Hello Reader,

Have you ever had that feeling that you KNOW something, but can’t explain?

It is a hunch, a feeling, an insight. It is a “something” you can see, but when you try to make it known to others you don’t even know how to start explaining (and when you try to explain, other people don’t get it).

Researchers experience it all the time. Experts as well.

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Your current knowledge and experiences allow you to see something that people with different experiences can’t.

“It won’t work” - You tell your team - “We should do X instead”. Yet, they go for it anyway, spending 1 year of everyone’s time, just to come back to the same conclusion you had 1 year ago.

Only if you could have explained it better…!?

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This feeling that we have is what we call ‘tacit knowledge’.

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that we have but are not yet able to conceptualise.

Yes, contrary to what many people believe, knowledge happens before “concepts”. We observe things and make connections before we are able to verbalise them. Instead, concepts are forms of knowledge representation that help our cognitive reasoning and communication (I will say more about that in two weeks).

That means you have more knowledge inside of you than you probably give yourself credit for. You could write books about it. The challenge is: How can you make sense and communicate tacit knowledge?

Communication is the challenge of research.

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And it all starts with how you take notes.

You can choose to do:

• Passive Note-Taking where all you do is to describe a situation (e.g. describing the events that happened in a meeting) or highlight your readings. That way you are capturing your ‘stimulus’ – the things that make your insights pop to mind.
• Active Note-Taking where you capture not only your stimulus but the knowledge you derived from it. This is the ability to express your knowledge (that lives in your mind and body) within your notes and relate it to the “things you see”.

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Passive vs Active Note-Taking in Practice

Here is what passive and active note-taking look like in practice:

When you come in contact with a situation, you can SEE something in that situation. That something relates to your current knowledge, context, and things you are paying attention to.

When you see the problem your team will face, why they will face the problem, and why you believe a given direction will be a better one, you can:

• write a note with the decisions of the meeting (passive note-taking).
• write a note about why you disagree with the decision taken at the meeting, containing the problem you see, the reason for it, and the direction you believe the team should go (active note-taking).
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When you highlight a text you are reading, you can also SEE something in that text. Something that is either interesting, relevant, or puzzling has caught your attention. So you can:

• highlight or quote the text (passive note-taking)
• write a sentence about the thought that came to mind (poor active note-taking). If you don’t fully note that down, a few months down the line when you are in a different context, and paying attention to different things, that same realisation may not come to mind again. So you will be wondering: “What was I trying to say here?”
• explain what the thought is and how it relates to the text you were considering highlighting (active note-taking)
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Active Note-Taking comes from the realisation that your knowledge is not IN the things you see/hear/touch.

Instead, your knowledge is in your mind and body. It is in YOUR experiences. The world we experience is the stimulus for the generation of your personal knowledge.

So when taking notes, you can choose to capture only your stimulus or capture (also) your knowledge.

But how to do Active Note-Taking?

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Developing the Active Note-Taking Skill

Active Note-Taking is a skill, not a method.

As a skill, it involves:

• The mindset changes that unlock your self-expression (a requirement for all perfectionists out there).
• The methods you can use with each mindset (including how to apply a method and in which situations you should apply each one).
• The tools that can best support your self-expression.

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This is the first skill I teach in the curriculum of the Prolific Researcher Mentorship as it drives all other Personal Knowledge Management skills. There is nothing to manage if you can't even express your knowledge in the first place.

And now I am separating this part of the curriculum into a self-paced course.

So if you want to learn all mindset changes and methods you need to start expressing your knowledge within your notes, join the waitlist for the Active Note-Taking course.

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And if you are already a pro in self-expression, next week we are talking about Active Reading, which is the ability to engage with a source from multiple perspectives.

Meanwhile, if you have any questions, feel free to ask by replying to this email.

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Talk to you soon.

Until then, take care.

Bianca