If you aren't taking notes, stop reading // Slower process, faster progress // Healthy externalities
I have a bad habit of spending lots of time reading things that seem “interesting,” but which don’t actually have the chance to change my thinking or behavior.
Not necessarily because the stuff is useless, but because I’m not using it.
Which is fine and good while reading for pleasure or distraction, but is pretty self-defeating when when reading to learn.
To compensate, I’ve spent the last couple weeks following a new rule:
If you aren’t taking notes, stop reading.
In many cases, I don’t want to take notes because I’m actually reading for distraction or pleasure, not for learning. In which case I just step away from the desk and go read something I’ll actually enjoy.
But when I’m there to learn, this rule has been so impactful for getting the most out of the good stuff. For what we’re reading (or hearing or experiencing) to matter, we need to spend the time to actively engage with and reflect on what it means for us.
If you read a business book or article without taking the time to reflect on it, have you actually read anything…? I would argue that no, you have not.
Hand-written notes force a series of frequent pauses for reflection-as-you-go:
What matters most to me here? Why does it matter? How can I use it? Wait, _does it_ matter? Or should I be doing something else instead??
An interesting side effect is being able to identify when something is beautiful written but informationally empty. The notes (or absence thereof) reveal the ruse.
It also encourages learning from authors you disagree with. You either figure out how to articulate why they seem wrong, or you learn that you’re carrying outdated and inaccurate opinion. Either way’s a win.
I’ve also noticed myself spending way less time reading Twitter and comment threads during the workday. Because when’s the last time you took real notes on one of those? For tooling, I was originally sending everything (both articles and books) to the Kindle. But for me at least, that ends up being the worst of both worlds; highlighting feels like note-taking, but it’s too fast. There’s no pause for reflection.
I tried keeping a blank stack of A4 on my desk for note-taking, as well as using Roam. Those were both far better than Kindle, but I didn’t like needing to re-create the context of the original book/article in my notes. I like to write on the source material.
So I got one of those ReMarkables (not an affiliate link, just a link), which has completely solved this issue for me. I’ve been putting everything I read – both books and articles – onto it. Which is admittedly a bit annoying! The file conversion/transfer can be a 20-60 second speedbump. But if I’m going to be spending an hour attempting to learn from a good article, or 20+ hours on a good book, then that speedbump is a feature, not a flaw. It forces me to be more intentional about what I read. Because if I’m okay with not learning from it, then I shouldn’t be reading it in the first place.
In terms of healthy externalities, these daily notes also tend to become the seeds for what I write and think. And I feel more energetic by being able to do my “serious” reading away from a computer screen.
The reason I don’t share my notes is simply because they’d be useless to anybody else. I care about internalizing and implementing, not remembering or recounting. Book summaries – for someone else – are a homework assignment; book notes – for yourself – are a way to get the most out of the time you’re spending.
Once you’re in the flow, it’s like having access to an never-ending, self-directed workshop, in one-on-one conversation with exactly who you want to learn from. It’s slow, and I love it.
Comments (16)
Should I have made notes on this post....? ;-)
Only if you're trying to learn from it ;). But I'm fine with being the distraction in your day if required😅
Ha! I 100% agree, though. I have so many tabs of "interesting" blogposts open on Chrome, and almost none of them will have a lasting impact on how I view the world, or behave within it.
Great actionable tips as usual, Rob. Do you like using Remarkable, aside from the time to convert/transfer files?
I absolutely love it, yes, although I was already doing a lot of my work on paper, so the workflow change felt very natural for me -- it was what I was already doing, just better, and with less clutter.
I really like having my daily pages in the same place as my work ideas and plans, and also my reading/notes. If I'm heading to a cafe or away from the house, I can just grab that one thing and know that I've got my whole thinking environment with me.
The $7 / month subscription seems important, since that gives you access to the desktop/phone apps for passing files back and forth to the tablet. And there's a nice little browser plugin where you can move most articles over to it in one click.
Kindle files are the biggest pain (for books that aren't available as a PDF), since the tablet doesn't natively read kindle files, requiring a couple extra conversion apps/steps.
Thanks, I'll probably get one too.
Totally agree. Really wish that Audible and Otter would have a baby though so I can make notes while I'm walking. I tend to vet books in several formats. Lucid or Blinkist as a gate keeper, then Audible, and ideally a PDF for the reMarkable, and if it's a keeper, paper copy too :)
Hi , awesome to see you here 😃. The multi-medium approach resonates with me a lot — I like audiobooks for inspiration/entertainment, but can't use them at all for actual learning. (Which slightly confuses me now that I mention it, since ~50% of nonfiction sales are now for audiobook. But I guess a lot of nonfiction is more infotainment than useful, so maybe that lines up.) For certain high-impact books, I've also noticed myself reading them multiple times, sometimes back-to-back, in different ways: e.g., once for pleasure and big-picture, again for knowledge-extraction, and a third time as a workbook to work through applying that to myself.
totally agree! I always take notes while reading for learning, but I haven't thought of this point: stop reading if you aren't taking notes. Great point, thank you
Doesn't apply to reading for pleasure, of course! :D
I did not know that about audio book sales! What's your distinction between infotainment and useful? Like your layered reading approach. I tend to loop back on stuff when I find a new connection in the next one on the breadcrumb trail :)
For me the distinction is whether I do anything differently after reading it. If so, "useful," if not, just "interesting." But it's less of an absolute quality of the book, and more a quality of the "book-reader-moment" combination. E.g., most philosophy books are read by most people at most times for pleasure/interest, but if you're suffering from an issue the book happens to deal with, it becomes extremely useful in that moment, and you'll probably read it differently.
Ah, yes. I can see how that would work. 'Interesting' is probably more a tool of the trade for me :)
Thank you for those thoughts!
I'm wondering, when you read a book or a blog post, do you know exactly what you want to learn? Do you have a specific process while choosing what you'll read next?
It's still blurry to me. I read great non-fiction books about building businesses, self-improvement etc... And they inspire me. But, I don't really know what I'm learning while reading those.
“do you know exactly what you want to learn? ”
No, it's often a pleasant surprise. To clarify, it's not that I'd force myself to take notes on something that was irrelevant. It's that when the absence of notes helps me *identify* that it's irrelevant (at least to my immediate goals). So when I'm not taking notes, I know that I'm actually reading for pleasure/distraction, which I'm still very happy to do, but probably not during core work hours.
I did the same but with a Boox Air Note 2. The pen experience is amazing, and I love writing on books too. Converted my epubs to pdf for that reason.
I see a few problems:
1. context switching between book and note app is not viable, the latency is too long and you lose flow. Doing split window doesn't solve it. So you end up, as you described, writing on the book itself
2. There's no way to search notes. Not the end of the world, if you could link them together.
3. But you can't link notes. Not if they are hand drawn on a pdf book. Or on the proprietary notes app, Neonotes: no tagging, no linking. That feels 'like notetaking in the 90s but worse'
So Now I take notes on index cards (well, a vertical separator that is longer, and photo them into a tool that can link (logseq, used to be amplenote).
The kind of sketchnotes that I've seen you do are invaluable, and normal '2022' notetakers don't do those well.
I really want the ability to link those sketchnotes together. The tablet that gets there first gets my money (eink that is)