Have you ever felt like your notes are more of a cluttered archive than a useful tool? Maybe you’ve scribbled down ideas, bookmarked articles, or highlighted passages in books, only to find them ...

Get out a pen and some paper.

Have you ever felt like your notes are just a chaotic collection of thoughts, scattered across notebooks, apps, or sticky notes, never quite coming together into something useful, like a second brain?

Note-taking can help in class or a meeting—and if you do them right, they'll help you afterward as well. Lindsey Ellefson is Lifehacker’s Features Editor. She currently covers study and productivity ...

This article was updated on October 10, 2023, with additional contributions by Mars Girolimon. How you take notes can affect how much information you’re able to recall. You could make reviewing course ...

Lindsey Ellefson is Lifehacker’s Features Editor. She currently covers study and productivity hacks, as well as household and digital decluttering, and oversees the freelancers on the sex and ...

A while back, in my corporate days, I was experiencing this far too often. So I went back to my college days and pulled out a note-taking method I used to use, one of the most popular note-taking ...