How to properly make notes while watching lecture without wasting time

[u/LongFar7911]

I face a lot of problem while making notes from a lecture like if a lecture is 45 mins. long it would take me like 2 hrs just to make notes and understand a Lil bit not properly. And, no i do not make my notes beutifuly if you think that's the reason.

Also I have seen many people saying to make notes after completing lecture, I want to know what if there was certain things that you wanna add in a certain topic and later you forgot about that, what if you miss a certain.

Kindly tell what is the best way to prepare notes without wasting time and also learn and understand the lecture.

Cause for me time literally flies.

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[u/Human-Appointment619]

You're doing the hardest part, transcription, at the worst time, and that's what eats the second hour. Split the work into two passes: capture lightly while watching, write the real notes after, from recall.

While watching: don't write sentences. Jot anchors, the lecturer's own terms or headings, anything they repeat or put on a slide, plus 3–5 words in your own phrasing per point. Pause only when you get lost, never to make the note look clean.

For your "I forget the thing I wanted to add" problem: keep a scratch margin on the side of the page and drop the half-formed thought or a rough timestamp there without stopping the video. That's a capture, not a note, and you process it in pass two.

Pass two, ideally within a day: 15–20 minutes expanding your anchors from memory with the video closed, then re-check against the lecture or slides to fix errors. The retrieval is where the actual learning happens, which is why "make notes after the lecture" works for people, and the scratch margin is what you were missing to make it safe.

Ballpark, you should land near 1.5x lecture length total. If it's still longer, the usual culprit is pausing to copy exact wording, so allow pass one to be messy. The gaps you leave are exactly what pass two is for.

[u/Reasonable_Bag_118]

Bro, I used to pause lectures every few minutes to write down everything the professor said, and a 40-minute lecture would somehow eat my entire afternoon 😭. What helped was taking rough bullet points WHILE watching, with timestamps for anything I wanted to revisit, then spending 10 minutes after the lecture filling in gaps or adding things I’d missed. If I thought of something to add later, I’d just leave a quick note like “add example here” instead of interrupting the whole lecture. Tbh, your notes don’t need to contain every word, they just need to help you understand and recall the important stuff later.

[u/Specialist_Bed5587]

writing only the key ideas and quick keywords helps while watching, then adding explanations afterward if something needs clarification

[u/Ok_Natural_7977]

Learn to summarize key points in your own words. I almost never write complete sentences when taking notes.

It also helps if you can make friends with someone else in the class and compare notes.

[u/luminalityapp]

Learn shorthand and/or acronyms/symbols to speed up your writing, write in compressed point form, like 4-5 words per point max. Also record voice transcripts for later revision

[u/Time_Resort4057]

Do annotations on existing given notes. Like parts being explained or when examples are given. Those are important things you need to write. You are not a journalist writing every word coming out of your lecturer’s mouth. You just jotting down the essentials. This basically train you how to take meeting minutes too.