Research using ChatGPT and how I take Notes from its Answers

As I try to go about building the tools required under the Curious Sprouts brand, I find myself using ChatGPT to perform research. At this moment, I am asking ChatGPT to search for known techniques in spaced repetition, the type of tools using spaced repetition, effectiveness of fixed repetition vs spaced repetition, and whether there are differences in using spaced or fixed repetition to teach children math or languages.

ChatGPT is excellent for that. I'm not comparing it by AI and saying ChatGPT is better. But I think it does a fairly good job in answering my questions. It generates a lot of content, and structure the answers to answer different categories of questions that I throw at it. It also gives many sources for reading.

Taking Notes

The point of this particular blog post is to address how I take notes. It is one thing to read the research that it presented, and another thing to try to distill the key points.

I use Obsidian MD on my iPAD, with Obsidian on one half and ChatGPT on the other half.

I categorise each section similarly to how ChatGPT structures its answers, which is generally based on the questions I asked it anyway. Hence, instead of reading the entire article and summarising it, I read segments from ChatGPT's answers.

I take the key points as I go about, sometimes word for word and sometimes summarising it when I feel that it can be written in a way for me to grasp it easily. This is dependent on my style and it should be similar to yours too. Do what it takes for it to be useful.

At the end of each segment, I have a blocknote to showcase my thoughts:

>[!My Thoughts]
>Some of my thoughts

These are the actionables from the things I have learnt. For example, ChatGPT mentioned trying to help parents by scheduling vacation breaks. This is a great idea because as parents we do take overseas holidays or a local staycation. We might not want to deal with a kid's flashcards during a holiday. Hence I would write under this blocknote that I should implement such a functionality.

Besides having blocknote under each segment, I have a section of my markdown notes all the way to the bottom. Something like this:

<Certain sections>
I am typing my summary and thoughts here

====================
Random Thoughts
- XXXX

I include a random thoughts corner for the random things that may come into my mind during the writing. It could be relevant but not suited for that particular segment, or it could be something irrelevant. But I wanted a space to dump thoughts so I could quickly return to the work at hand - summarising and distilling key points for follow up.

This is how I take my notes currently, let me know if there are other best practices!