The 7 best note-taking methods
and when to use each

Here are the seven methods students and professionals use most, with when each one shines:

The Cornell method was developed by education professor Walter Pauk at Cornell University and popularized in his book How to Study in College¹. It's still the most widely taught note-taking system because it builds review into the page itself.

Cornell notes format

• Right column (notes, ~70% of the page): write the lecture or reading notes in short phrases.
• Left column (cues, ~30%): after class, write questions or keywords that the notes answer.
• Bottom strip (summary): write a 2–3 sentence summary in your own words.

Cornell notes example

Cue: "What does the AWS shared responsibility model split?" → Notes: "AWS secures the cloud (hardware, facilities); customer secures what's in the cloud (data, IAM, configs)." → Summary: "Security is shared: AWS owns infrastructure, I own my data and access."

To review, cover the notes column and answer each cue from memory. That turns your notes into a ready-made practice test.

Write main topics at the left margin and indent supporting points beneath them. It's fast and tidy when the speaker is organized, and it converts easily into flashcards: each heading becomes a question.

Put the main topic in the center and branch out to subtopics, using colors and short keywords. Mind maps are excellent for seeing how ideas connect, for example how cloud services relate or how causes lead to effects in history.

Create columns (e.g. Certification | Cost | Eligibility | Best for) and fill in rows. Charting is the fastest way to study anything you'll have to compare: drugs in pharmacology, frameworks in project management, services in cloud exams.

Write every new fact or idea as a separate, numbered sentence. It keeps up with fast speakers. Rewrite into Cornell or outline form the same day, while you still remember the context.

Draw a box around each group of related notes. Boxing is popular on tablets (GoodNotes, Notability, OneNote) and works well for ADHD because each box is a small, visually separate chunk you can review one at a time.

A system of small "atomic" notes, each with one idea, linked to related notes. Apps such as Obsidian make it easy. It shines for long-term learning across many certifications or a whole career, rather than cramming for one exam.

• Write in your own words. In a well-known 2014 study, Mueller and Oppenheimer found laptop note-takers tended to transcribe word for word and did worse on conceptual questions². Later replication work (Morehead, Dunlosky & Rawson, 2019) found the laptop-vs-longhand gap smaller than first reported³. The lasting lesson is to paraphrase rather than transcribe, whatever the device.
• Testing beats re-reading. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) showed that practicing retrieval leads to much better long-term retention than restudying⁴. That's why the Cornell cue column works so well.
• Space your reviews. Reviewing notes after 1 day, 1 week and 1 month (spaced repetition) consolidates memory far better than one long cram session.

On Android, iOS and desktop, Microsoft OneNote, Google Keep and Obsidian are free and work well with these methods: OneNote for boxing and Cornell templates, Keep for quick sentence notes, Obsidian for Zettelkasten. For handwriting on tablets, GoodNotes and Notability are popular paid options.

Method descriptions follow standard study-skills sources (Cornell Learning Strategies Center). Research claims cite the peer-reviewed papers listed below.