# How to take notes that stay useful

> Write notes for the person who will read them in six months. A method for capturing, rewriting, linking and pruning notes, with an example from a meeting.

Source: https://priortasks.com/guides/notes-that-stay-useful/
Last updated: 2026-11-05

Notes stay useful when you write them for the reader who will open them in six months: you, with no memory of the meeting, the book or the idea. That reader needs a title that says what the note holds, a few sentences in plain words, where the information came from, and a way to reach related notes.

## The method in a few lines

1. **Capture fast.** Get the thought out of your head, into one place, without sorting it.
2. **Process it soon.** Within a day or a week, rewrite what matters as a note that makes sense alone.
3. **One note, one idea.** The title states the idea, not the topic.
4. **Link.** Connect it to related notes and to the project it serves.
5. **File by use.** Keep notes where you will look for them when you need them.
6. **Prune and act.** Update notes that change, delete what you will not use, and turn decisions into tasks.

## Why it works

Collecting is not learning. In their [2013 review of study techniques](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/which-study-strategies-make-the-grade.html), Dunlosky and colleagues rated highlighting, underlining and rereading as low in utility, and practice testing as high. A page of highlights feels like progress and produces little recall. A note worth keeping makes you do something later: act on it, answer from it, or turn it into a question.

Two well-known systems point the same way. Niklas Luhmann, the German sociologist, kept a slip box of about 90,000 notes written between 1951 and 1996, now held by [Bielefeld University](https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/soziologie/forschung/luhmann-archiv/). Sönke Ahrens described the approach in *How to Take Smart Notes* (2017). Andy Matuschak's [evergreen notes](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes) list similar principles: notes should be atomic and concept-oriented, densely linked, organized by association rather than a strict hierarchy, and written for yourself by default.

You do not need to follow either system to a letter. The shared point is that a note is useful when it is small, written in your own words, and connected to other things you know.

## How to do it, step by step

Take a client call.

1. **Capture during the call.** Bullets, names, half sentences. Don't format. This is raw material, not a note.
2. **Rewrite within a day.** Open a new note. Give it a title that says the outcome: "Client wants delivery before the 15th (trade show)", not "Call".
3. **Write for your future self.** Add the date, the people, what was decided and why. A reader who was not in the call should understand it.
4. **Split what is separate.** If the call also produced an idea about pricing, that is its own note with its own title.
5. **Link.** Connect the note to the project, to the client's note and to the pricing note. Links are how you find it again when you do not remember the title.
6. **Pull out the actions.** Decisions become tasks with dates and owners. The note keeps the reasoning, the task keeps the work.
7. **Return to it.** At your weekly review, update what changed and archive what is done.

A skeleton that works for most meetings:

```
## Client call
**Date:** 2026-11-12
**People:** Anna (client), me

### Decisions
- Delivery before the 15th, because of the trade show

### Next steps
- [ ] Send the revised plan by Friday
- [ ] Ask Anna for the logo files

### Source
Call notes, 12 November
```

The same shape works for a book or an article. The title is the idea, the body is in your words, and a line says why it matters to you:

```
## Spaced study beats one long session
The same hours, spread over several days, give better recall than one block.
The best gap grows with how long I need to remember.
Why it matters: start revising weeks before the exam.
Source: Cepeda et al., 2006
Related: [[Retrieval practice]], [[Exam plan]]
```

The note is short, it says one thing, and it points to its neighbors. In a year you will know what it says, where it came from, and what else to read.

## Mistakes to avoid

- **Saving without reading.** A pile of clipped articles is a reading list, not a library.
- **Writing for the moment.** Abbreviations and "as discussed" make sense today and nowhere else. Write the full name, and say what was discussed.
- **Titles like "Notes" or "Ideas".** You cannot find them and you cannot link to them.
- **Copy-paste instead of rewriting.** If you did not put it in your own words, you probably did not process it.
- **No source and no date.** In six months you will not know if it is still true.
- **Deep folder trees.** The deeper the tree, the more often a note has two possible homes. Use a few folders by project or area, and links for the rest.
- **One long note per topic.** It grows without a shape. Short notes with links stay readable.
- **Notes that never lead to action.** If a note holds a decision, a task should exist for it.
- **Never revisiting.** A note you never look at again was not a note, it was a capture.

## In Prior

Prior's **Notes** space is plain Markdown, so a note stays readable anywhere and you can export it.

- **Capture and structure.** Type `/` for blocks: headings, task lists, tables, callouts, toggles. In **Live** mode you see the result as you type, and **Source** shows the Markdown. [The note editor](https://priortasks.com/docs/notes/note-editor/) lists the blocks.
- **Start from a template.** An empty note offers Meeting notes, Project brief, Weekly review, Comparison and Budget. See [Note templates](https://priortasks.com/docs/notes/note-templates/).
- **Link.** Write `[[Note title]]` to link notes and `#tag` to tag them. The inspector shows the **Outline** and the **Backlinks**, the notes that link here, and the graph shows how your notes connect.
- **Turn text into action.** In a block's menu, **Create a task from this** makes a task from that block, and **Ask Prior AI about this** opens the assistant on it.
- **File by use.** Folders, favorites and search organize your library; see [Organize notes](https://priortasks.com/docs/notes/organize-notes/). Every project has a **Notes** tab for the notes that serve it, covered in [Project notes](https://priortasks.com/docs/notes/project-notes/).
- **Write together.** Notes of a shared project are edited live by every editor. [Shared notes](https://priortasks.com/docs/notes/shared-notes/) explains roles and the **Share with the project** action for personal notes.
- **Keep what you need to recall.** Turn a fact worth remembering into flashcards. [Spaced repetition](https://priortasks.com/guides/spaced-repetition/) explains why.

[Notes overview](https://priortasks.com/docs/notes/notes-overview/) shows the whole space. Deleted notes go to the Trash, so pruning can be undone.