Taking notes by hand is generally preferable to using tech, both because it’s better for retention and also because so many of the best note-taking methods are designed for notebooks. But sometimes, you just need to the utility of digital notes, and if you don’t want to digitize what you’ve already written, you should take them down on your laptop using a note-taking method designed for digital use. It’s called the boxing method.
What is the boxing method of note-taking?
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The boxing method involves a process similar to mind mapping, where you use boxes to differentiate ideas and group similar concepts together. The difference is, of course, that you are using your computer instead of literally drawing boxes and circles, and connecting lines on a piece of paper.
How do you use the boxing method for note-taking?
Every time you hear a new topic in class, type it into your document page. Concisely list all related information under each subheading. For instance, if you’re studying diseases, you might have subcategories like “noncommunicable,” “communicable,” “treatable,” etc. List the diseases under their corresponding subhead, and when class is over, use the insertion tool to put boxes around each.
You can revise these boxes, adding in new information or removing anything unnecessary. This is why using the boxing technique on paper doesn’t make sense: You may have to add more information under a certain topic or move some from box to box, which is frustrating when you’ve run out of room on your paper and don’t want to erase a bunch of content and start over. It’s much easier to just copy and paste or add new text in a word processor, which will happily expand the size of the box for you. You don’t have to write long sentences, indent outlines, or do anything fancy beyond just writing down related words.
Once you have the basics down, you can add lines to connect related boxes or highlight colors to make distinctions. For instance, if a disease is both communicable and treatable, you might want to highlight all treatable diseases in blue, so any blue-highlighted words under “communicable” and “noncommunicable” are easily identified as treatable ones.
The benefit of the boxing method is that it makes it easy to take concise and easily parsable notes, generating a simple visual “map” illustrating how concepts fit together.
Things to keep in mind
Categorizing everything can be time-consuming, so don’t try to create all of your clusters in real time. Instead, use the time you devote to revising notes after class to move your notes into the appropriate columns and box them up. This is especially important in classes that function more like discussions than structured lectures, as you won’t want to split your focus any more than you need to.