A lecture moves faster than you can write, so trying to capture every word guarantees you capture the wrong things. Good lecture notes record structure and meaning - and are reviewed before they go cold.
Ten minutes with the lecture title and any pre-reading gives new information somewhere to attach. Walking in cold means the first fifteen minutes are spent just working out what the topic is - time you cannot get back.
Your job is to record the shape of the argument and the parts you will not remember, not to be a court stenographer.
Lecturers flag what matters: "the three causes were...", "the key point here...", "this often comes up in exams...". Capture the structure those phrases reveal. Leave space in your notes so you can fill gaps afterwards.
Slides are a skeleton, not the lecture - the value is in what is said around them. If recordings are permitted and allowed by your institution, use them to fill gaps, not to justify zoning out live; re-watching an entire lecture is one of the least efficient uses of study time.
Within a day, re-read your notes, fix shorthand while you still remember it, resolve your "?" marks, and add two or three questions the notes answer. Notes reviewed within 24 hours are dramatically more useful than notes rediscovered the week before an exam.
Those reviewed notes feed directly into exam preparation.
Get the free Study Skills Starter Kit - the planners, note templates and revision checklists that go with these guides. It is free, and it is the same system we teach in the full study-skills course.
Occasional updates, tips and new features. No spam.
Unsubscribe anytime.