Taking notes by hand is generally better than using technology, both because it’s better for memorization and because many of the best note-taking methods are designed for notebooks. But sometimes you just need the convenience of digital notes, and if you don’t want to digitize what you’ve already written, you’ll have to jot them down on your laptop using a note-taking method designed for digital use. It’s called the boxing method.

The boxing method is a process similar to mind mapping, where you use boxes to separate ideas and group similar concepts together. The difference, of course, is that you’re using your computer instead of literally drawing boxes and circles and connecting lines on a piece of paper.

Each time you hear a new topic in class, type it into your document page. List all related information concisely under each subheading. For example, if you are studying diseases, you might have subcategories such as "noncommunicable," "communicable," "treatable," etc. List the diseases under the appropriate subheading and after class, use the add-in tool to put boxes around each topic.

You can revise these boxes, adding new information or deleting unnecessary information. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to use the boxing technique on paper: you may need to add more information under a certain topic or move information from box to box, which is frustrating if you run out of space on your paper and don’t want to erase a bunch of content and start over. It’s much easier to just copy and paste or add new text in a word processor, which will happily increase the size of the box for you. You don’t have to write long sentences, indent outlines or do anything other than write related words.