Taking Notes When Reading Books

[dboyle]

Hey everyone

So I'm spending a lot of the summer just reading, reading and reading, before I start College in September, and was wondering how often you guys and girls here take notes when reading a self-help book, or just a normal non-fictional book?

Do you think taking notes while reading impacts you better in terms of actually remembering the material? 

How often do you look back on those notes when you've finished the book?

Reason for this topic was because I was reading Meditations earlier on, and was thinking that I just wanted to remember it all!

And then looked at the stack of books next to me and thinking to myself that I'll never finish all the books I want to read if I'm going to stop and take notes for all my books. 

So, what do you think?

[Man in the Mirror]

i take notes in a google document or google spreadsheet. i find it very helpful, and allows me to remember important parts better.  after i've finished the book, i have often referred back to my notes to refresh my memory. it's a good habit, in my opinion.

try not to look at your stack of books next to you and worry about the future. be mindful and just focus fully on what you can get from the book you're reading right now.

[Black Flag]

I usually just go through with a pencil and/or highlighters and highlight or make notes in the margins when I come across something I like. 

I do find it quite satisfying when I flick through when I've finished and there are just golden nuggets jumping out at me left right and centre. Although with Meditations I did seem to be highlighting the majority of the book! 

[dude]

Sticky post-it's that stick out of the top of the book where the golden nuggets are. And just write my take on those concepts on a piece of paper.

[Dragallur]

I recommend using OneNote (if you have microsoft office), it is quite intuitive and good for notes for videos/books.

[Soulbass]

Cintanote (win) is also good, for organizing notes with key words.

There is no point reading books about meditation, when you could meditate instead.

[edavis79]

I just finished reading a short book mindfulness meditation. I know very little about meditation. I need to read more. It even recommends learning about yoga.  I think that would be very good. I need to learn how to do it before I actually do it.

[Time Traveler]

In order to remember you should try to recall and then look the right answer.

There are good software for that, e.g. Anki that simulates so called flashcards.

I take notes in form of questions and answers and put them into Anki and later use it to put these questions to me. For me it is best way to learn many subjects simultaneously.

Edited July 8, 2016 by Time Traveler

[cirkussmile]

On 2016-07-06 at 0:48 AM, edavis79 said:

I just finished reading a short book mindfulness meditation. I know very little about meditation. I need to read more. It even recommends learning about yoga.  I think that would be very good. I need to learn how to do it before I actually do it.

You need to do it and eventually you'll learn it.

[99th_monkey]

everytime ive read something and taken notes, the best part about it is seeing what i used to think was important at that time. after the "finished read" the important things seemed different