Kendrick Lamar once said that note taking is the closest thing that we have to time travel. Yeah. Yes. The Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning rapper is a self proclaimed note taking god. And in this video, I'm gonna deconstruct Kendrick's note taking system and his overall creative process so that you can learn from one of our greatest contemporary writers. Kendrick's been on record saying, I have to make notes because a lot of my inspiration comes from meeting people, or going outside the country, or my old neighborhood. Taking notes is how Kendrick conserves his precious ideas, develops them over time, and eventually turns those ideas into art. How many brilliant ideas have escaped your mind after you failed to write them down? How much useful advice and how many memorable quotes have you lost to the entropy of memory? Note taking is the solution, and it's the best way to store our precious ideas so that we can level up our creative game and build systems to improve our craft, just like Kendrick Lamar.

See words on the page, they have this infinite shelf life. The ink preserves what our memory forgets. And these notes, the ones that you end up saving, they get more valuable as you find ways to cross pollinate your ideas. Taking notes allows you to compound your knowledge over time, which is exactly what Kendrick has been taking advantage of since childhood. Part of the reason that Kendrick is a phenomenal artist today is because he's been living in the world of ideas for a really long time. And he's been taking copious notes since the 7th grade. This was right around the time when he had this poetic awakening at Compton's Vanguard Learning Center. That's where he met an English teacher named Regis who brought poetry into the curriculum in an effort to deescalate the tension and the violence at Kendrick School.

He thought that if the kids wrote out their frustration, instead of internalizing it and holding it in, it could be a cathartic and healthy way of expressing their emotions, instead of resorting to violence. Kendrick and his peers at the time had to deal with a lot of pressure at school and in their communities. But through poetry, Kendrick found the words to talk about shared experiences and the shared human struggle. Learning from his English teacher and taking notes on his epiphanies was a breakthrough moment for the young Kendrick. Kendrick was a shy middle schooler. And he had a stutter that came up whenever he got really excited. It was so frustrating that he ended up turning to the written word. He felt like it was his only option.

The more he became obsessed with writing, the more he scribbled rap lyrics on note book paper instead of finishing assignments for his other classes. So now let's fast forward to Kendrick's wildly And in 2016, he became the rapper with the most Grammy nominations in a single night. And craziest of all, Kendrick became the 1st rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize Award for his album Damn. The first time the prize has ever been given to an artist outside of the either the classical or the jazz community. But how does Kendrick do it? How does he actually write so well? You might think that he just sits down and grinds it out pen to paper 247. But Kendrick has described his creative process as a perpetual one where ideas develop over time. It's as if he slow cooks his ideas instead of turning the creative burner all the way up and seeing how fast he can turn raw material into something that's ready for consumption. He doesn't just sit down in one sitting and write all his songs in one place.

He says, I write stuff all the time. It can be pulled from anywhere. They can generate some rhymes as soon as I walk out the store. Rather than sitting down to Pomodoro timers for deep work sessions or something, Kendrick is always working. And in his words, he's vibing out and soaking up energy. Like Alchemy, his note taking process helps him convert these young notes into award winning triple platinum singles. But unfortunately, our education system doesn't have the same respect for note taking. It's absolutely bonkers to me that students in school aren't taught to take deliberate notes in a way that accumulates throughout their life, in the way that Kendrick has already figured out for himself.