How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
Hidden Lesson: Knowledge isn’t what you read—it’s what you retain, connect, and use. Your brain is not your storage system. Your note-taking system is.
What the CFA Curriculum Teaches You
The CFA Program rewards structured thinking and long-term retention. You’re expected to synthesize hundreds of readings, formulas, and frameworks across three levels and apply them under timed, high-pressure conditions.
You learn the content of investment management.
But you’re never explicitly taught how to learn it.
How to manage complex information.
How to make ideas stick.
How to recall concepts six months—or six years—after reading them once.
Instead, candidates often default to passive review, highlighting, or cramming—all of which feel productive but fail when it counts.
What How to Take Smart Notes Reveals Instead
Sönke Ahrens introduces a deceptively simple but radically effective system called the Zettelkasten—a method that transforms how you engage with information. It’s not just about “taking notes”—it’s about thinking in writing, connecting ideas, and creating a personal knowledge engine that compounds over time.
Here’s the core idea:
Most people take notes to remember. Smart notes are taken to develop understanding and spark insight.
Instead of underlining key points and hoping they stick, Ahrens teaches you to write down ideas in your own words, connect them to other ideas, and build a dynamic web of knowledge. It’s a process that turns study from a memorization sprint into a creative, self-generating system of thought.
This book doesn’t just help you study better. It helps you think better.
Real-World Trigger
It’s two months before your CFA Level III exam. You’ve read the curriculum. Twice. You’ve got color-coded notes, flashcards, bookmarks, and a graveyard of half-used notebooks.
And yet… you’re struggling to articulate key concepts without the material in front of you. You realize your notes are passive. They summarize—but they don’t synthesize. They remind—but they don’t teach you anything.
Then you discover How to Take Smart Notes, and everything shifts.
You start processing readings by writing one idea per note, in your own words, linked to other concepts. Suddenly, you’re not just remembering—you’re building a mental model of how things fit.
It’s like switching from a flashlight to a laser.
Why This Book Still Matters
Because we live in an age of information overload—and the CFA Program is no exception.
How to Take Smart Notes gives you a system to filter, capture, and use information more effectively than 90% of candidates.
In a world where content is abundant, clarity is a superpower. This book gives you the tools to build it.
Not just for the exam, but for life.
Reflection for CFA Candidates
- Are you collecting notes… or creating a system that helps you connect ideas and generate insight?
- What if the key to passing the CFA exams wasn’t just studying harder—but thinking differently about how you process and engage with material?
What would your study sessions look like if you optimized for understanding instead of coverage?
Final Thought
How to Take Smart Notes won’t show up on the CFA reading list—but it should.
Because knowing more is useless if you can’t remember it, apply it, and explain it.
This book doesn’t just help you study—it rewires how you learn.
And that’s the kind of edge no prep provider can sell you.
