available for your mind to act on.”

Physical or digital, I think whatever system gets you to look forward to consistently reviewing what you’ve collected (read: forgotten) is the best system.

III. The Notecard System

“For every good idea that comes out of you, you need ten good ideas coming into you. And that’s up to you to ensure that you continuously fill yourself up with fresh knowledge and information and impressions so that one thing can come out.” — René Redzepi

Like any system, the notecard system needs inputs.

Whether you use physical notecards or an app like Evernote, Obsidian, or Notion—your collection of notes is a function of the content you consume.

A rough estimate, but 75% of my notecards come from books, 13% from podcasts, 10% from articles, and 2% from videos (YouTube, documentaries, movies, etc.).

My consumption strategies vary slightly across mediums, but they all stem from what I learned from one of my reading heroes, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson liked to identify four classes of readers: the hourglass, the sponge, the jelly-bag, and the Golconda. The hourglass takes nothing in. The sponge holds on to nothing but a little dirt and sediment. The jelly-bag doesn’t recognize good stuff, but holds on to worthless stuff. And the Golconda (a rich mine) keeps only the pure gems. “Emerson was the Golconda reader par excellence,” one biographer writes in a little book on the role of reading in Emerson’s creative process, “or what miners call a ‘high-grader’—a person who goes through a mine and pockets only the richest lumps of ore.”

Of his huge book collection, it was said that Emerson had a bigger appetite than intake. He glanced at thousands of books, only reading carefully when his attention was fully captured. He believed it was the book’s job to fully capture his attention. So he had no problem moving on from a book after the first page, the first chapter, the first half—whenever he caught his attention fading.

He was on a relentless hunt for that feeling when a book really has you hooked in its teeth. You know it if you know it. “Learn to divine books,” Emerson once advised a friend, “to feel those that you want without wasting much time. Remember you must know only the excellent of all that has been presented. But often a chapter is enough. The glance reveals what the gaze obscures…You only read to start your own team.”

You only consume what others created to do your own creating. “There is then creative reading as well as creative writing,” Emerson said. “The discerning will read…only the authentic utterances of the oracle—all the rest he rejects.”

With that said…

wide funnel, tight filter—start a lot of books/articles and quit most of them. If I catch myself trying to convince myself to stay with a book/article, I stop reading it. There’s a certain feeling when a book captures your full attention…I’m searching for that.
chain smoking—light the start of the next book with the end of the previous book: if I really like a book, my next book is one that was either mentioned in the book or in the book’s bibliography.
trust but verify—start every book/article referenced or recommended by someone with good taste. But again, if it doesn’t capture and hold my attention, I’m quick to move on.
all of the above, and:
people not podcasts—I don’t have any go-to podcasts. I get interested in someone—a writer, a musician, a comedian, a chef, an entrepreneur, etc.—then I search what podcasts they’ve been on.
all the above, but less frequently.

The way I bookmark things I might ultimately transfer onto a notecard also varies slightly across mediums.

I will show you those various methods, starting with books…

I mostly read physical books. I have an iPad with the kindle app, which I use only in the following way. If someone recommends a book or if I see a book referenced in another book or if I’m listening to a podcast and a book gets mentioned or etc., I will download the kindle sample. I will read that sample (usually the first 10% or so of the book) on the iPad and if i get hooked, I order a physical copy.

I like to read with a pen. ( This is my favorite pen because it writes like a sharpie but doesn’t bleed through the page of a book or a notecard).

When I come across interesting information, I underline then write a corresponding question in the margin. So what I underlined is an answer to the question.

For example:

This, I find, is helpful when you go back through the book. The question in the margin sparks a recollection of the corresponding information. And typically, it does so faster than it’d take to reread that information.

When I come across an anecdote I like, I write a corresponding phrase in all caps in the margin. So I ask myself, “if this were to appear in a future article or newsletter or etc, what might the title or header be?”

For example, I recently read about how Lin-Manuel Miranda tells the same story dozens of times to the same person because he forgets who he already told. Once, when he finished telling his collaborator Tommy Kail a story, Kail said, “That happened to me. I told you that.” They both laughed then Kail added, “That’s why you’re cut out for theater, because you’ll tell it like it’s the first time.” So in the margin I wrote, LIKE IT’S THE FIRST TIME:

I’ll draw those squares around names, book titles, a good phrase, anything I might want to catch my eye when I am going back through the book.

When I come across something that reminds me of some other story or idea or etc., I write “<=> INSERT RELATED THING” in the margin.

For example, I recently read this idea of matching your selling techniques to people’s buying habits. That reminded me of something I once heard Nick Thompson talk about. He was asked what he learned from playing the guitar on NYC subway platforms. He said he learned that you gotta figure out who your ideal demographic is and then you gotta go to the subway platform they are most likely going to be at. You gotta meet your people where they are:

And then, as I mentioned with the “Let The Notes Determine The Themes” principle above, when I draw a connection between three or four cards, those become a section with a card up front with a kind of index.

For example, here’s a collection of cards from a section around simplicity/reducing things down to the atomic unit:

(And here , you can see how some of those cards become a newsletter issue ).

If a notecard could fit in multiple sections, I do this:

So that’s basically what I’m doing when I read: I’m looking for interesting information, I’m on the hunt for stories, and I’m trying to make connections. Oh, and whenever I underline or write in the margins, I fold over the page. If it’s the left-hand page, I fold the bottom corner. If it’s the right-hand page, I fold the top corner. That way, if I want to fold both sides of the same page, I can.

When I finish a book, I put it back on the shelf for a week or two. After a week or two, when I have a block of time, I grab the book and a stack of 4×6 notecards. The reason to wait a week or two? Time is a great filter/editor. Even with a really good book—one where I fold over every other page—I might only make 5-10 notecards.

As I talk about above with the “Do Not Copy and Paste” core principle, with the passage of some time, most things you underline don’t hold up. (Quick aside: I hear from people who somehow have their Kindle app and their note-taking app synced up so that everything they underline goes straight into their note-taking app. I think this is a terrible thing to do.) The interesting information, you realize, actually isn’t that interesting. The great anecdote, you realize, actually isn’t worth the cognitive energy required to write it out in your own words. So, I move from one folded page to the next, asking myself, is this worth the energy? When the answer is yes, I try to make a notecard as if I might want to later transfer it directly into a piece of writing.

For example, in the book The Secret Wisdom of Nature , I liked the idea that trees that have to struggle for sunlight grow stronger and live longer than trees that are free from that struggle:

A month or two after reading this, I made a notecard…

(I put a title of some kind at the top of every card. This is helpful when I finger-tip through the cards—in a glance, I can tell if it’s what I’m looking for).

A few weeks after making the notecard, I wrote about how the actor Jeff Daniels decides what jobs to take on. Basically, he only takes a job if it will be challenging. His explanation reminded me of the idea that trees that have to struggle get stronger:

On the back of the notecard, I put the book title and page number(s).

There must be better ways to do this, but this is what works for me.

I typically listen to podcasts when I am on the move: running, walking, driving, etc. So when I’m listening to a podcast, as soon as I hear something I might want to later transfer onto a notecard, I copy the link into a note in Notion titled “Podcasts” then put the name of the person getting interviewed.

Then, like I do in the margin of books, next to a time stamp, I put either a question or a phrase that corresponds to what the person said.

For example, I recently listened to a podcast where David Sacks talked about how, when he’s stuck on problem, he assembles smart people he trusts, and tries to get a variety of advice/opinions out on the table. He analogized it to taking the Rubik’s cube out his head, putting it on the table, letting others have it for a while, then putting the cube back in his own head. So I made this note:

If I am reminded of some other idea, I write “<=> INSERT RELATED THING” below the question.

For example, I listened to a podcast where Marc Andreessen advised against starting what he called “synthetic startups,” which he said is when you start with just wanting to be an entrepreneur and try to work backwards to an idea. It can work, he said, but in his experience, it’s rare that a synthetic startup works. Successful startups, Andreessen said, more commonly happen as follows. You have been immersed in an industry for five to ten years. You work tediously and tirelessly to develop to earn the ability to know the industry inside-out. With the eye of expertise, you see that something should work a different way. “If it’s an organic idea that comes out of something you’ve been deeply immersed in,” Andreessen said, “then you might be onto something.”

This reminded me of Robert Greene’s definition of creativity , which is that creativity is a function of putting in lots of tedious work. “If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading,” Robert says, “hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you.”

So I made this note:

As I said with my reading process, I’m a believer in letting time be a kind of editor. So every so often, I scroll through this note and see what ideas or stories or etc. still excite me. When something jumps out, the notecard process here is the same: I write a title/header at the top of the notecard then try to make the contents of the notecard as if I might want to later transfer it directly into a piece of writing.

For example, on a few different podcasts, I heard Kobe Bryant talk about how he was terrible at basketball when he first started playing then taking an iterative approach to getting better and better.

A few weeks later, I made a notecard:

Which later made it into a piece about a race to the South Pole and ice ages :

On the back of the notecard, I put the title of the podcast and a timestamp.

The only thing new to report here are some tools.

I typically come across an article I might want to read when I don’t have time to read it right then and there. I’m checking email and some newsletter links to some article. Or I’m scrolling twitter and someone shares something. Or I’m researching something for work and stumble on an irrelevant but potentially interesting article.

In these cases and others, I copy and paste the link into the read-later app Instapaper. It syncs across phone, iPad, and computer, but I typically read articles on my iPad before bed.

My article reading process is an adapted version of my book reading process.

When I come across interesting information, I highlight then comment a corresponding question:

When I come across an anecdote I like, I highlight then comment a corresponding phrase in all caps:

When I come across something that reminds me of some other story or idea or etc., I comment “<=> INSERT RELATED THING” like this:

Again, time is the best filter. I never immediately read an article then make a notecard. Like with the podcast process, every so often, when I’ve got a block of time, I open Instapaper and look at what I’ve read and the notes I took. When something still excites me, the notecard process here is the same: I write a title/header at the top of the notecard then try to make the contents of the notecard as if I might want to later transfer it directly into a piece of writing.

For example, a few weeks after I came across this short article by biographer Andrew Roberts about Napoleon’s “extraordinary capacity for compartmentalizing his mind,” I made a notecard:

Which later made it into a piece about Attention Residue :

On the back of the notecard, I put the title of the article and the author.

Because stuff from videos, as I said above, only makes up ~2% of what I ultimately transfer onto notecards, I will just say the following.

This process is identical to the podcast process.

I have a note in Notion titled “Vids,” where I either add a link (if it’s a YouTube video) or a title (if it’s a movie or documentary) then a timestamp before a question, phrase, or connect.

So those are the processes and tools I use for various mediums.

Now, the questions I’m frequently asked about my notecard system…

IV. Frequently Asked Questions

Do you use the same box as Ryan?

No. Ryan uses this one . I use this one . Both hold 4×6 notecards (I just use these basic notecards . Ryan gets 4×6 notecards custom made for whatever project he is working on— for example ). I went with a smaller box because it appears to fill up faster and that is satisfying. Also, it—along with my laptop, iPad, some pens, and a few books—fits in this Carhartt bag I take wherever I go.

How has your system evolved over time?

As I said in the “Let The Notes Determine The Themes” section, the biggest change for me has been from thinking about how a card fits into a theme to indiscriminately capturing things that interest me enough that I will take the pains to write it down.

How do you make sure you don’t lose track of cards?

I don’t make sure I don’t lose track of cards. As I said above and as some of the people below talk about, one of the joys of the system is when you surprise yourself, when you rediscover, when you find the perfect card while you were looking for something else.

What time of day do you typically make notecards?

Usually in the afternoon after I’ve completed work-related writing/tasks.

Do you do all your writing longhand?

No. Aside from notecards, I do all my writing in custom template I made in Notion. It facilitates every other step of the researching and writing process.

How much time do you spend reading per day?

It depends. When possible, I like to read first thing in the morning for an hour or so. Then throughout the day, I try to take any opportunity to read even just a page or two. If I’m frying an egg, for instance, I’ll read while the pan is heating up, while the egg is cooking, and while I’m eating breakfast.

Do you keep track of what cards you’ve used and haven’t used?

No. If I need to, I’ll search the various places online I might have used the contents of a notecard.

Do you make notecards for Ryan?

No. My job as his research assistant is to find material he might want to transfer into his notecard system.

How many notecards do you have?

I’m not sure. I have a box and ~1/4 full of cards. Each box holds ~1500 4×6 notecards.

What are you doing today that you wish you would have done from the start?

I review the cards way more than I originally thought was necessary. Almost daily, I engage with the boxes in one way or another.

How do you decide which cards you sift through before writing your Sunday newsletter?

The newsletter has evolved. In the beginning, I picked six random notecards and essentially transcribed them into the email service provider. So originally, I would go through all my notecards until I selected six. Recently, I’ve taken a more thematic approach to the newsletter. So I start with a vague sense of a theme—e.g. the ability to be in uncertainties and doubts without getting too stressed/anxious . Then, I have a pretty good sense of where I might find notecards that fit with that theme. So starting with a theme narrows my notecard search a bit, but because I’ve also found theme-relevant cards where I didn’t expect, I sometimes can’t help but expand my search beyond what is sometimes necessary.

V. Other People Who Use The Notecard System

“You’re better off starting imperfectly than being paralyzed by the hope or the delusion of perfection.” — Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday

Each one of Ryan’s books is comprised of thousands of notecards. What he does is he captures everything interesting he comes across. If there’s a good story in a book or a good line in a movie or a good lyric in a song, he writes it down on 4×6 index card and puts it in a box. When he goes through that box, he finds themes and makes connections that later become the idea for a book or a chapter or an article or a daily email or a talk or a video or a product or etc.

He first wrote about his system here and later, in this video , he explained his methods for reading, organizing what he reads, and using that information in his life and work.

I also recommend his article on the creative powers of the index card.

“It’s not an exaggeration: Nearly every dollar I’ve made in my adult life was earned first on the back or front (or both) of an index card. Everything I do, I do on index cards.” — Ryan Holiday

Robert Greene

Ryan adopted and adapted the notecard system from Robert Greene.

Robert talks about his system and shows one of his boxes of notecards here . And in his interview on the Knowledge Project podcast , starting around 12:50, Robert details how he reads, researches, marks up books, transfers material onto notecards, files those cards, and uses those cards to write his books.

When asked about why he doesn’t use a digital system, Robert said:

“Writing things out by hand has a logic to it. When I’m taking notes, when I’m scrawling with my fountain pen on a card—I’m thinking more deeply than when typing on a computer…The handwriting process links closer and faster to the way my brain works…Then, having a box of two thousand cards that I can sift through with my fingers and that I can move around with incredible speed—I can’t do that on a computer. It’s not the same process.”

Niklas Luhmann

The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann published some 50 books and 550 articles in various publications. When asked about his high quality and high volume output, Luhmann would credit his “slip-box” (or zettelkasten in German).

“Of course, I do not think of all this on my own; it mostly happens in my file…In essence, the filing system explains my productivity…Filing takes more of my time than writing the books…Without those cards, just by contemplating, these ideas would have never occurred to me. Of course, my mind is needed to note down the ideas, but they cannot be attributed to it alone.” — Niklas Luhmann

Luhmann wrote a short essay about his slip-box as a communication partner here . And a Johannes F.K. Schmidt wrote a great paper, Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine .

The research analyst and developer Dr. Sönke Ahrens wrote a short book loosely based on Luhmann’s methods titled How To Take Smart Notes .

Tiago Forte

Tiago is the authority on digital note-taking, or—to borrow from the title of his popular online course and recent bestselling book—on Building A Second Brain ( course , book ).

Tiago’s methodology is app-agnostic. He’s a systems and principles kind of thinker, so even though I use physical notecards, his work has influenced the evolution of my processes.

Tiago also has a great piece on Luhmann’s slip-box system as written about in How To Take Smarts, which you can read here .

“What are the chances that the most creative, most innovative approaches will instantly be top of mind? … Now imagine if you were able to unshackle from the limits of the present moment, and draw on weeks, months, or even years of accumulated imagination.”

Dustin Lance Black

In this video , the Oscar-winning filmmaker Dustin Lance Black (Milk, When We Rise) explains and shows how he researches, makes note cards, organizes those note cards, then lays out those note cards to write his screenplays.

“What I do is take that [research] material and boil down the moments that I think are cinematic, the moments that are necessary for this story, and I start to put them onto note cards. Each note card should be as pure and singular an idea as possible, because I want to be able to move all the pieces around and to create a film. And a film is not what happened. A film is an impression of what happened.” — Dustin Lance Black

Vladimir Nabokov

After his death, Vladimir Nabokov’s final novel, The Original of Laura: A Novel in Fragments, was published. In it, you can see the notecards Nabokov made that he eventually would have pieced together into a cohesive novel.

Nabokov used this analogy for his notecard system—with each notecard, he was slowly assembling the structure of a book until he had what resembled, in his mind’s eye, the blocked grid of a crossword puzzle. Then, he went back and filled in the white space.

“The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the novel is done. My schedule is flexible, but I am rather particular about my instruments: lined Bristol cards and well sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with erasers.” — Vladimir Nabokov

Erin Lee Carr

In this interview , Erin Lee Carr talks about how she turned to the notecard system when she was stuck during the process of writing All That You Leave Behind.

“From the beginning I found myself deeply challenged and stuck — freaked out by the blank page. So I started to use my skills as a filmmaker. I note-carded it. I had the notes above my computer, and I got to do a little “X” when I finished the draft of a chapter; it was this really satisfying moment.” — Erin Lee Carr

Ronald Reagan

From the Reagan Foundation : “In the 1950s, Ronald Reagan began collecting motivational, entertaining and compelling quotes, writing them on notecards, from which he drew inspiration for his speeches.”

After Reagan won the 1980 presidential election, he and the speechwriter Ken Khachigan sat down to draft Reagan’s first inaugural address. Reagan took out his notecards. Khachigan said, “he had all this stuff he had stored up all these years — all these stories, all these anecdotes. He had the Reagan library in his own little file system.”

George Carlin

The comedian George Carlin said his system started when :

I had a boss in radio when I was 18 years old, and my boss told me to write down every idea I get even if I can’t use it at the time, and then file it away and have a system for filing it away—because a good idea is of no use to you unless you can find it…

“A lot of this,” Carlin said, “is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that’s our job is to just notice them and bring them to life.”

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VI. Conclusion

“Many times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the reader,—has decided his way of life.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There’s an argument I initially thought I might make here that would have gone something like this: if you don’t produce things with your notes, you’re wasting your time by taking notes. If you don’t currently create or have plans to create blog posts or books or songs or sneakers or etc., I thought I might argue, a note-taking process is a waste of time.

But then I thought more about it. I spent more time with my notecards. I paid closer attention when I was taking the pains to write things down. And now, I will make a different argument.

When you put stuff from a smart person’s brain into your brain, right then and there, you are changed. Your thoughts are downstream from your inputs. That’s something I’ve realized through the following bizarre and interesting experience. I’ll be talking or journaling and catch myself reciting (what feels like) word for word from a notecard I’d made. It’s bizarre because, as I said many times above, for the most part, I can’t remember the notecards I’ve made. It’s interesting because, wow, I’ll think, this experience couldn’t exist in this way if I hadn’t made that notecard.

When he was coming up as a writer, the author and journalist Rex Murphy would write out longhand favorite poems and passages. He was asked, what’s that done for you? “There’s an energy attached to poetry and great prose,” Murphy said. “And when you bring it into your mind, into your living sensibility, by some weird osmosis, it lifts your style or the attempts of your mind.” When you read great writing, when you write down a great line or paragraph, Murphy continues, “somehow or another, it contaminates you in a rich way. You get something from it—from this osmotic imitation—that will only take place if you lodge it in your consciousness.”

David Brooks talks about what he calls the “theory of maximum taste.” It’s similar to what Murphy is saying. “Exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness,” Brooks writes. “If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you [don’t].”

The famous line from Emerson is, “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

And same—I cannot remember the notecards I’ve made, but I like knowing they are both somewhere in my consciousness and somewhere in my box.

Want to see The Notecard System in action?

Every week, I pick six notecards from my collection to help me write my Sunday newsletter.

You can check out the archives here , and if you want to start receiving SIX at 6 in your email inbox every Sunday, drop you email in the thing below. Or email me and I’ll make sure you get added to the list.

Thank you to Katie McKenzie, Alejandro Sobrino, Jeff Shannon, Joseph Lindley, Harry Lawrence, Kevin Rapp, Max Feld, and Stanley Goldberg for reading drafts of this.

KB5042421: CrowdStrike issue impacting Windows endpoints causing an 0x50 or 0x7E error message on a blue screen

Microsoft has identified an issue impacting Windows endpoints that are running the CrowdStrike Falcon agent. These endpoints might encounter error messages 0x50 or 0x7E on a blue screen and experience a continual restarting state.

We have received reports of successful recovery from some customers attempting multiple restart operations on affected Windows endpoints.

We are working with CrowdStrike to provide the most up-to-date information available on this issue. Please check back for updates on this ongoing issue.

Important: We have released a USB tool to help automate this manual repair process. For more information, see New recovery tool to help with CrowdStrike issue impacting Windows devices .

To resolve this issue, follow these instructions for your version of Windows.

Hold the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device and then press the power button again to turn on your device.

On the Windows sign-in screen, press and hold the Shift key while you select Power > Restart .

Restart your device. Note You may be asked to enter your BitLocker recovery key . When the device restarts, continue pressing F4 and then it will log you in to safe mode. Please note, for some devices, you need to press F11 to log in through safe mode.

Once in safe mode, right-click Start , click Run , type cmd in the Open box, and then click OK .

If your system drive is different than C:\, type C: and then press Enter . This will switch you to the C:\ drive.

Type the following command and then press Enter:

CD C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike

Note In this example, C is your system drive. This will change to the CrowdStrike directory.

Once in the CrowdStrike directory, locate the file matching “C-00000291*.sys”. To do this, type the following command and then press Enter :

dir C-00000291*.sys

Permanently delete the file(s) found. To do this, type the following command and then press Enter .

del C-00000291*.sys

Manually search for any files that match “C-00000291*.sys” and delete them.

Restart your device.

On the Windows sign-in screen, press and hold the Shift key while you select Power > Restart .

Restart your device. Note You may be asked to enter your BitLocker recovery key .

When the device restarts, continue pressing F4 and then it will log you in to safe mode.

Once in safe mode, right-click Start , click Run , type cmd in the Open box, and then click OK .

Type in the following command and then press Enter :

Note In this example C is your system drive. This will change to the CrowdStrike directory.

Recovery methods

If you receive the Windows Recovery screen, use one of the following methods to recover your device.

Method 1: Use Enable safe mode

Hold the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device and thenpress the power button again to turn on your device.

On the Windows sign-in screen, press and hold the Shift key while you select Power > Restart .

After your device restarts to the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Enable safe mode . Then, restart your device. Note You might be asked to enter your BitLocker recovery key . When the device restarts, continue pressing F4 and then it will log you in to safe mode. Please note, for some devices, you need to press F11 to log in through safe mode.

If the screen asks for a BitLocker recovery key, use your phone and log on to https://aka.ms/aadrecoverykey . Log on with your Email ID and domain account password to find the BitLocker recovery key associated with your device. To locate your BitLocker recovery key, click Manage Devices > View Bitlocker Keys > Show recovery key .

If your system drive is different than C:\, type C: and then press Enter . This will switch you to the C:\ drive.

Type the following command and then press Enter :

Tip: CD C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike

Note In this example, C is your system drive. This will change to the CrowdStrike directory.

After your device restarts to the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Enable safe mode . Then restart your device again. Note You might be asked to enter your BitLocker recovery key . When the device restarts, continue pressing F4 and then it will log you into safe mode. Please note, for some devices, you need to press F11 to log in through safe mode.

If the screen asks for a BitLocker recovery key, then use your phone and log on to https://aka.ms/aadrecoverykey . Log on with your Email ID and domain account password to find the bit locker recovery key associated with your device. To locate your BitLocker recovery key, click Manage Devices > View Bitlocker Keys > Show recovery key .

Select the name of the device where you see the BitLocker prompt. In the expanded window, select View BitLocker Keys . Go back to your device and input the BitLocker key that you see on your phone or secondary device.

Note In this example, C is your system drive. This will change to the CrowdStrike directory.

Method 2: Use System Restore

After your device restarts to the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > System Restore .

If the screen asks for a BitLocker recovery key, use your phone and log on to https://aka.ms/aadrecoverykey . Login with your email id and domain account password to find the bit locker recovery key associated with your device. To locate your BitLocker recovery key, click Manage Devices > View Bitlocker Keys > Show recovery key .

Click Next on System Restore.

Select the Restore option in the list, click Next , and then click Finish .

Click Yes to confirm the restore. Note This will perform just the Windows system restore and personal data should not be impacted. This process might take up to 15 minutes to complete.

If the screen asks for a BitLocker recovery key, use your phone and log on to https://aka.ms/aadrecoverykey . Log in with your Email ID and domain account password to find the bit locker recovery key associated with your device. To locate your BitLocker recovery key, click Manage Devices > View Bitlocker Keys > Show recovery key .

Select the Restore option in the list, click Next , and then click Finish .

Contact CrowdStrike

If after following the above steps, if you still experience issues logging into your device, please reach out to CrowdStrike for additional assistance.

Start your PC in safe mode in Windows

Third-party information disclaimer

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. We make no warranty, implied or otherwise, about the performance or reliability of these products.

We provide third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. We do not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

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Best Research Note Card Software: 4 Top Choices

Research note card software helps you organize your notes and bibliography in a digital format, so you never lose a reference again.

When you learn how to write a research paper in high school, note cards are a major part of the process. Students write their outline points on index cards, so they can more easily organize them when they are ready to write. Research note card software performs the same function but in a digital model.

Serious writers who learned the benefit of using cards as students and want to continue their note-taking and organization methods as adult writers can tap into this software to more intuitively keep their thoughts organized.

This guide will help you choose the right software to help you write .

Top Research Note Card Software Options

1. scrivener, 2. onenote, 3. evernote, 4. zotero, the final word on research note card software, how can i use research note card software effectively, what is the best note card app for collaborative projects.

As you begin your search for note card software, start with these popular choices:

Who It’s For: Scrivener is ideal for writers creating long-form works, like dissertations and books. It also works well for scriptwriting. Pricing: $45

Scrivener tops the list of note-taking and writing software because of its robust list of features. This software can become your entire workflow, organizing not only your research but also your writing.

Scrivener organizes notes and research along with the manuscript for a project all in one place, combining it into a digital binder you can easily navigate. When you are writing, your research is always readily available. It even supports digital index cards.

It also lets the writer use templates to guide writing and notecard creation. Scrivener is available for both Mac and PC. It also has a mobile app for Android and iOS.

All in one content-generation tool
Ideal for long documents
Everything all in one place
May have too many features for simple note taking
Has a tough learning curve
No free version

Scrivener is our go-to app for long-form writing projects. It's popular with best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more.

Who It’s For: OneNote is ideal for people who need to share their research with a team, making it a good choice for business people. Pricing: $69.99/year

With Microsoft OneNote , a cross-platform app you get when you purchase Office 365, you get the option to create digital notes through your Microsoft OneDrive.

In addition, this app has the option to create To-Do LIsts for yourself or your team. It integrates well with MS Office products and apps, and it works with the Apple stylus.

To make the most out of OneNote, you should have an Office 365 subscription. If you have Office 365, you will find that this tool integrates the best of all of the note-taking apps with the products you use. It has collaborative functions through Microsoft OneDrive.

Creates digital notes quickly
Easy to use with little learning curve
Works best with Office 365, and may not work well with other apps
Lacks formatting options for note cards
Rich text formatting is sometimes lost when pasting into OneNote from Outlook or Word

Who It’s For: Anyone who does online research and who stores multimedia resources can benefit from the flexibility of Evernote. Pricing: Free to ₱162.90 per month

Evernote has built-in tagging and search features so you can retrieve your research more easily

Evernote is one of the more popular note-taking apps on the market. It allows you to capture, organize and store your notes on a phone or web browser, including both Android and iOS options and Windows or OS X desktops browsers.

Evernote allows you to capture ideas in pictures, store articles you want to look at later for potential annotations, and even put photo notes or audio recordings in the app along with your text files.

It has built-in tagging and searches features so you can retrieve your research more easily. This multimedia platform is what makes it so helpful in note-taking.

An affordable option for note taking
Multimedia research storage
Compatible with iOS, Windows, Mac, Chrome, Edge, Safari, Android and others
Often does not retain the formatting of the text
Can slow down on older devices
Requires premium paid version for offline access

Who It’s For: Zotero is ideal for writers who need to organize and access online research. It also has collaboration features, so students or workers working on collaborative projects can share their libraries with each other. Pricing: Free to $120/year

Zotero is an independent, open-source project which means it is free of charge. When you are doing online research, Zotero helps you keep it organized. Create digital note cards to save searches, collect sources to cite and create bibliography cards.

The intuitive nature of Zotero earned it a spot on this list. It automatically fills note cards with material as you research, saving you time. It also has the option to sync across your various devices, so you can access your research whether you’re on your computer, iPad or phone.

Free note generation program
Integrates with MS Word
Fast to learn
Reliant on users for fixing bugs because of open-source design
Requires Zotfile plugin to work with PDFs
Works better with MLA format than APA style

Want more? Check out our guide to the Zettelkasten method .

With so much research at your fingertips due to the World Wide Web, you need a notecard system to keep it all organized. Apps and digital systems give you the power to organize that without cumbersome paper files. The right app or software program will help you keep research notes, bibliography information and more organized and accessible.

To choose a research note card system, consider what you will use it for. Choose a system that handles the reference material in the format you use, and move forward confidently knowing your research is always accessible as you write.

FAQs About Research Note Card Software

Research note card software can take the place of your paper note card system to organize your annotations and research cards in one place. Some programs are multimedia programs that can store videos, audio files, PDFs, web pages and more.

Many have templates to automatically put note cards into MLA or APA format.

If you are doing a collaborative project, Zotera and OneNote work well. These note-taking apps let you easily share your project with others.

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The repository provides code for running inference with the SegmentAnything Model (SAM), links for downloading the trained model checkpoints, and example notebooks that show how to use the model.

facebookresearch/segment-anything

Folders and files.

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Segment anything.

Meta AI Research, FAIR

Alexander Kirillov , Eric Mintun , Nikhila Ravi , Hanzi Mao , Chloe Rolland, Laura Gustafson, Tete Xiao , Spencer Whitehead , Alex Berg, Wan-Yen Lo, Piotr Dollar , Ross Girshick

[ Paper ] [ Project ] [ Demo ] [ Dataset ] [ Blog ] [ BibTeX ]

The Segment Anything Model (SAM) produces high quality object masks from input prompts such as points or boxes, and it can be used to generate masks for all objects in an image. It has been trained on a dataset of 11 million images and 1.1 billion masks, and has strong zero-shot performance on a variety of segmentation tasks.

Installation

The code requires python>=3.8 , as well as pytorch>=1.7 and torchvision>=0.8 . Please follow the instructions here to install both PyTorch and TorchVision dependencies. Installing both PyTorch and TorchVision with CUDA support is strongly recommended.

Install Segment Anything:

or clone the repository locally and install with

The following optional dependencies are necessary for mask post-processing, saving masks in COCO format, the example notebooks, and exporting the model in ONNX format. jupyter is also required to run the example notebooks.

Getting Started

First download a model checkpoint . Then the model can be used in just a few lines to get masks from a given prompt:

or generate masks for an entire image:

Additionally, masks can be generated for images from the command line:

See the examples notebooks on using SAM with prompts and automatically generating masks for more details.

ONNX Export

SAM's lightweight mask decoder can be exported to ONNX format so that it can be run in any environment that supports ONNX runtime, such as in-browser as showcased in the demo . Export the model with

See the example notebook for details on how to combine image preprocessing via SAM's backbone with mask prediction using the ONNX model. It is recommended to use the latest stable version of PyTorch for ONNX export.

The demo/ folder has a simple one page React app which shows how to run mask prediction with the exported ONNX model in a web browser with multithreading. Please see demo/README.md for more details.

Model Checkpoints

Three model versions of the model are available with different backbone sizes. These models can be instantiated by running

Click the links below to download the checkpoint for the corresponding model type.

default or vit_h : ViT-H SAM model.
vit_l : ViT-L SAM model.
vit_b : ViT-B SAM model.

See here for an overview of the datastet. The dataset can be downloaded here . By downloading the datasets you agree that you have read and accepted the terms of the SA-1B Dataset Research License.

We save masks per image as a json file. It can be loaded as a dictionary in python in the below format.

Image ids can be found in sa_images_ids.txt which can be downloaded using the above link as well.

To decode a mask in COCO RLE format into binary:

See here for more instructions to manipulate masks stored in RLE format.

The model is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license .

Contributing

See contributing and the code of conduct .

Contributors

The Segment Anything project was made possible with the help of many contributors (alphabetical):

Aaron Adcock, Vaibhav Aggarwal, Morteza Behrooz, Cheng-Yang Fu, Ashley Gabriel, Ahuva Goldstand, Allen Goodman, Sumanth Gurram, Jiabo Hu, Somya Jain, Devansh Kukreja, Robert Kuo, Joshua Lane, Yanghao Li, Lilian Luong, Jitendra Malik, Mallika Malhotra, William Ngan, Omkar Parkhi, Nikhil Raina, Dirk Rowe, Neil Sejoor, Vanessa Stark, Bala Varadarajan, Bram Wasti, Zachary Winstrom

Citing Segment Anything

If you use SAM or SA-1B in your research, please use the following BibTeX entry.

Code of conduct

Security policy, contributors 16.

Jupyter Notebook 99.1%

“I like being autistic”: Assessing the benefit of autistic-led psychoeducation for autistic children

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ORCID record for Sinéad L. Mullally
For correspondence: [email protected]
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Info/History
Supplementary material
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Background Despite receiving autism diagnoses in early life, autistic children are not routinely supported to understand these diagnoses post-diagnostically ( 1 ). Consequently, they typically grow-up lacking an accurate understanding of what it means to be autistic on both a collective and individual level ( 2 ). Without this foundational knowledge, children’s understanding of autism is garnered from how others perceive their autism, resulting in an understanding of autism, and of themselves, that is inherently negative ( 3 ). This lack of appreciation of their own individual needs, also denies them the important self-understanding afforded by the diagnosis in the first instance, alongside the opportunity to effectively self-advocate for themselves when these needs go unmet.

Aims Here we sought to directly assess the benefit of a pre-recorded, online autistic-led psychoeducation course about autism and the lived experience of being autistic (i.e., ‘NeuroBears’ https://www.pandasonline.org ), for children’s understanding of autism and their autistic experiences, their feeling about being autistic, their communication with others about their autistic experiences, and their confidence to self-advocate for their needs.

Methods Using a concurrent embedded mixed-methods, repeated-measures design, autistic children (aged 8-14 years), completed a bespoke questionnaire exploring the above topics, both before and after completing NeuroBears at home with a nominated safe adult. A total of 63 children (mean age=10.57 years) completed sufficient content to be included in the analysis.

Results Significant benefit was observed across a range of areas, including a significant improvement in the children’s knowledge and understanding of being autistic and of their unique strengths and challenges, a significant rebalancing of how the children viewed being autistic, evidence of emerging positive autistic identities and a growing sense of belongingness, a significant change in the children’s abilities to communicate about being autistic, and evidence of strengthening self-advocacy skills.

Conclusion Learning about autism in a neutral and non-stigmatizing manner, and presented through the lens of autistic lived experience, conferred numerous benefits on autistic children’s self-understanding, emergent autistic identity, sense of belonging, and on their communication/self-advocacy skills. Future work is needed to establish the downstream benefits on wellbeing and quality of life.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Funding Statement

This study did not receive any funding

Author Declarations

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

The Faculty of Medical Sciences Research Ethics Committee of Newcastle University's Research Ethics Committee gave ethical approval for this work

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

Data Availability

All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors

View the discussion thread.

Supplementary Material

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about medRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

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39 Simple Note Card Templates & Designs ᐅ TemplateLab
39 Simple Note Card Templates & Designs ᐅ TemplateLab
Example Of Note Cards In A Research Paper
FREE 10+ Research Note Templates in PDF
Research Paper Note Cards Sample
Research Notecards

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COMMENTS

How to Write a Research Paper: Note Cards
After you've gathered your sources, begin reading and taking notes. Use 3 x 5 index cards, one fact or idea per card. This way related ideas from different sources can be easily grouped together or rearranged. On each index card, be sure to note the source, including the volume number (if there is one) and the page number. If you wind up using ...
The Note Card System
The card topic is the title for the kind of information on the card. The card topic is a name that you make up yourself. Think of it as the title, or main idea. of the card.. After writing down the information, figure out how you could briefly categorize, or title it. For example, if you are writing a paper on the life and works of the poet, Langston Hughes, you may have cards with topics such as:
How To Make Notecards For a Research Paper Effectively
This way, you can quickly find the needed information. Before writing notecards, look at all the information to write your research document. Once you know basic ideas, gather the main points of your research. Preferably, a 3″ x5″ note card would do your bidding. Also, notecards look fantastic, and even if they're scattered around the ...
Research Note Cards
In the center of the note card is the quote/paraphrased information from the source. In the bottom right corner of the note card is the page number the information came from. Back. On the back of the note card is the full citation for the source. *Note: Keep in mind, your note card might not be organized the exact same way as the example. That ...
10 Tips for Using Research Note Cards
Devote an entire note card to each idea or note. Don't try to fit two sources (quotes and notes) on one card. No sharing space! Gather more than you need. Use the library and the Internet to find potential sources for your research paper. You should continue to research until you have quite a few potential sources—about three times as many as ...
PDF Taking and Organizing Notes for Research Papers
Taking and Organizing Notes for Research Papers Why take notes? Note taking is the transcription of information using shortening techniques to create an outside memory source. Students take notes to record information and to aid in comprehension and reflection. Note taking is an essential part of writing any research paper because they give you a
PDF Beginning the Research Paper—How to Make Note Cards
There are two types of notecards: source cards and research cards. I. Source Cards You will make one of these when you find a source that you are going to use in your paper. The purpose of this card is to record the bibliographic information. Here is an example: You won't have that many source cards—probably 4-7. But you need them! Source #1
Taking Research Notes: Types of Note Cards
Types of Note Cards. There are four different types of notes that you might write. Paraphrase. When you paraphrase a passage from your source, you put the author's text into your own words. Summary. A summary captures the author's point of view or argument. It could be anywhere from one or two sentences to a short paragraph.
13.5 Research Process: Making Notes, Synthesizing ...
1.4 Annotated Student Sample: ... use something like the template shown in Figure 13.8, or another like it, as a template for creating your own research notes and organizational tool. You will need to have a record of all field research data as well as the research log for all secondary sources. ... Figure 13.8 Electronic note card (attribution ...
9 Organizing Research: Taking and Keeping Effective Notes
When you have the time to sit down and begin taking notes on your primary sources, you can annotate your photos in Tropy. Alternatively, OneNote, which is cloud-based, can serve as a way to organize your research. OneNote allows you to create separate "Notebooks" for various projects, but this doesn't preclude you from searching for terms or tags across projects if the need ever arises.
How to Do Research: A Step-By-Step Guide: 4a. Take Notes
Include a heading or key words at the top of the card. Include the Work Cited source card number. Include the page number where you found the information. Taking notes: Use abbreviations, acronyms, or incomplete sentences to record information to speed up the notetaking process. Write down only the information that answers your research questions.
PDF The Extended Essay: Successful Note-taking
Here is how a note card might look for a paraphrase: A summary note card would take this paraphrase further: Sometimes, you may find it necessary to combine. Here is how a note card might look for a paraphrase and quotation blended together: C. Helpful Tips for the Note-taking Process 1. Always keep your research question and outline in mind.
Making Note Cards- CRLS Research Guide
1. Write the subtopic heading of the note at the top of each note card. (see Tip Sheet 11: Creating Subtopic Headings) 2. Write only one main point on a note card. 3. Only write information directly related to your Statement of Purpose. (see Tip Sheet 9: Writing a Statement of Purpose) 4. Write only essential words, abbreviate when possible.
Note-taking techniques I: The index card method
As its name indicates, the Content Index Card is a combination type of index card that includes direct quotations, draft notes and ideas, conceptual diagrams, etc. that are all associated with the main article, book chapter or book discussed in the index card. I use larger (5″ x 8″) index cards for those cases.
Using Note Cards for MLA Research Papers
To create research note cards using index cards, follow these steps: Create one note card for each source. Write down all data necessary to locate that source, using the core element list. If you are using a direct quote from that source, write that down on the index card and specify it's a direct quote. Write a summary of the source, similar ...
PDF Taking Purposeful Research Notes
How Notes Sheets eliminate possible note-taking problems: Problem #1: Students write too much information on a card Notes Sheet Solution: Each space on the sheet is only big enough for one fact or quote. Problem #2: Students fill out cards just to meet teacher requirements (i.e. "you must have 50 note cards for your paper") without thinking about the usefulness of the information or its ...
PDF Examples of How to Take Research Notes
METHOD 2: Cornell Notes. Divide a piece of paper into three sections. The large box to the right is for writing notes. Your key points can be translated into the main ideas of each of your body paragraphs. Skip a line between ideas and topics. Use point form. Use abbreviations whenever possible.
Research Note Cards
In the center of the note card is the quote/paraphrased information from the source. In the bottom right corner of the note card is the page number the information came from. Back. On the back of the note card is the full citation for the source. *Note: Keep in mind, your note card might not be organized the exact same way as the example. That ...
PDF Taking Notes Using Note Cards
Write only one main idea on a card. Write a heading for the note—it might be a heading or subheading on your outline. Take notes by: recording brief fact or statistic. quoting directly—enclose information in quotation marks. paraphrasing. summarizing. Write the page number at the bottom of each card. This card.
Taking Research Notes Using the Note Card System and Ilaro
The Research Note Card. A research note card contains a single quote, note, or idea. Due to the physical size of index cards, there is a limit to how much you can write on on each card. But this limitation forces you to keep concise notes. The short notes make it easier to organize thoughts and outline writing.
The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read
The Notecard System — how I capture stories, ideas, and research I come across when I read books and articles, ... (much more on this and many examples below). The note card should be able to communicate a complete thought or idea or story or lesson that an ignorant audience (me) can understand, learn from, or be surprised by. ...
KB5042421: CrowdStrike issue impacting Windows endpoints causing an
Note In this example, C is your system drive. This will change to the CrowdStrike directory. Once in the CrowdStrike directory, locate the file matching "C-00000291*.sys".
Best Research Note Card Software: 4 Top Choices
Top Research Note Card Software Options. As you begin your search for note card software, start with these popular choices: 1. Scrivener. Who It's For: Scrivener is ideal for writers creating long-form works, like dissertations and books. It also works well for scriptwriting. Pricing: $45.
Fitch Expects to Rate CIBC's CARDS II Trust, Series 2024-1 Notes
CE supporting the class A notes is derived from 7.25% subordination of the class B and C notes, excess spread and a cash reserve account (CRA) to be funded by the trust when excess spread falls to or below 4.00%. Class B notes will benefit from 3.00% CE derived through the subordination of class C notes, excess spread and the CRA.
facebookresearch/segment-anything
The Segment Anything project was made possible with the help of many contributors (alphabetical): Aaron Adcock, Vaibhav Aggarwal, Morteza Behrooz, Cheng-Yang Fu, Ashley Gabriel, Ahuva Goldstand, Allen Goodman, Sumanth Gurram, Jiabo Hu, Somya Jain, Devansh Kukreja, Robert Kuo, Joshua Lane, Yanghao Li, Lilian Luong, Jitendra Malik, Mallika Malhotra, William Ngan, Omkar Parkhi, Nikhil Raina, Dirk ...
"I like being autistic": Assessing the benefit of autistic-led
Results Significant benefit was observed across a range of areas, including a significant improvement in the children's knowledge and understanding of being autistic and of their unique strengths and challenges, a significant rebalancing of how the children viewed being autistic, evidence of emerging positive autistic identities and a growing sense of belongingness, a significant change in ...

How to Write a Research Paper: Note Cards

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The Note Card System

Researching

Sample Source List

Make an Outline and Start Writing

At a Glance

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How To Make Notecards For Research Paper In Most Effective Way

Why And How To Make Notecards For Research Paper?

Steps Towards Writing Notecards For Research

Get Yourself a Pack Of Fresh, Nice Smelling Notecards

Gather More Ideas Than You Need

Shortlist The Sources

Use A Full Notecard For Each Idea

Write Down The Quotes

Label and Number The Note cards

Include Every Attribute / Aspect

Don’t Use Abbreviations Or Acronyms

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Organizing Your Research

Questions? Ask a Librarian

Resources for Researchers

Types of Note Cards

13.5 Research Process: Making Notes, Synthesizing Information, and Keeping a Research Log

Summary of Assignment: Research Log

Writing Center

Quick Launch: Beginning Questions

Creating the Research Log

Types of Research Notes

Bibliographic Notes

Informational Notes

Direct Quotations, Paraphrases, and Summaries

Other Systems for Organizing Research Logs and Digital Note-Taking

9 Organizing Research: Taking and Keeping Effective Notes

Principles of note-taking

Organizing research- applications that can help

Using note or project-organizing apps

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How to Do Research: A Step-By-Step Guide: 4a. Take Notes

Note Taking in Bibliographic Management Tools

Tips for Taking Notes Electronically

Tips for Taking Notes by Hand

Forms of Notetaking

Example of a Work Cited Card

Note-taking techniques I: The index card method

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Organizing Your Research: Research Note Cards

Example Note Card

The note card system

The Research Note Card

One Source Per Card

One Item Per Card

Label Each Card

Write a Complete Note

Use Quotation Marks When Quoting

The Source Card

Making Note Cards Better

The Author Card

The Subject Card

More About the Note Card System and Research Note-Taking

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The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read, Watch, and Listen To

I. Who Needs The Notecard System?

II. Note-taking Principles

III. The Notecard System

IV. Frequently Asked Questions

V. Other People Who Use The Notecard System

VI. Conclusion

Want to see The Notecard System in action?

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Recovery methods

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