You open your notebook after a few days away from a topic and find a row of underlined sentences. They looked important at the time, but now they don’t tell you what you understood or what to do next. Notes work better when they act as a short bridge back into the subject.
Write what made sense
After a reading session, close the book and write two or three sentences from memory. Explain the main idea as if you were telling a curious friend, then reopen the source to check what you missed. This small pause helps distinguish an idea you can explain from one you only recognize on the page.
Keep the useful details
Add only the details that clarify your explanation: a key term, a concrete example, or a question that remains unresolved. If you’re learning how a recipe works, for instance, a note about what the baking powder does is more useful than copying the whole paragraph around it. Your notes don’t need to preserve every sentence.
Leave yourself a return point
End each entry with one sentence about where to resume, such as “Next, compare this example with the one on the following page.” When you come back, that cue saves you from rereading everything just to find your place. Keep the notes brief enough that you’ll actually want to use them.