I stopped using notes, and I'm doing better than ever.

Throw away your textbook. Throw away your study guides. Throw away your test prep books. Throw away your notes. You don't need them. I used to think that keeping a set of detailed notes was vital for understanding and remembering schoolwork. I even took the time to colour-code and re-write my notes once a week, carefully categorizing and cataloging them with a system of folders and binders so I could easily find them in a moment's notice. I would obsess over these notes, spending hours each week re-reading and re-writing them, and they fit perfectly in my mental routine of doing just the bare-minimum to keep my grades up. Nowadays, these methods sound ridiculous to me, and I've learned a far better way of doing things. Now, instead of writing notes, I write questions. Questions about the material, questions about context, and questions about what I don't understand. I compile these questions into single questions meant to guide me, to explain the material, to help me understand the larger picture. I ask these questions to teachers, classmates, my friends, my parents, and myself. I want to *understand *the material, to *understand *the subject matter. I don't want to just memorize a bunch of facts and figures, I want to *understand how they all fit together*. When you want to understand something, you ask **Why?**. Why is it the way it is? Why is it important? Why does it matter? Usually, as I'm asking these questions, I'll write the answers down and use them to make a mental map of the relationships between different subjects. You see, when you start to ask questions, and you desire to understand something, you begin to start seeing things in a different way. You start noticing patterns and connections between seemingly unrelated things. I don't mean patterns like those used to solve puzzles or brain teasers, I mean patterns that are in everything, a hidden structure of logic and reason that binds everything together. I start to notice that history repeats itself, that a lack of context means a lack of understanding, and that nothing is as simple as it seems at first. I've learned to embrace complexity, to embrace nuance, and to be skeptical of simple answers. I've learned that the best thing you can do when faced with a problem is to ask a question. Questions. This is what learning is all about. Questions. These questions guide me, they direct me towards a deeper understanding of the material. They force me to actually understand the material, to find a way to explain it to someone else in a concise manner. That is the key. When you can explain a concept to someone else, can you truly say that you understand it? Or are you just reciting words and figures that you don't actually understand? When you ask yourself a question, you are forced to confront the reality that you may not actually understand a concept as well as you think you do. And when you begin to understand, when you begin to grasp the larger picture, you are forced to confront the reality that you are not as smart as you thought you were. You see, education is not about learning, it's about unlearning. It's about confronting the fact that you are wrong, that you don't actually know as much as you thought you did. It's about being willing to change your perspective, to change your opinion, and to **learn**. Everything you think you know is wrong. You don't actually know anything. And when you understand this, that's when you can finally start to learn. So, throw away your notes, you don't need them. Throw away your textbook, you don't need it. Throw away your study guides, you don't need them. Throw away your test prep books, you don't need them. Throw away your preconceptions, throw away your assumptions, and throw away your ego. You don't actually know as much as you think you do.

I stopped using notes, and I'm doing better than ever.

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