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 ...

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?

Taking notes in college isn’t just about scribbling down what your professor says; it’s about creating a system that helps you retain information, stay organized and actually use your notes later.