How to Make Notes and Write

by Dan Allosso, S.F. Allosso

There are plenty of personal knowledge management systems out there, promising to help you take smart notes or link your thinking or build a second brain. And there are plenty of writing guides out there promising to teach you the elements of style. This book offers a simple and effective way to make effective notes on sources and your interpretations of them, then turn those thoughts into clear and compelling output.

Genres: Writing

140 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 23, 2022

About the author

Historian, author, hobby farmer. Lives in the Upper Midwest on a small farm. Raised all the meat his family ate for a while. Now buys local. Blogs at https://danallosso.substack.com/ and has a YouTube channel called MakingHistory.

Reviews

[Dan Prisk · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book focused on reading and note making is well done. It doesn't necessarily add much new content if you've read much on Zettelkasten, but it presents it nicely and with a focus on working towards output. This focus on output is something that Allosso notes--and I agree--is often missing in discussions of note taking/making strategies. Unfortunately it's also something that I felt was ultimately a bit lacking in this book. There's a pivot point about midway where the book moves from note making to writing papers, but this pivot is rather brief and doesn't really deliver on the promise of structuring the system towards output. I think I was hoping for some more specific discussion of using Zettelkasten to read and structure specific outputs, like literature reviews (although I realize that may be a little out of scope for a book largely targeted and undergraduates). That isn't here.

Overall I found the second half of the book is much less useful than the first. Again this may be because I'm not the intended audience however. If you are looking at the book for help thinking through applying Zettelkasten techniques to academic work however you might well be able to skip the second half.

As a little nitpick I was particularly frustrated by the several examples in the final chapter where Allosso seemed to be working quite hard to not use the singular "they". As he says, by using euphemisms and forms of language associated with certain groups you make yourself appear aligned with those groups. In this regard, refusing to acknowledge the singular "they" in 2022 is not a good look.

[Eddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good revision of authors' previous book

This is a much improved revision of the authors' previous book. That one was satisfactory even it felt rushed. This one is better overall and covers the two topics in a balanced way. In this sense, there is little to add: as the title says, the book teaches you how to make notes and write.

I would recommend this to any student without any hesitation.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spends a lot of time as a basic style guide

The author’s book provides students with a method to take and organize notes that become an online for academic writing. I had hoped that the author would spend more time on integrating a specific Zettelkasten method of note taking and organization with document writing. Instead, he spends a good bit of time on basic elements of writing that are far more generic. The book may be helpful for high school students or undergraduates.

[MarkGrabe Grabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing process

This is a brief text on the writing process. It combines comments on how to take useful notes in preparation for writing with the type of recommendations for solid writing you would receive in a quality college composition course. The brevity of the work makes it a possible addition to a variety of college courses that emphasize significant writing tasks.

[Becky Nissila · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book to help with developing a personal knowledge management (PKM) system or Zettelkasten. This is definitely a skill to earn, albeit a personal skill. Everyone might do it a bit different and that’s ok.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read and very helpful as a humanities scholar.