Visual Notetaking is popular online, especially in [[Bullet Journaling]] circles. There are (many) whole YouTube channels whose videos are essentially just drawing out lessons from books. It's popular because it makes aesthetically pleasing results. It _should_ be popular because **it forces you to actually _engage_ with the content of the material** in order to figure out how to best present it. This is [[Desired Difficulty]]. Writing a ton of words doesn't produce better learning than doing the work of [[Distillation]]. Pretty designs and straight lines are just dessert. Nice, but not the point of the meal. # Example ![[Pasted image 20240107120342.png]] (coming back to this example years later - I'm not so sure that's a great example.) # Tools - Pen & paper - [[GoodNotes 5 + Notion]] - [[Obsidian Canvas]] - [[Excalidraw]] - [[DrawIO]] - although not particularly great for _notes_ - [[DrawIO in Obsidian]] can work, though. # Group Think (in a good way) You also benefit from [[Whiteboarding App|whiteboarding]] visually when trying to understand each other's [[Mental Models]], and arrive at a common group understanding of something. Bringing in full blown [[SysML|Systems Models]] is pre-mature[^1], but something more approaching a free-form, general syntax pictures with labeled lines chart can really help a group get on the same page. It allows the [[Thinking Outside the Mind|spatial-reasoning parts of our brains]] to kick in to assist the wordy-parts. [[Visuospatial]] + [[Plain Text Superpowers|plain text]] for the win? **** ## Source - Self ## Related - [[Notes (index)]] - [[Business is Laziness]] - [[Excalidraw]] [^1]: Here you're [[Modeling Purposes]] are for *communication* not for *simulation*.