Here is a mind-dump of my personal note taking strategies, which are highly context dependent [CCW]:
(FWIW, I studied in an elite-ish engineering program, finished with a B average)
Lecture: My number one goal is to stay awake, and listening to the words coming out of the professor's mouth. For a chalk and talk scenario, I use a notepad (that tears off at the top) and follow the blackboard and add commentary. If I can't process the information, I devolve to rote copying. This is the raw material of studying that I will attempt to understand later. For slides: ideally I will have a copy of the slides and take notes overtop. If I don't have the slides before but I will have them after, then I will try to understand the information and take extra notes. If I will never have the slides I'm unlikely to really benefit from the lecture, I might actually buy the textbook.
Tutorial: If the TA is good I'll sit still and pay attention to the problem solving. Otherwise I won't attend. No notes.
Reading: Highlighting and margin notes on the first pass, and then very very terse notes on paper on the second pass. I might end up with 10 pages of notes for a one semester course.
Other non-student situations:
For keeping track of actions taken from the command line I use a text file, emacs org-mode, and keep track of every command run, issues that I ran into, and commands used to verify. After a few run-throughs this may get boiled down to a shell script or some other type of program. I initially developed this habit working on EC2 before EBS existed, but now I deliberately destoy VMs and start from scratch often so I can be sure that I have a working process for getting up and running.
For some type of programmatic data processing, I will usually use a python file. As I'm working I won't revise anything, I'll just keep adding on the bottom. I will then run it like "% python -i scratch.py" so I can examine failure at the prompt and continue to add the the file and re-run as I figure things out.
For memory augmentation while thinking, for example for design work, I personally generally use letter (A4) size paper along with a pen, so I can spread out the paper on my desk while I get to grips with the problem. Typical to fill 3-10 pages. At this point I'm mainly using the computer just to retrieve reference material and the verify things. Ideally these notes get scanned later but I probably won't use them again. Stage 2 is to take the notes and try to distil it into a 1-page coherent top-down design. Sometimes I will cheat by using 11x17 notepad and a mechanical pencil, which allows an extravagant amount of detail an a single sheet.
(FWIW, I studied in an elite-ish engineering program, finished with a B average)
Lecture: My number one goal is to stay awake, and listening to the words coming out of the professor's mouth. For a chalk and talk scenario, I use a notepad (that tears off at the top) and follow the blackboard and add commentary. If I can't process the information, I devolve to rote copying. This is the raw material of studying that I will attempt to understand later. For slides: ideally I will have a copy of the slides and take notes overtop. If I don't have the slides before but I will have them after, then I will try to understand the information and take extra notes. If I will never have the slides I'm unlikely to really benefit from the lecture, I might actually buy the textbook.
Tutorial: If the TA is good I'll sit still and pay attention to the problem solving. Otherwise I won't attend. No notes.
Reading: Highlighting and margin notes on the first pass, and then very very terse notes on paper on the second pass. I might end up with 10 pages of notes for a one semester course.
Other non-student situations:
For keeping track of actions taken from the command line I use a text file, emacs org-mode, and keep track of every command run, issues that I ran into, and commands used to verify. After a few run-throughs this may get boiled down to a shell script or some other type of program. I initially developed this habit working on EC2 before EBS existed, but now I deliberately destoy VMs and start from scratch often so I can be sure that I have a working process for getting up and running.
For some type of programmatic data processing, I will usually use a python file. As I'm working I won't revise anything, I'll just keep adding on the bottom. I will then run it like "% python -i scratch.py" so I can examine failure at the prompt and continue to add the the file and re-run as I figure things out.
For memory augmentation while thinking, for example for design work, I personally generally use letter (A4) size paper along with a pen, so I can spread out the paper on my desk while I get to grips with the problem. Typical to fill 3-10 pages. At this point I'm mainly using the computer just to retrieve reference material and the verify things. Ideally these notes get scanned later but I probably won't use them again. Stage 2 is to take the notes and try to distil it into a 1-page coherent top-down design. Sometimes I will cheat by using 11x17 notepad and a mechanical pencil, which allows an extravagant amount of detail an a single sheet.
I currently have a fresh A3 170-page moleskine that I'm saving for some kind of massive project that needs this much space. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8862931956/ )