Summarize Your Class Notes With the ’GIST' Method

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Whether you’re revising your notes right after class or condensing them later so you can study using the Feynman method, you’ll need a solid system for pulling out the most critical information and distilling everything down into something digestible and easy to retain. This is where the GIST method can prove extremely useful.

The worst-case scenario when you're studying is that you read and read and read, but don't exactly retain much of it. That's even worse than if you don't study at all because you wasted all that time and it can be extremely demoralizing. GIST will help avoid that fate if you do it right.

What is the GIST method?

The GIST method is an aptly-named system for condensing your notes (or anything you’ve read, like a chapter in a book) so everything is as simple as possible to read through and review. The point is to help you get the gist of the content block. Get it?

This approach requires you to resist the natural urge to pack your notes with too many details. The GIST method helps you break that habit. With it, you'll practice breaking each point down to 25 words or so. It might seem like that's just not enough to fully encapsulate everything you're learning—and it's not. It's enough to give you a solid, foundational understanding of the material that you can then build on once you get the basics down. Instead of reading thousands of words and retaining just a few of them because you have no real fundamental grasp of the ideas, you're creating a more concrete understanding of the most elemental parts.

“GIST” is an acronym for “Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts.” It's clunky because it was obviously retrofitted to match up with the word "GIST" itself, a perfect example of using the association technique to remember steps in a sequence. What this all means, in simpler terms, is creating a framework between the text you’re working from (whether that’s your full class notes or a textbook excerpt) and your condensed notes. Once you have identified the GIST of whatever you’re studying, it can serve as a roadmap to guide your review sessions, so you’re sure you’re focusing on the most critical details.

You ask yourself a few questions: What is happening? Who is doing it? When is it happening? Where is it happening? Why is it happening (or why is it important that it's happening)? How is it happening? It can be helpful to think of the familiar “Five Ws and H.” Once you have collected all of that information, write it out simply in a short-form block.

To clarify, the GIST itself isn’t what you’ll be studying. The goal is to help you identify the main message or idea of a text and hone in on it until you understand it at its most basic level. From there you can move on to the more complicated, weedy parts, too—and methods like mind mapping will help you get there.

How to start using the GIST method to summarize your class notes

The GIST method starts with a close reading of your notes/chapter/assigned text. (Here’s a full guide on close reading.) It’s better to do this with shorter chunks of information than multiple chapters or lessons. Next, grab a sticky note or notebook paper and write, in a column, the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Answer the questions simply, taking the information straight from your notes or reading. Next, write a paragraph underneath, limiting yourself to approximately 25 words. The paragraph should summarize the answers to the questions above.

Say you're studying the Boston Tea Party. Who was involved? It was colonialists and the Sons of Liberty. What did they do? They protested against the British Tax Act. When did they do it? They did it December 16, 1773. Where did they do it? They did it in Boston Harbor. Why did they do it? They opposed taxation without representation. How did they do it? They boarded British ships and dumped tea into the harbor.

Once you have those basic answers written down, you'd write your paragraph like this: "In December 1773, American colonists protested British taxes by dumping tea into Boston Harbor, opposing the Tea Act and taxation without representation." That paragraph is now the jumping-off point for everything else you have to learn. Anything else you read or go over after that will make more sense after being mapped onto this simpler distillation.

You can use a prepared GIST template to help you through the process, though some limit your GIST to 20 words. For condensing notes or studying at a higher level, 25 words is a good number to aim for, as it lets you expand complicated concepts with just a little more information—but not too much.

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