[Michael]

I love Jeff’s NINGa method. I’m a firm believer of ditching the highlighter and instead just writing notes while watching the videos. However, I find my self taking too many notes (I’m afraid I’m going to miss something). At times it feels like I’m just rewriting the book and because of that it takes my about 2 hours just to get through a half hour video. At this rate it’ll take me forever to watch all the videos for FAR. There has to be more effective way. I’m not looking for a short-cut. I’m just looking for a better way of using my time, since I work full-time and I have a family to take care of.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

AUD: 72, 68
BEC: 64
REG: TBD
FAR: TBD

Using Roger CPA Review

[Anonymous]

Pretend you're back in college sitting in a lecture, and you can't take 2 hours to take notes for your 1/2 hour lecture – you have to take notes as quickly as the guy is talking. How would you take notes in that situation? You write more cryptically (phrases and partial sentences instead of whole words) and you're more selective in what you write down.

Now granted, your method of taking 2 hours worth of notes for 1/2 hour video is definitely highly effective! Just maybe not efficient enough (remember all that terminology from AUD? 😉 ).

To modify your note-taking to make it reasonable, I would try initially to take notes without allowing yourself to pause the video. Then once you get in the habit of pulling out and summarize the important things, then you could let yourself again pause sometimes, and you might find that you're more efficient without losing much effectiveness.

Also, do you take notes by hand or by computer? Use whichever method is faster for you so that you can get the most notes per minute (for me, it would definitely be typed notes!) – then when you re-write your notes, you can do it the alternate way if you think that would help you learn better.

P. S. Videos taking too long to watch is one reason why I use Wiley, since it's much more efficient…but it sounds like your issue is more the note-taking-time, rather than strictly the lecture-watching-time.

[Author]

Replies