take themselves. If you don’t, you’re lost. By contrast, pattern notes
are like a copy of a map or the A to Zof a large city: you can see clearly
the various routes you can take, so you can make your own choices.Freeing the mind to work more imaginatively
Indeed, those who advocate pattern notes argue that the brain just
doesn’t work in a linear manner and that conventional ways of plan-
ning and taking notes are, therefore, not the most useful. They force
the mind to operate in artificial ways, thereby releasing only a small
fraction of its potential. If the brain works best within the clusters
of key concepts in an interlinked and integrated manner in the way
we’ve already seen, it makes sense to structure our notes and our word
relations in the same way, rather than in the traditional linear manner.
This is borne out by those students who’ve adopted the method as
an integral part of their pattern of study. Some of my most exciting and
rewarding experiences as a tutor have come from seeing students use
this method. For most of them this is the first time they realise that
education can be an exciting business in which they have a valuable
and significant role to play in producing their own insights and per-
ceptions seen only by them in their own unique way.
By leaving them as free as possible to write down their own ideas as
they come to them, it injects more creativity into their work. It also
gives their own ideas greater prominence, so that when they come to
research them they’re better prepared to evaluate and select from what
they read.
Indeed the flexibility of this strategy is almost unlimited. You can go
on adding connections and new ideas as and when they occur to you.
So, unlike many other systems, rather than stunting your abilities,
it gives the mind the freedom to work more imaginatively, creating
new analyses, seeing unexpected connections and contrasts, and
synthesising ideas from different sources.Better for unstructured situations
It’s particularly useful when we have to work in unstructured situ-
ations, unlike linear notes, which work well in the structured tasks like
taking notes from a book. For example, pattern notes are useful when
we’re trying to make notes from recall and the ideas come tumbling
out thick and fast. The same is true of taking notes during a class dis-
cussion, where ideas might be thrown about quite rapidly and, unlike
those in a book, you have no control over them. You can’t go back to
get something down you may have missed, as you can in your book byFlexibility 53HTW7 7/26/01 8:54 PM Page 53