As you know now, this is not an easy exercise. It will take a few
more attempts at different passages to get it right, but you will see
quite dramatic improvements in a short time as long as you remain
clear about what you’re trying to achieve. While you were reading
the passage your mind self-organised to produce a structure out
of what you read. Your main goal, then, is to reproduce this in your
notes.In the next chapterHaving done this, you should then be able to recall the structure accu-
rately as long as the main points are triggered off by memorable key
words. In the next chapter we will examine ways to improve this and
other aspects of our note-taking.Notes
1 Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism(New York: Praeger Press, 1972).
2 Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1947).
3 A. A. Zhdarnov, On Literature, Music and Philosophy(London: Lawrence &
Wishart, 1950).
4 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism(London: Allen and Unwin,
1966).Processing the Ideas 93HTW12 7/26/01 9:04 PM Page 93