On a keyboard, you can type almost everything your teacher says. That’s exactly the trap. Fast note-taking keeps what matters and drops the rest. Here are five simple methods. They work in class and in meetings, and mostly they just take a bit of practice.
Why typing fast isn’t enough
A study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in 2014 in Psychological Science, found that students who took notes on a laptop copied the lecture word for word more often, and that this copying hurt their understanding. A follow-up study, published in 2019 by Kayla Morehead, John Dunlosky and Katherine Rawson, didn’t find a consistent gap between handwriting and typing.
The two studies agree on one thing: what helps is sorting and putting things in your own words. The five methods below are built for that. We go deeper into this debate in Notebook or laptop for taking notes in class?.
1. Abbreviations
Every word you shorten saves you a few keystrokes. Over an hour of class, it adds up.
What works best is a fixed list that you stick to all year. On a keyboard, go for what you can type directly: a “->” is faster than an arrow you have to dig out of a menu.
| Word | Abbreviation |
|---|---|
| something, someone | sth, sb |
| problem | prob |
| that is | ie |
| example | ex |
| definition | def |
| because | bc |
| with, without | w/, w/o |
| leads to, so | -> |
| equal, different | =, != |
| goes up, goes down | +, - |
Add the abbreviations for your own subject: “rev” for revolution in history, “eq” for equation in math.
If you take notes in French, the full list, with symbols and examples, is on French abbreviations for note-taking: you can add it to your notebook and print it.
One tip: write each important idea out in full the first time. The day you search your notes for “revolution,” that word will be there.
2. Take down the teacher’s outline, not their sentences
A class almost always has an outline, and teachers often announce it without saying so: “we’re going to look at three things,” “now let’s move on to,” “make sure you remember this.” Those sentences are your headings.
Type the outline first. Under each heading, keep only:
- definitions, copied exactly;
- dates, numbers, formulas;
- one example per idea, in a few words.
For everything else, rephrase it in one line. If something your teacher says doesn’t fit any of these boxes, it can wait.
This sorting has a second upside: your notes have a structure. When you study, you read an outline before you read any text.
3. A color code, three colors max
Colors help you reread, as long as there are only a few and they’re always the same. Go past three and you spend more time picking an ink than listening.
An example that holds up all year:
- a dark ink for the body of the lesson;
- one color for definitions;
- a highlighter for what you need to know by heart.
On a keyboard, switching inks costs you a few seconds every time. If the class moves fast, type everything in the same ink and add the color tonight, while you reread: it’s a good way to do the review from method 5.
In Cayer, colored inks are free, and so is the highlighter in yellow and blue, which is plenty for this code. We explain how to keep the same colors from one subject to the next in Organize your class notes on a computer like in your notebooks.
4. Leave space and fill it in tonight
You’re going to miss parts. That’s normal. What matters is knowing which ones.
When you lose the thread, skip a line and type a marker that’s always the same, like “missing.” Don’t try to catch up during class: you’d lose what comes next.
Tonight, go through your markers one by one and fill them in: with the textbook, the handout, a classmate’s notes, or a question to your teacher next class. In a tool that searches your text, like Cayer, typing “missing” in the search takes you back to the pages where there’s still a gap.
Also leave some breathing room between sections. A blank line before each heading makes the page easy to read, and gives you room to add an example or a comment later.
5. Review within 24 hours
It’s the simplest method, and the one people forget most often.
In 1885, the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus published Über das Gedächtnis (“On Memory”), where he measured on himself how fast he forgot lists of nonsense syllables. In 2015, Jaap Murre and Joeri Dros redid his measurements and published them in PLOS ONE. Their curve looks like Ebbinghaus’s: you forget fast in the first few hours, then it clearly slows down.
Two caveats: this research is about syllables with no meaning, and about one single person each time. A lesson has meaning, and you forget it differently. Still, the general shape of the curve is a good reason to review early, before the key points fade.
Ten minutes in the evening is enough:
- Reread all of today’s notes.
- Fill in the “missing” spots.
- Add the colors.
- Turn each heading into a question: “What is the Truman Doctrine?”
On test day, those questions become your study sheet.
The five methods at a glance
| Method | During class | That evening |
|---|---|---|
| Abbreviations | you shorten common words | you write key ideas out in full |
| Teacher’s outline | you type the headings they announce | you check that each section has its content |
| Three colors | one ink if it’s moving fast | you add the colors |
| Space left | you type “missing” and keep going | you fill in each gap |
| Review | nothing | ten minutes, and some questions |
Start with just one method, the one that clicks most for you, and add the others over the weeks. After a month, you’ll probably take fewer notes, and use them more.