Use the Boxing Method to Get Better at Taking Digital Notes

Taking notes by hand is generally preferable to using technology, both because it saves better and because many of the best note-taking methods are designed for laptops. But sometimes you just need digital notes, and if you don’t want to digitize what you’ve already written , you should write them down on your laptop using a note-taking method designed for digital use. This is called the boxing method.

What is the box method of note-taking?

The boxing method involves a process similar to mind mapping , where you use frames to differentiate ideas and group similar concepts. The difference, of course, is that you use a computer instead of literally drawing rectangles and circles and connecting lines on a piece of paper.

How do you use the boxing method for note-taking?

Every time you hear a new topic in class, introduce it to the document page. Briefly list all relevant information under each subheading. For example, if you are studying diseases, you might have subcategories such as “non-infectious”, “infectious”, “curable”, etc. List the diseases under the appropriate sub-headings, and when the lesson is over, use the insert tool to fill in the boxes. around everyone.

You can edit these fields to add new information or remove anything unnecessary. This is why using the boxing technique on paper doesn’t make sense: you may have to add more information on a certain topic or move it from box to box, which is frustrating when you run out of space on paper and don’t want to erase a bunch of content and start again. It’s much easier to just copy and paste or add new text into a word processor, which will happily resize the field for you. You don’t have to write long sentences, indent, or do anything fancy other than simply writing down related words.

Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can add lines to connect related blocks or highlight colors to differentiate them. For example, if a disease is both infectious and curable, you could highlight all treatable diseases in blue so that any words highlighted in blue under both infectious and non-infectious can be easily identified as curable.

The advantage of the boxing method is that it makes it easy to take concise and easily analyzed notes, creating a simple visual “map” illustrating how concepts fit together.

Things to keep in mind

Classifying everything can take a long time, so don’t try to create all the clusters in real time. Instead, use the time you spend editing notes after class to move your notes into the appropriate columns and organize them. This is especially important in classes that are more like discussions than structured lectures, as you won’t want to split your attention more than necessary.