Have you ever felt like your notes are more of a cluttered archive than a useful tool? Maybe you’ve scribbled down ideas, bookmarked articles, or highlighted passages in books, only to find them ...

Have you ever felt like your notes are just a chaotic collection of thoughts, scattered across notebooks, apps, or sticky notes, never quite coming together into something useful, like a second brain?

Note-taking can help in class or a meeting—and if you do them right, they'll help you afterward as well. Lindsey Ellefson is Lifehacker’s Features Editor. She currently covers study and productivity ...