Book: Why Do Smart People Use Grid Notebooks?

Author: Masafumi Takahashi

Who should read this book: anyone who wants to process information more efficiently

What this book gives you: the point of "taking notes", and the techniques for it

This book isn't really about the benefits of grid notebooks — it's about "how to take notes effectively".

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The point of taking notes

Taking notes is about processing information, and there are three situations where you need to process information:

• When learning something new
• When thinking and making decisions
• When communicating and persuading others

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When learning something new

Whatever you're doing, learning always comes first. Here the focus of note-taking is "storing".

A common trap is students copying the board word for word during class. Storing like that has zero effect.

Changing just one habit dramatically improves how well things stick: "look up and read the board first, hold it in your head for a moment, then look down and restate it in your notes in your own words". Because the notes are now written in your own words, they'll actually mean something when you read them later — that's when storing works.

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When thinking and making decisions

The goal of thinking is to reach a conclusion. Here the focus of note-taking is "discarding".

Concretely, you keep condensing what you stored in the previous step, and use arrows and connecting lines to find the relationships between pieces of information, until a conclusion emerges.

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When communicating and persuading others

Reaching a conclusion isn't enough. To communicate a message effectively, it's best to expand the conclusion into concrete, actionable steps.

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Note-taking techniques

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Why a grid notebook?

The advantage of a grid notebook is that it's easy to draw and lay things out on. That's it. The point isn't the notebook's format, but how you use it.

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How the grid note-taking method works

1. One topic per page, with the title written at the top of the page
2. Split the page into three blocks, from left to right: facts → interpretation → action
3. The facts block records the board, matching the "storing" function — separate objective facts from subjective opinions, for example with different pen colors
4. The interpretation block condenses the facts, matching the "thinking" function
5. The action block sums up the actions you'll take, matching the "communicating" function

The author also brings up two interesting ideas that I find valuable too:

• The size of your notebook determines the size of your thinking. Don't buy a notebook that's too small — A4 is the industry standard, and you should buy an A4 grid notebook
• Don't be stingy about investing a little money in pens and notebooks that write well; enjoying the writing is what keeps you writing

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My take

I believe reading has only one purpose: changing your own behavior.

The fastest way to do that is to practice what the book says while you're reading it. So halfway through this book, I went to a bookstore, bought a grid notebook, and took notes as I read. Below are my notes.

I've never doubted the importance of taking notes, and I've always used note-taking apps, because I figured digital notes are more efficient to record than paper ones. But after more than a year of doing this, I hit a big obstacle: I had recorded a lot of content, but my thinking stayed shallow. I also had no habit of condensing and organizing my earlier notes, so when I needed them, my notes were too messy to pull the key points from.

Because I noticed this problem, I decided to start over with paper notes, which is why I borrowed 《Why Do Smart People Use Grid Notebooks?》 to read.

Back to the point: writing paper notes feels completely different from writing digital ones. On paper, your writing speed is limited, so you filter for the key points much more seriously. And with the three-block structure of "facts, interpretation, action", it forces you to keep condensing the facts and adding your own viewpoint, deepening your thinking.