How do you take notes on books you’ve read?

[VictorB02]

I have heard many different people refer to the fact that taking notes on books you’ve read is extremely beneficial long-term, and a great resource to always go back on.

My question is, how do you take notes efficiently without taking the joy out of reading? (Not having to take notes for 15 minutes after reading for only 30 minutes)

What I have been doing is underlining  things that I really like or things that are really important to the book I am reading, and then transferring all of the underlined material to my OneNote commonplace book. Although this is great for storing a good deal of information and resources, it is not at the least bit enjoyable for me to do every day after I read. I am wondering if there is other systems that you use that still keep the benefits of taking notes but it’s easier to handle.

Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

P.S. This would be a great video Leo could do: How to read books, integrate them, and take notes on them.

[Rinne]

^

[Rigel]

I would also like to have feedback on that. I struggle with it too.

 

[dorg]

I put a soft vertical pencil line (4B) in the margin by what I like and this can go up to 4 parallel vertical lines if I really like it . Then when rereading what I have marked up, I stick a small post-it poking out the top of the book on that page if I want to read more later, and there is a series of post-it colours too. The brighter the colour the more I want to re-read that page (in my system red is the highest).

I find with this method I don't need to copy anything anywhere.

With this system you can change the ranking of the pencil marks or the tabs easily.

Edited December 29, 2018 by dorg

[Sahil Pandit]

@VictorB02 I read until i get to a juicy part, take notes using OneNote, then find a way i can apply it, and i write that insight down in my one note as well. 

[Brittany]

I use kindle primarily and I highlight and take notes directly unto the digital book.

Since it's digital, you can remove the highlights and notes whenever you want. And kindle also takes all of your notes and places them in a central file if you want to view all of the notes at once.

[Brittany]

4 hours ago, Sahil Pandit said:

@VictorB02 I read until i get to a juicy part, take notes using OneNote, then find a way i can apply it, and i write that insight down in my one note as well. 

I do this too. If the quote is really mind blowing, I will place it on my One Note.

[Zigzag Idiot]

I underline a sentence or mark a paragraph.

Then write the page # on the 2 or 3 blank pages at very end of most books. With one sentence description.

 

[Krisena]

I've always talked passionately about what I read on various chatting services and on online forums after reading. It's a great way to take ownership of the knowledge you recieve.

I sum up the ideas in the books as well as I can, present some of my disagreements, agreements and associations and so on.

I did this from when I was a little kid since most of my friends were online, precisely because I couldn't find anyone to talk with about my interests. It's in recent years I realize the massive blessing this has been to my accumulation of knowledge and performance in school. It wasn't something I was conscious of doing, so it makes you wonder if it could easily not have been like that.

Anyway, highly recommended to have study groups, given that you actually like to talk about your interests (but who doesn't? You'd have to tape my mouth to make me shut up about music )

[BjarkeT]

I don’t take notes but I practice recalling the ideas without looking I find it less time consuming.

[lmfao]

@VictorB02 Leaving aside what I'm able to practically achieve for school or university environments (for reasons I could elaborate on), I think that ideally notes should be made only after you have taken in and learnt the information. This way then process of writing notes involves you having a conceptual understanding in juxtaposition to mindlessly copying down sentences you read/hear. Mindlessly copying down shit you don't understand isn't efficient, although it might be something you have to do depending on your situation.