How to Take Notes Productively (Notion Template Included)
About this video
Jeff Su defines effective note-taking by low friction across three phases: before (how easy it is to start a note), during (how quickly you can get thoughts down without fighting formatting), and after (how easily you can resurface the right note when needed). He says his old system — one Word document in reverse chronological order with diverse topics, from coffee chats to book summaries to video ideas after watching Ali Abdaal — passed before and partly during but failed the resurface test, requiring digging through one long document and relying on memory; he only rediscovered June 2020 YouTube SEO notes while scrolling for this video. His Notion system splits into a backend and a frontend. The backend is five notebooks covering his personal life, implemented as Notion databases and set up once; he notes the structure was adapted from Thomas Frank. The frontend is projects as Notion pages (e.g., renting an apartment, a podcast/book/article). Each note has properties including platform, status (all notes start as open, then after completion are set to resurface or archive), URL, created and updated. Note pages use three sections — a /callout for the one key takeaway at the top, action items, and the notes themselves — written bottom-up while capturing but read top-down when revisiting. Templates and the down-arrow new-note flow keep before/during friction low. Resurfacing is solved with /linked database views embedded on frontend pages, filtered to show only relevant platform notes (e.g., platform contains All Platforms or YouTube) with status not archive, sorted by updated descending, so YouTube notes appear on the YouTube page and new notes created there pre-populate the label. He provides a template with one notebook and one example project that includes an objective callout, to-dos, and quick links, with completed items dragged to archive.
Key takeaways
- Judge any note system on before, during, and after friction — most systems fail the after/resurface test, not capture
- Separate backend notebooks (databases, set up once) from frontend project pages you use daily
- Use a consistent note template: key takeaway callout on top, action items, then notes, with status flowing open -> resurface or archive
- Resurface notes automatically with linked databases filtered by platform/topic and status not archive, sorted by most recently updated
- Pre-build templates so starting a note is one click and properties like platform are pre-populated from the project page
Episode details: published April 20, 2021 · 10:29 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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