As a student, I can almost bet at one time or another you have had the experience of taking reams of notes, only to find you’ve left something important out or simply cannot find it in your notes later. Fortunately for you, there are some helpful tips in this article to help you remember everything your teacher says. Read on for some techniques sure to increase your ability to absorb and recall massive amounts of information, easily and effortlessly.

Use Color Extensively

Have a look at some notes you’ve taken in class. What is the common element in all of your notes? It’s the color of your notes - no doubt all taken down in pencil or standard black / blue pen. When you’ve got this page after page , it’s hard to scan your notes for the important points. Rather than always taking you notes like this, try colored pencils and different colored inks. If you make a habit of this, you’ll find your notes MUCH easier to refer back to.

The majority of people have an easier time locating, learning and recalling information when they have visual cues. Using varied colors in your notes gives you a visual cue which can help you remember or at least find important facts in your notes. Experiment with these - some people find some colors more helpful than others. Different colors for different kinds of notes can also be useful.

As for myself, I write most of my text down in black with highlights in other colors. When corrections are necessary, I like to use RED since it stands out the best.

Underline and Accentuate Important Items

This is very important when taking notes. Be creative and explore different variations. Multi-stroke, underlining, boxes, circles, and shadows are effective in drawing attention to increasingly important items or definitions. Just be sure not to overdue it or these styles will be ineffective.

Include Graphs, Charts and Figures

Charts, drawings and diagrams make things like timelines and relationships (which are very difficult to get across in writing) readily understood. Using different colors for your text in diagrams, shading and the like will make these items even easier to follow.

Use Oversized Paper

For some reason, large sized paper works really well for note taking. You can get continuous computer paper in boxes of 5,000 sheets for as little as $25, making this a great investment - I’ve been using the same box for two years now! You can even do large diagrams and charts and simply fold them up for easy portability.

The advantage of large sheets like these is being able to fit your notes from a lecture onto one sheet of paper. Alternatively, the sheets can be divided by subject or concept. One or the other strategy may be better, depending on the course.

As an example, not long ago I took a course where I placed my notes for each lecture on a single page. This allowed me to condense my notes for 17 chapters of textbooks and 30 articles into a dozen or so pages. It’s a lot simpler to read through a dozen pages than a thousand. This cuts down many hours of pre-test revision to less than one.

Seriously though, creating these pages is “fun” for me. I know that when I am doing an exercise, it is all being filled up in my memory banks. When you try it you’ll feel the level of confidence go up tremendously and literally feel like you’re in control. In the end it’s important to see the “big picture” as a visual. Taking these methods and integrating them into your note taking will definitely do the same for you.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and you feedback is always appreciated.