Cornell notes style lab book and Moleskine

This is going to be a bit of a difficult post to write since I don't have the appropriate graphics tools (and I'm missing a scanner), but bear with me.

I've been using the Cornell Notes system over the last couple of days to help me write longer and more interesting pages in my lab notebooks. The part of me that holds frugality dear wants to use the $1.59 8x10 cheap big quadrille lab books whenever possible in preference to the $10 3x5 Moleskine, especially when I'm writing somewhere that space is not at a premium. I'm following pretty much the same principles that I did on an earlier try on this, using columns and layout to sequester data and metadata into its own place, and to be consistent enough in what I'm doing that I can find stuff again while not being so consistent that I feel hemmed in.

The style is as follows:

Top right corner: date, time, location, meal and cost if I'm out writing, weather if it's notable, any other quick reminder of where I was at the time. Many of these in the Moleskine list a bus route; most of the lab books give a coffee shop or "home". (there's useful metadata)

Right column (10%): just enough of a margin to write marginal notes in of anything that's distracting me at the moment, but not enough to get involved in it. That goes down 85% of the page. In a coffee shop it's where you'd write down overheard gossip.

Top: title of the page, for the index.

Left column (25%): leave it blank for now.

Bottom (15%): leave it blank for now.

Middle (65% wide, 85% tall including top title): enough room to capture a whole thought, at least three or four paragraphs of it, and if I get sufficiently distracted by anything I note in the right margin and move on.

Once the whole middle is full to the edges, only then do I go back and review it, see if it makes any sense, and start composing the left column. The whole left column gets questions, only questions - any questions that can easily be answered by what I've written in the middle, plus questions that arise from reflecting on it, and all other on-topic queries that arise. Usually the question writing goes very very fast, especially if the topic is interesting - I'll often create enough questions in the course of writing that part of the page that there's an easy start to a next page or two.

Finally once the top 85% is full, I go to the bottom and fill in a summary of the page. Note that this may be very different from the title topic - that's one frustration of titled pages in this or any system, you might divert in the process of writing. I still think it's good to know the title and topic before you start, but that right margin is really key to make sure that you have enough space to catch fleeting ideas.

For the 3x5 Moleskine, this is way harder. You have a lot less space, and the page fills up a lot more quickly. My habit in lab notebooks is to use the right page only (leaving the left for sketches); for the Moleskine I tried using the full right page for the essay + very thin right margin for marginalia, and then the right quarter of the facing page for questions. That still leaves most of a facing page for art, or for more questions layered on top of the first pass.

I'm pretty sure this could all be rendered in some kind of CSS layout - the default Typepad setup doesn't come anywhere near, since it has per-weblog layout but not customizable per-page marginalia. I made a quick change to the private wiki I use for notes to self to allow for a linked editable left and right margin, which seems pretty neat but which I don't have enough experience with yet to know whether it's a just a great weird idea or actually something worth re-implementing the "right way".

I promise - I've been promising - that this will all show up scanned in at some point.

Technorati Tags: writing, cornell, quadrille, moleskine

Comments

[jose]

i would love a native editor (windows, os x, un*x) or a web app that did this. and i need to apply myself to using this method more rigorously, because it's effective.

nice post, ed :)

[Katherine]

For a midpoint between the cheap lab book and the expensive Moleskine, you might look at Levenger. (http://www.levenger.com) They have nifty pads that are quadrille ruled, but with a blank left margin, using high quality paper to avoid bleedthrough. In a variety of sizes, either unpunched or punched for their Circa notebook line.

[JoshD]

A project I've filed in the "sooner" edge of someday/maybe is to take a scanner, flickr, and elements of a blog and wiki, and set up either a set of scripts or something else that allows me to retroactively "Cornell Note" a full set of notes in my notebook, from my scanner.

That is, I run the app, it scans a page of my notebook, posts the scan to Flickr, and makes a page with the full page scanned image of the notebook in the middle right, a space where I can put the appropriate questions down the left, a summary at the bottom, and some kind of navigation tree and set of tags at the top. Wiki-style auto-crosslinks would be useful, I think. Add in some Flickr-style hovering notes so I can explain what the little doodles mean, too.

It's my hope that this would make for a good mesh between the strengths of a notebook and computer, without a tablet.

Of course, I have no idea how to actually build this.... :)

[Edward Vielmetti]

A scanner + flickr or other fotonotes implementation should be real useful here, yes. You might also tag pages with del.icio.us so that you could make sense of them in a broader context.

[Edward Vielmetti]

Update: I now have a scanner, and plan to put some wireframes of this online as well as some scans of old notebook pages. Gotta find some pages that lend themselves nicely to scans (with appropriate editing for the net).

[howardgr]

Back when I went to CU, and as recently as 2 years ago, they had flip pads of this paper with 3 hole punch available at the Campus store. Could probably find someone to send some to you.

[lotfollah samaee]

would you please tell me "who has researched in cornell method note taking?"
thank you

[lotfollah samaee]

would you please tell me "who has researched in cornell method note taking?"
thank you

[RickL]

1. An interesting attempt to implement Cornell electronically can be seen in Circus Ponies Notebook (www.circusponies.com).

2. If anybody comes up with a good scanning system of the type discussed further up in the comments, please, please publicize it!

3. After posting several comments on your blog, Edward, I notice that you disclose commenters email addresses to all and sundry. So that's another wave of spam I've let myself in for. Email addresses should be for you only and should NOT be disclosed to the world.