The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - The Art of Learning and Taking Notes

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Curious to know how Jeff takes notes? Continuing his discussion on the art of learning, Jeff shares his method of taking notes and what he has learned about note taking over the years. Snippet from the Show Doing anything of value takes time. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together and living as activated disciples. This is Show 274, The Art of Learning, and Taking Notes. Okay, so I have been getting mail. I have been getting emails and all kinds of messages. because lately I've been talking about learning and it's connecting. I'm getting people saying, you know, what you have been talking about the last four or five weeks and also saying, hey, I did see you on Matt Frad's show, you know, Pints with Aquinas and with Christopher West.

So they saw it, me talking about the art of learning and creativity. And they said, I want to learn more about that. So that's what you're going to get today. The art of learning and taking notes, I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I take notes. And I, you know, over the years I have put out an awful lot of material with the Great Adventure Bible study. That's 24 hours of teaching. And that doesn't come about just by sitting down and saying, well, I'm going to do 24 hours of teaching. It really comes as a result of gathering together what you have learned and how you have connected it.

and deciding on how you're going to present it. You know, and so it really does take time. And doing anything that's worth doing does take time. And it is work. But today, today, my friend, I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I go about taking notes and what my library looks like and my fascination with collecting ideas. Some people collect cars. Some people collect baseball cards.

some people collect coins i collect ideas and i take those ideas and i i bring them into the world of jesus world the kingdom of god and i can i can tell pretty quick whether that's a good idea or that's not such a good idea because what we're doing as we evolve and grow in our in our faith is that we are becoming wiser and more knowledgeable about the ways of God, the kingdom of God. And so we want to continue to talk about that this week. If you would like to show notes, got a big response in the last couple of weeks. If you do want the show notes, all you've got to do is text my name, Jeff Kaven's one word.

And you can text it to the number 3377. 3377. Well, last week I talked about the Art of Learning and Deep Fat Friday. I got some response from that. And people love that idea. If you missed it, for one reason or another, Deep Fat Friday was an idea that my friend came up with. Where on Fridays, I think it might be once a month, now that I'm thinking about it, it might be once a month. It could be every week, but I think it's once a month.

They called it Deep Fat Friday, and they had their kids inviting other kids, high school kids and junior high kids all came together. And they had a big deep fat Friday. They fried foods, you know, French fries, they had burgers and all kinds of different. things. And then after they, everybody was full, they introduced an idea from a book or a scripture or some concept of Jesus, you know, that he taught. And they had about a two-hour discussion with these high school kids. And there's, oh, I forgot to tell you last week, no phones allowed. They didn't allow phones. These kids are going to be there talking about meaty stuff besides the burgers, but good, good deep stuff. That's what they're going to talk about. And they're going to

think. And they're not going to be involved in TikTok faith. They're going to get their phones out of there. They're going to meet with one another. And they're going to think. And that, boy, that gets a stir from all of you. You want that. And if you do start a deep fat Friday, let me know. Maybe we'll end up interviewing you on that. Okay. So we're going to talk about the art of learning and taking notes. I'm not sure that deep work is going to be done in the modern era in the church. Now, when I say that, I say that because what I have noticed, and I mentioned this last week, is that I'm noticing a trend, and that is that people are having a very difficult time going deep. And they are very much surface, surface Christians

in terms of, oh, yeah, they do have a lot of books. And they go to conferences, and they have a lot of CDs and so forth. But they haven't taken the time to go deep with the thoughts or with the truths that there. It's kind of like background noise and it doesn't penetrate the heart. If you look at bestselling books, for example, this is another sign of the times we're living in. People are not thinking about the great thoughts and philosophy. They certainly are distancing themselves from the great thinkers of the church to get into a discussion with most people about Aquinas or St. Augustine, Aristotle, whoever, that's just a few people that might want to get together, or even being able to name some of the great classics, you know. They are, if you look at the

books, if you go to Barnes & Noble or somewhere, look at the best-selling books. They are immediate in terms of what they are aiming at, immediate, and they are very much oriented to me, me orientation myopic view of the world in other words lacking imagination foresight or intellectual insight they're the really good things in life when it comes to the truths and the meat tend to come uh they don't tend to come i should say from from either being immediate or me oriented most of the really good stuff when it comes to thinking and the truth and knowledge that Jesus gives us, it doesn't tend to come in an immediate way. It grows in us.

We learn to live with that, and we exercise it like a muscle. And it certainly isn't just me oriented. But that's what's popular with the books today. If you go to the best-selling books. If I went through, let's do this, if I went through your library and chose a book, okay, it could be any book. You can even direct me to what shelf in your library. You direct me to a shelf in your library and say, take a book.

And I take it off of your shelf. And I quickly look through it, table of contents and so forth. Now, if I asked you about what was in the book, what would you say? That's a good question, isn't it? You know, they just pick up a book. Maybe it's a well-known Catholic author. I pick it off there, off the shelf, and I open it up. And there might even be some underlining.

or highlighting in it. Yay, right? But if I asked you what was in the book, what would you say? If I asked you, what lessons did you learn in this book? What would you say? Those are good questions, really. If I asked you, what was the main point of this book that you paid 1695 for? And I can see that you actually highlighted some stuff in here.

What was the main point? if I went on and started to ask you questions like, is there anything to pass on to your children in this book? Hmm, that's a good question. Will this book make a difference at work for you? What did you learn in this book that made a difference at work? And then really the granddaddy question of all of them is, have you grown closer to Christ as a result of this book?

And if so, how? How? now that's a well some people say that's a rigorous exercise but seriously let's think about that for a moment you paid 1695 for the book you brought it home you opened it up you started to read you underlined some key you know sentences or paragraphs you dog-eared 16 17 pages you even highlighted in a bright neon type of green or orange marker on some of the words in there. You wrote a few things in the margin. So again, what I would ask is, well, what lessons did you learn?

What was the main point? Is there anything to pass on to your children? Will this make a difference at work? Have you grown closer to Christ? Now, if the answer is, boy, Jeff, I just don't remember. I just don't, huh. then I have to ask a difficult question and please understand you and I are friends I'm not being mean I'm not putting anybody down or anything like that we're trying to go forward right you

and I are friends we're going forward okay I'm in the same boat with you know I just have a different or okay so if you can't answer any of those questions then I'm not going to question your desire or intent on on buying the book and wanting to learn that and wanting to know what was between page one and page 195. I'm not questioning that. I think that you have wonderful, great, hungry ambitions. I don't doubt that.

But I would question how you're going about reading that book and how you're going about capturing the good stuff in there. That caught your attention enough to lay some ink down. That's what I would question.

I would question the art of learning and taking notes which I understand what you're doing because I'm looking around in my office right now in this studio. I am today, I am not deep in the woods right now. Today I am actually in the city. But I'm looking around at all my books

and I'm just grateful for one thing and that is you're not here to ask me about some of these books because I did what maybe you've done. And that is I read them. I laid down ink. I laid some color down. I don't remember much. at all about that book. But that's not due to my hunger. That's due to sloppy habits and taking

notes. So, you know, I do a daily show with Jonathan Rumi. Hello. You know, the morning devotion every day, the daily devotion, it's five to seven minutes worth of insight every day. And when I look at the blank screen, I ask myself before I'm creating every single one of these episodes. Is this making a difference? Do people need us? And if they do, then I can proceed. If they don't, then I need to find something else to do. Just to note, before you get into the note taking here, just a note to academics. Please do not be offended at what I'm saying. But the truth is, there are many very bright people who either cannot or will not communicate

to the average person at a level that people can understand and do some meditating on it and run with it. And what I mean by this is that they will not do the work and the thinking necessary. to adapt the message to the predicament of the listener or the level of understanding of the reader. And that's something that we need to think about as academics or as people who are creating content, whether it's on YouTube or a podcast of some kind. So I have to ask myself, does the world need this podcast? If it does, that's good.

But if it doesn't, I have other things that I should probably do. discipline of thinking very difficult these days you have to schedule deep thinking there are times when i need to think through something so i i take a walk or i sit on the back porch and i just think and when i talk about thinking what i'm saying is is that i am taking a thought which we're going to get to on the other side of the break here we take a thought or a quote from a book and we spend some time with it and we ask questions. We ruminate. We marinate. We meditate on what has captured our attention and we go deep with it and we figure out how to articulate that and how to pass that on to the next generation, starting with your own kids, right? And a lot of times when you read a book,

you can't just quote. You can't just read a quote out of a book you're reading to a a middle school student. They might not understand what that quote is saying, but the deep thinking that you can do on that quote can bring it to a point where you can articulate it

to a sixth grader if you will take the time to do it and not participate in TikTok theology, TikTok faith, but actually take the time, time out, pause, and do some thinking

about the faith. When we come back after the break here, I am going to go into a method that I have been using for years and years and years and years and has been a great source for me and a great source of inspiration to keep studying, keep learning, because I'm building on something. And I'll share that with you right after this. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. Every one of us is made in the image of God. We are unique, worthy of love, and called to greatness. In this world, though, we can be distracted from that truth and begin to doubt God's

love is real. You see, we live in a world that tells us we are not smart, attractive, thin, or rich enough. It is easy to focus on the ways we fall short of worldly perfection and forget that we are already made perfect. We are already enough. I'm Danielle Bean, author of You Are Enough, what women of the Bible teach you about your mission and worth. You Are Enough dives into the stories of women in the Bible so that you can fully see God's plan for your life. To order, visit ascensionpress.com or Amazon. have been talking, it seems like, for several weeks now, about learning and about knowledge.

We did a show a few weeks ago on knowledge hoarding and the solution and talked about Jesus and radical individualism, talked about how to become rich, the art of learning and Deep Fat Friday, that was last week. We're talking about learning to take notes today. Okay, so most people, when they take a note, when they have a book, they have a tendency to just underline everything that kind of sounds cool, sounds good, or hey, that's pretty deep. I like that. And they underline it. And they might have a system where they might put an asterisk in the margins showing. That's really good. I really, I really like that. Or they might use

color highlight different degrees of how cool that particular insight was. Or for who it was intended. If it was me, it might be yellow. If it was orange, it might be family. If it was blue, it might be, you know, my business or, or whatever. But most people that are serious about reading books about the faith, and I'm talking about you reading books that are written by Scott Hahn, Brant Petrie, Edward III. You know, I can go on and on. I'm going to leave so many people out. But, you know, just the books that are out there, Christopher West, and the list can go on and on. So that's what I'm talking about. You're reading the books, you are underlining some things. Maybe you go to a conference. And the typical way that people take notes at a conference,

at least from what I've seen, and I've observed a lot of note takers over the years, trust me, is they have a notebook and a pen, and they try to just write down as much as they possibly can. And they look up occasionally, but they're just writing down as much. as they possibly can of what the speaker is is saying. And if you've got a really good speaker, you know, someone like Scott or whoever, you're going to be doing a lot of writing because you're thinking to yourself as you're writing. I don't exactly understand this, but if I get it down, I will, I'll understand it later. Not, I'll tell you why. The reason for that is that you go on to other things when you go home and that you don't take the time to go back and

marinate in what he said at that conference you paid $200 for a flight in a hotel room you went on to something else you didn't take the time to go deep when you came across something that you thought was really cool that's the problem that's the problem in taking notes from lectures and that's the problem in underlining books that we really did enjoy and our heart was in the right place. We wanted to grow. We wanted to expand our knowledge. We wanted to go deeper. But when we were done reading that book, if we got to the end of the book, which is another problem that we could talk about someday, books that are started but not ended. And there's a, there's a psychology behind that, actually, and why people do that. But the problem is, is that they

simply, you or I, we simply underline. Okay. So we got talks, lectures, books. We have, things that we heard on the radio, and before we went into the store, we took a piece of paper out and wrote down that cool thing that we heard on the radio. So part of the problem in taking notes and going deep into the truths that have really caught our attention is the way that we are gathering the information. We are gathering information pointing out interesting quotes without a plan, without a plan to do something with these. And when you don't have a plan to do something with the quotes that caught your attention, you have a tendency to highlight a lot of quotes, a lot of them. And then you realize, well, there's just too many quotes here.

I can't go back to all of that. But, you know, it's pretty good. Now, studies show, and this is interesting, studies show that people who underline a lot in the books do not learn as much as those who simply listen to what was being said. Isn't that interesting? There are studies that show this, that the energy that you put into underlining or the energy that you put into highlighting or the energy that you put into writing down

as much as the speaker said, your energy is used up in doing that and not taking it in and listening, really listening. And you're afraid that if I don't write it down, I'll never get it. but you're not going to get it by writing it down because you're not going to go back to it in most cases. And so the preferred method that a lot of educators now are starting to see is that when you hear something in a lecture, you're sitting there and you're listening to that, there may be a central

thought that caught your attention and what they're saying. That's okay to write that down. Or if you are recording the lecture to go back to that point and then write that point down, to write that paragraph down if it's in a book you might write that down and keep it that particular paragraph now here's what i do that that has served me so well all these years starting in the early 80s in the early 1980s i was aware of a man from germany an educator intellectual nicholas lumen was his name he came up with this method of taking notes called Zettlcastin. And I gave a show on this a while ago.

Yeah, I did. A while ago I talked about Zettlcastin and how to take notes. And when he was reading a book, he was concerned not with the entire book, but he was concerned with what are called atomic notes. And that is one note, one idea that caught his attention. And so what he would do is he would take out your regular, what is it, three by five index card, and he would write down that quote, that one quote. that's it that's the idea that's the atomic note what i what i mean by atomic note and matt frad

asked me this on his show the other day he said what do you mean by an atomic note and i said an atomic note is like an atom it's the smallest idea in the book that's the idea right there and as i read a book a really good book i may i may by the time i'm done write down i'd say 10 to 15 quotes 10 to 15 atomic ideas now I'm not just writing them down because I want to have 10 to 15 quotes from that book and feel like hey I got my money's worth you know but I'm writing down 10 to 15 atomic notes each with their own card although I don't use cards I use a text file in the computer and I'll get to that in a moment I write down 10 to 15 of these atomic notes from the book because those were the notes those were the ideas that I was looking for those

were the ideas that were rock star ideas. And I want to know it. I want to go deeper. I want to remember this. I want to know how to pass this on. I want to connect this to what I already know. I want this to be important in my life. Okay. So what I did back then is I started to use these index cards and every book that I had had check marks next to every paragraph that I thought was was a rock star paragraph. And then what I would do is I would go back and I would write down on the index card that quote. And so I started to collect index cards.

I had that index card with the quote. And then on the back of the card, I would have all the necessary information, the book, the publisher, the page number, and so forth. So I could keep track of that. But I also had something else on the back of that card. and that was connections to other cards. So every card had a number, and I kept track of that. I knew how many numbers I was up to, and I would give that a number, you know, 1,222.

And next one's 1,223. And so on the back of each one, I would have the number of other cards that I connected that atomic idea to. Now, when I collected those five or six cards that were all interconnected and laid them out in front of me and looked at them and started to think about them, I started to see new things arise. And so the more I did this, the more ideas rose up in my thinking and I could apply them to my teaching as a young pastor or as a writer or as a speaker. And so what I had actually created was a living note-taking system that grew and grew and grew. And then in the 1980s with my Macintosh, which I carried around everywhere with me, they started to come out with software packages. And they had one called HyperCard back then. And it was a programming language where you could create index cards.

And I thought, oh, I'm in heaven. I am in heaven. And so I started to take all of my cards, my index cards, and I put them in the computer and started linking them to each other in the computer. And of course, you're only limited by your hard drive. And I'll tell you what, I paid about $2,500 for that Mac SE 30 and convinced my wife that that computer would never have to be replaced because it had a 30 megabyte hard drive. Well, it's a joke now, isn't it?

Some of my notes are more than 30 megabytes. So anyway, I was doing this, and my world of ideas, my collection of ideas was growing and growing, and I could then go to any topic. You could say, okay, raising teenage boys, and I could do a word search, and I could find all of my connections that I had already thought about, and I could renew my thinking and looking at those and thinking, yes, that's right. I'm glad I'm going back. And I would spend some time marinating there and thinking about,

about these things. And I can tell you this, there is a great joy in thinking when you know what you're doing, when you have a goal. It's a joyous exercise to think, to use what God gave you to investigate deeper, deeper truths. It's far more interesting, far more interesting than TikTok. It is miles more interesting than Instagram. It is way more interesting. then squirrels on roller skates, is the world of ideas, the world of God's thoughts, the rules of the universe that God baked into creation. And this is where it's at. And I love it.

So what I did, just to keep the story moving here, is I started building this. And what I would do when I got a new book was I would read it and I wouldn't just underline everything that kind of got my attention. I was hunting for the idea, hunting for in the book, the idea, the supporting points. What's the author trying to say? And I ask myself questions. Once I take that quote out of the book, out of the talk, out of the TV show, off the billboard, and I put it in a card, which I don't do now because I use technology. Now I create a single text file for every idea. You say, well, Jeff, that's kind of a waste of space, isn't it? No, no, no, no. Remember, it's not convenience we're going after here. It is ideas.

It's thinking. And so every idea gets a text file. And then I put that all together in a folder on my computer that is backed up in iCloud and i use a program called obsidian like the stone obsidian it's free you can use it on mac or pc it's free and through obsidian and it takes just a little bit of a learning curve but it is well worth it you can start to connect and see all of your ideas and and there's a graph that comes out of it where it shows you your second brain in a sense and it keeps growing and growing and you start to see things differently because you are doing more deep thinking about it and so i can collect all kinds of treasured ideas about raising children or love and marriage or uh about jealousy or about faith or about uh sacraments or about the blessed

virgin mary and i start connecting and it's amazing so i started asking myself questions about you know the atomic note that I've taken from the book or the talk and I ask myself questions like what difference will that make in my life how does that affect my marriage what does that truth right there mean for me at work how would the early disciples deal with this what if I was struggling with sin how would that knowledge right there have any any bearing on my life are Are there any other great thinkers who said something like this? Does Jesus say anything like this? What this author is saying? See, it's questions, thinking. Turn the radio off, turn the TV off, get your phone turned off, and think. Pray, God, reveal to me. Show me more. Show me, Lord, more.

All with the intent and the goal of not just knowing, but to do. To me. make a difference. Now, if you, over a period of a lifetime, you pick out those atomic notes out of the book or the talk or the billboard, the TV show, or the lecture, whatever it might be, after a number of years, you're going to have quite the collection of tremendous ideas. And ideas that you can pass on to the next generation, by the way. And this is part of, I didn't think I was going to share this, but I think I will now, now that I thought about it, Father, Mike Schmitz and I put together an Insight Journal. An Insight Journal is a specially laid out, made journal that Ascension sells that is for the purpose of keeping track of the gold in

your life, keeping track of the tremendous insights that moved you. It's called the Insight Journal. We built it just for keeping track of the insights. It's like the Fort Knox of Notes. and they can be for you, but I have three Insight journals that I'm developing right now and one is for each of my three grandkids. When they turn 18, I'm going to hand them the notebook. I'm going to hand them the Insight Journal

and I'm going to say, honey, I want you to know, I have been thinking of you, Dominic, Frankie, Fiona. I've been thinking of you these years. I wrote some things down. I want to give it to you. The dross has been burnt off.

This is pure. This is wisdom. And it started out from a book, but I thought about it. I connected it to some other things I was thinking about. And I wrote it down so that a sixth grader could understand it. And by the way, that's something that I do in my note-taking is that if I get a quote out of a book, I call that a fleeting note. It's like a seedling in my collection.

of quotes and talks and so forth. And then what I do eventually is I will take that and I will rewrite that at a sixth grade level. Why a sixth grade level? Because that gets up there for even adults these days. And if I can write it out and explain that concept of Scott Hans or that concept of Christopher West or whoever, if I can write that at a sixth grade level,

then I can share this. with people. I don't have to sit and look at notes and talk to you. I can actually just talk to you and say, you know, Scott had this idea and I want to, I want to share this with you and I explain it at a sixth grade level. So anyway, we did that for the Insight Journal and I'll put that in the show notes for you if you're interested in getting a few of those to start that practice. But what I do with the program Obsidian is I continue to add to it, which is basically adding to my notes, and it's building, and the more you use it, the more it yields. And you start to see a roadmap of your thinking over the last 5, 10, 15, in my case, 40 years,

40 years of thinking. And I go back and look at those thoughts that I put in there 40 years ago. And okay, yeah, okay, I'm a little embarrassed sometimes. I put that stuff in there. I thought, oh, my gosh, what did I see in that? well maybe not a lot but there are times where I look back to 1983 when I started and I look at the notes and think wow I'm so glad I kept track of this I can see that book is on my bookshelf yep there it is but I don't remember anything from that book but I took what I wanted out of

that book put it into my second brain and there it's not going to get lost and I'll be able to use it for years to come okay so let me give you one more idea here before we wrap this version of the art of learning up okay uh there are 52 weeks in a year actually there's 52.1 429 weeks in a year that's an atomic note by the way sorry but there are 52 weeks in the year and just imagine with me for a moment if you took one idea like transubstantiation or forgiving those you don't want to forgive or investing in heaven, your treasure in heaven rather than on earth, or sacraments, or the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Ark of the Covenant, or, you know, go on and on and on. Jealousy, forgiveness.

Just one topic a week, one quote a week, and you own it. You marinate in it. You think about it. You connect it to what you know. You connect it to the catacet. you connect it to other verses, you talk to your spouse about it, you share over the kitchen table with your kids the thought of the week. Just imagine this, after 52 weeks, after one year, you'll have 52 insights that you would have otherwise never had and probably won't. You see, learning is a matter of structuring your life and having a problem. plan. It doesn't just come from nilly-willy reading books and underlining things. You're looking

for something. You're looking for wisdom. You're looking for more of Jesus so that you can serve him and enjoy him and love him now and for eternity. So that's a little bit about my note-taking the way I do it. I still have some of the old, old stuff. But if you looked at my computer as I'm looking at it right now I have everything from since 1983 every talk I've ever given every Bible study I've ever given every cool quote I came across it's in my second brain okay so we're going to probably continue with this in the next few weeks or so might divert a little bit but I do enjoy being with you and talking about learning and I know from what I'm hearing back you do too so you got ideas you got thoughts questions you can write me

The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. The Jeff Kavan Show at ascensionpress.com. If you want the show notes, type my name, Jeff Kaven's one word, and text it to 3377. I'll get it. I'll read it. And we'll go from there.

Okay, let me pray for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, we are awesomely made. You are so awesome. And everything you make is absolutely brilliant, brilliant. You're amazing. There's no one like you in the entire universe. We marvel at your creation, your ingenuity, and your wisdom and your insight and the way you have revealed yourself.

Lord, help us to be disciples of your word, to go deep into your word, to study and to think and to be able to communicate. All that we're learning communicated at a sixth grade level to other people. Lord Jesus, may we be delivered from a TikTok faith. May we be delivered from a TikTok theology where we just quickly spend moments on everything comes by our desk, everything we read, everything we hear. The Lord, help us to settle down and go deep, not wide and shallow, but narrow and deep.

And that narrowness, Lord, is everything about you in this universe. help us, Lord, to be delivered from the inconsequential data out there in the world. That is so much a waste of time. Point us to that which matters. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I love you, my friend. I really do.

And I hope you get to start to collect the great things that you're learning. I'd love to hear from you. God bless. Have a wonderful week. Thank you.