My experience on notes: * You have to try things and discover what is actually effective. Systems used by other people won't always work for you. * People tha

My experience on notes: * You have to try things and discover what is actually effective. Systems used by other people won't always work for you. * People that look good at note-taking are often very deficient. I have worked with many people and noticed that many have elaborate note-taking systems. I often wonder why many of these people are so ineffective. If their ability to take notes had been removed from them, perhaps they'd have developed other skills/abilities which would have helped them. * How I take notes depends on the context. I don't have a single way. Sometimes it's a list of things, but at other times I'm writing words and drawing connections between them. * Writing notes and then rewriting them in a condensed format, perhaps with detail from later research helps me learn the material. Writing on paper and "typing them up" seems to be the best approach. * I very rarely return to notes later. Actions should not be buried in the notes. They should go immediately from notes to email, a ticket in the bug tracker, etc. I think you may have some other issues with discerning what is important. You need to know this before you can only note the important things. The two methods I had in the UK which were universally available (read: most minimal, but a starting point if you don't have anything else) were comparing the lectures to: the syllabus and past exam papers. As you go along, ask how the information connects with what they state they are going to teach and what they test on. This did not help with everything you could get out of the courses, but it tended to give me a start.