Holy scripture of taking notes

Author: Protyasha Roy

Created: 2025-01-03

Last Modified: 2025-01-03

Here you will find two method for taking notes for single layered and multi-layered topics. Single layered topics are those which are single articles/books/papers. And multi-layered topics include study of multiple books/papers/articles.

Kiwi method

Kiwi method is a nested method for taking notes for multi-layered topics. The name ‘Kiwi’ was chosen because the fruit Kiwi is a multi-layered fruit, and simply I like the name Kiwi(keeuuweeeuueee sounds cute, right?). The method is described below step by step.

Let’s say, we want to study ‘Big bang’ (the most accepted scientific theory for the origin and evolution of the universe). To study this complex topic from the academic and non-academic overall multiple sources keeping track of multiple books/articles/papers become really tough. Here are the steps I follow in order to study complex and multi-layered topics like these.

First Layer

Create a folder with the topic’s title. In this case ‘The Big Bang’.
Now create these 5 notes inside ‘Additional’ folder: To read, Summary and key-points, Personal thoughts, Further readings, Draft, Doubtful claims, References.

Notes	Description
To read	Keep the initially selected article/paper/book links that you are going to study for the main topic.
Summary and key-points	Write ‘Summary’ and ‘Key-points’ here for the overall books/articles/papers.
Personal thoughts	Write all of your personal ideas and thoughts that has grown in your mind after reading the topic as a whole.
Further readings	Topics or anything additional that you want to study. Copy-paste links or write any term/word/sentence for further study.
Draft	Put scattered thoughts/points here that you will organize later. You can delete this note after organizing the content.
Doubtful claims	Here you write down the doubtful claims found from the sources. This will get shifted to the ‘Further readings’ note.
References	Put all references here for each read.

Second Layer

Create folder for each reading(paper/book/article).
Create two more folders named ‘Additional’ & ‘Chapters’ or ‘Part-number’ if there are multiple parts(again create two folders for each part).
For each book/paper/article create these 7 notes inside ‘Additional’ folder: References, Unknown terms & words, Summary and key-points, Personal thoughts, Further readings, Draft.

Notes	Description
References	Put all references here for each read.
Unknown terms & words	Write all of the unknown terms and word meanings here.
Summary and key-points	Write ‘Summary’ and ‘Key-points’ here for the overall books/articles/papers.
Personal thoughts	Write all of your personal ideas and thoughts that has grown in your mind after reading the topic as a whole.
Further readings	Topics or anything additional that you want to study. Copy-paste links or write any term/word/sentence for further study.
Draft	Put scattered thoughts/points here that you will organize later. You can delete this note after organizing the content.
Doubtful claims	Here you write down the doubtful claims found from the sources. This will get shifted to the ‘Further readings’ note.

Inside the ‘Chapters’ folder create single notes for each chapter and write down the key-points, what you learn and a summary inside each note.

Gluon method

Gluon method is a method for taking notes for single layered topics. Single layered topics are those which are single articles/books/papers. This method is named ‘Gluon’ because gluon is one of the fundamental/elementary particles and as always, I like the name. So, it tries to imply the fundamental layer just as single layered notes(though elementary particles are not easy to understand).

This method is not different from the second layer of the Kiwi method. So, I’ll just copy-paste the second layer here.

Create folder for the reading(paper/book/article).
Create two more folders named ‘Additional’ & ‘Chapters’/‘Sub-sections’ or ‘Part-number’ if there are multiple parts(again create two folders for each part).
Now create these 7 notes inside ‘Additional’ folder: References, Unknown terms & words, Summary and key-points, Personal thoughts, Further readings, Draft.

Notes	Description
References	Put all references here for each read.
Unknown terms & words	Write all of the unknown terms and word meanings here.
Summary and key-points	Write ‘Summary’ and ‘Key-points’ here for the overall books/articles/papers.
Personal thoughts	Write all of your personal ideas and thoughts that has grown in your mind after reading the topic as a whole.
Further readings	Topics or anything additional that you want to study. Copy-paste links or write any term/word/sentence for further study.
Draft	Put scattered thoughts/points here that you will organize later. You can delete this note after organizing the content.
Doubtful claims	Here you write down the doubtful claims found from the sources. This will get shifted to the ‘Further readings’ note.

Inside the ‘Chapters’/‘Sub-sections’ folder create single notes for each chapter/sub-section and write down the key-points, what you learn and a summary inside each note.

How to

Divide each chapter/section into sub-sections. Give headings accordingly.
Write down the unknown terms and words as you read the sub-section. Don’t search for the meaning of it unless it’s necessary to understand the next lines.
Note down key-points, further readings, and doubtful claims as you read.
After finishing a whole chapter write down a summary and write your personal thoughts.
Write draft if needed for anything that you are not sure of, but want to organize later.
Link references of key-points, doubtful claims and personal thoughts as you read.