recently i tried a bit of a new method for taking notes on non-fiction books
and it worked really well so today you get to hear about it as a disclaimer personal knowledge
management is a topic that's still pretty new to me so i'm kind of a noob in this area and still
figuring out how i want to do it so this video is not meant to be like this is the best way
to take notes on non-fiction books and this is exactly the steps that you should follow
i hope that this video is sort of a jumping off point for discussions and i also want to learn
from you from the comments what your favorite note-taking methods are so this is just something
that i've tried but i'm still working on and developing so feel free to critique it so the
reason that i came up with this method was when i was writing the script and doing research for
my recent life admin video i read this book called life admin by elizabeth evans and because i wanted
to make that video script really good and really helpful i read that book in a more focused and
active way than i think i've ever read a book before like not even for school and so what i
came up with was this three-step process that i am now going to share with you but first
i have a very exciting announcement and please don't skip past this because this is actually
really exciting for a while now i've been working on a big project that i would tease occasionally
for example sometimes on my instagram stories i would post a photo of my ical and there'd be
an event on the calendar that said like work on blank which is blank as that big project but no
one would notice and so i think my teasers were too subtle so basically for the past few months
i have been doing a bunch of stuff i've been interviewing people like the ceo and founder of
a mobile app mental health counselors um youtubers in the personal development space i've gotten to
interview and talk to a bunch of bliss bean readers and viewers which has been so lovely
i have been writing rewriting photographing and just having the worst imposter syndrome
of my life basically and i couldn't tell you about any of these feelings and emotions that
i was experiencing because i couldn't tell you that this project was happening but now
i can finally share with you that i am publishing a book and you can pre-order it now it is called
plan and organize your life when mango publishing reached out to me about this we brainstormed a
couple of different ideas for a book but what i decided i wanted to create was like a complete
guide almost like a little handbook that you can have on the desk next to you when you're being
productive and getting things done like a little reference manual to getting organized and getting
things done so there's four parts to it it's divided into planning organization productivity
habits and routines so these are all of the techniques that i've used in my own life to get
things done efficiently and balance the different passions of my life right now i'm just working on
youtube for the time being but as you might know when i started the bliss bean i was balancing
high school and extracurriculars and running a photography business and doing the youtube
channel and so i needed some serious planning and organization skills to manage all of that
and that is exactly what i've tried to describe in detail in this book so you can pre-order the book
on amazon on bookshop a bunch of different book retailers all of the links that you need are in
the description you should follow me on instagram to stay tuned about updates and also learn about
the pre-order gifts that i've prepared for you if you do pre-order the book which if you do
i so appreciate you thank you for your support but literally everyone even if you don't order
the book thank you so much for watching my channel supporting me all these years i would not have
this opportunity i would not have like any of the opportunities that i have these days if it weren't
for you so the book is dedicated to you once you get it you can flip open to that page and see that
dedication written out to you so i really hope you love it and that you find it helpful um okay let's
move on to step one of my book note-taking process all right let's open up kindle so the very first
thing that i did was i did a quick read um i just read through it one time i made highlights and i
made quick notes of any thoughts that popped into my head i do like using my actual kindle
for reading fiction books or like entertainment nonfiction books but when it comes to personal
development books or anything that i want to take more notes on the kindle computer app is
great because i can type notes a lot faster than i can on this and i can also highlight in different
colors so i like to use the blue highlights for vocabulary and then yellow highlights for any
important passages even though this is just the first quick read i feel like it's really
important to still read in a very active way so i like to compare it to having a conversation
with someone if you were talking to someone you would be bringing off personal anecdotes and
making random connections to other things you've read you would not just be sitting there
like yeah yep sounds good i agree with that do you have anything to add no what you said was perfect
so try to be thinking about what personal stories can you write down connections to other books if
something makes you go huh or if you disagree with something or if it doesn't fit something that you
read before make a note of that so for example when i was reading this life admin book wait not
this book sorry it was a book called how to take smart notes okay so there was a passage that said
more people in a brainstorming group usually come up with less good ideas and restrict themselves
inadvertently to a narrower range of topics and the note that i wrote down because i was like
i wrote i find this hard to believe because tangents that another person brings up triggered
new ideas in me that i might not have otherwise thought of so that's something that i might need
to do some more thinking about for the time being i just make a note of that and in the future maybe
i will agree with the author said here but for the time being there's like a discrepancy and that's
important as you're interacting with the text step two the next thing i did and i think i did
this the next day because i made sure to have at least a day in between each of these steps so that
the information had time to like simmer and stew in my head i love cooking metaphors for talking
about learning so what i did was i reviewed all of the highlights and notes that i took and i deleted
any highlights that i decided actually were not that helpful because i'd rather have a few really
high quality highlights than just a bunch of crap and there were also some highlights where multiple
highlights said basically the same thing so i just deleted any that were redundant as i was
doing that i was also typing and condensing my notes into bullet point notes in obsidian
so this is an app that i've been using lately this is also something that i'm still
trying to learn um obsidian is similar to rome research if you've heard of that
there's basically an edit mode where you type in markdown language and then when you preview it
it shows the way that you would probably see it in any regular note-taking app the really cool
thing about this is that you have bi-directional links and so basically what that means is if you
put double brackets around a word or a section of text you can create a link to a different note
so for example as i was reading live admin i was reminded of this article that i read
called how millennials became the burnout generation and so i made a note just for
that maybe someday i'll be reading a different book and it'll also remind me of this article
or a podcast will remind me of this article and so basically the idea is to be making all of
these different connections between the stuff that you're consuming so anyways as i am reviewing my
highlights and my notes i'm taking bullet point notes and one of the things that the book how to
take smart notes really drills into your head is that you have to take your notes in your own words
in order to test your understanding so because of the i think it was the mere exposure effect
if i remember correctly the more times you look at something the more familiar you become with it
so if you go back and you read through a chapter a couple of times it's gonna feel very familiar
to you but that doesn't necessarily mean that you understand it so your brain might be tricking
you being like oh yeah this this all looks familiar i've seen this before i understand this
but when it comes time to actually explain that concept to someone else in your own words
then it might not be as easy so by taking your notes and trying to explain things in your own
words rather than just copying in direct quotes you're already kind of translating it for your
own brain if that makes sense one thing to point out is that with this book life admin specifically
the way that the author organized the chapters didn't really make sense to me
and so when i was taking my notes i actually wrote down my own categories of headers so
for example one of my categories was that admin should be actively addressed in a relationship
i thought there was a main point that the author made however these bullet point notes were kind of
scattered throughout the book and it made more sense to me to just gather them under one heading
rather than trying to format my notes the same way that the author formatted the book i'm not sure if
i'll do this for books in the future but i think it is a nice way to personalize your notes step
three was the big new important thing because i have taken book notes in the past um but in
the past i would only do bullet point notes this time i actually wanted to write a summary in prose
so sort of like an essay or a book review except unlike an essay or a book review no one actually
has to see this so this is a summary that i wrote i definitely left out some of the
bullet point notes because they weren't that important i think in the future if i ever want
to review the general concept of this book the summary will be the easiest thing to read because
it's just it's natural language it's the shortest version of my notes it's a really good like dense
piece of information that is personalized to what the book meant to me personally so again
i do think it's important that i did each of these three steps on different days
i think part of it is that i just get tired so um the day that i finish a book i'm not really
in the mood i don't have the energy to also start thinking deeply about it and writing notes
um but i think the second and the bigger benefit is that every time you come back
to your highlights and your notes and whatever you come back to it with a fresh set of eyes it almost
feels like someone else wrote it and so you have a more objective view of it and you can decide
are these notes that i took actually important why did i decide to highlight that etc so i
showed you that i read on the kindle paperwhite i also read on the kindle computer app and i've
been using obsidian for notes in the past i used to use google drive for my book notes and then i
used apple notes because i just found that easier to navigate and now the reason i'm using obsidian
is because i started reading this book the book is called how to take smart notes and it talks
about the zettel costan method which is a concept where let's see if i understood the book well
enough to explain this concept basically from the stuff that you read and consume you take
permanent notes and you put them into something called a slip box so every idea that you have
is contained in one single note and then you make connections between notes sort of like a brain
so rather than setting up your entire folder structure in advance and having like a folder for
each topic that you read about and then subfolders and subfolders you kind of let the structure form
and evolve naturally based on the stuff that you're thinking about and the new interests that
you're pursuing and the new stuff that you're reading so i'm currently trying to wrap my head
around that and learn that um one tool that i hear a lot about that i still haven't tried
ali abdaal mentioned it in one of his videos it's called read wise i believe it takes all of the
highlights that you've ever made on kindle and then it sends you five random highlights as an
email to your inbox every day kind of as a way to review books that you might have read a long time
ago and just keep reminding yourself of the stuff that you highlighted as being important personally
i feel like i would just stop opening those emails the way that i stop opening some newsletters so
for the time being i'm trying to just focus on writing really good book summaries but
if you had a good experience with read wise let me know because maybe i should give it a try
otherwise that is basically all that i wanted to share with you today um so if you're subscribed
to my newsletter which you totally should be the link is in the description i sent
out a newsletter a couple of weeks ago where i shared this summary the the entire thing that i
wrote for the life admin book don't worry if you weren't subscribed to it at the time whenever you
subscribe to the newsletter you get access to the whole newsletter archive and so you'll find that
edition just a couple of weeks back please let me know in the comments what your methods for taking
notes on books are please also pre-order my book that would mean so much to me but again even if
you don't i really appreciate your support thank you for watching this video please make sure to
give it a like and subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications see you next week bye you