Instead of intensive note-taking sessions, now I just collet ideas and review them.
In this video, I want to show you what that process looks like.
I’ve tried different note-taking methods like the zettelkasten and progressive summarisation.
They are all great, but over time it became tiring to maintain the system, and eventually
it felt like an extra job to do.
And after a long day of work, it wasn’t something I wanted to do.
So I don't really do much of note-taking now.
Instead, I just collect highlights from books and articles I read, and then review them.
That’s all.
That way, you don't waste your time building a complex system and feel stressed trying
to maintain it.
So, I thought I’d show that process today.
I do only two things.
Collecting ideas and reviewing them.
I try to read one book a month.
And I read multiple articles a day.
So sometimes I come across cool interesting ideas.
Since I cannot possibly remember them all, I use a note app like most people.
When I find an idea I want to remember, I save it to Readwise using its chrome extension.
You can use Napkin’s chrome extension too if you prefer.
But they both do the same thing.
And it’s the same for mobile too.
When I’m on my phone, I usually save things to Readwise.
Just highlight the parts you want to save, and share them to Readwise.
Even if it’s my random thought or idea, I just put in Readwise because it’s easy.
But again, you can use Napkin’s mobile app to collect ideas in there directly.
It’s same on lap top too by the way.
I have Readwise bookmarked on the sidebar of browser.
I can open it anytime quickly and write down ideas.
Now I don't want to waste these ideas I collected so I want to review them regularly so I won’t
forget them.
The daily digest from Readwise is pretty useful to remember what you read before.
It only takes a few minutes, and you get to see some of your learnings.
But this is the part where Napkin shines the most.
When it comes to reviewing ideas and get inspired, nothing comes close in my opinion.
I have it connected to Readwise so that I can see all of my notes and highlights in
Napkin.
The reason why I like reviewing in Napkin rather than other apps is that you also get
to see your note alongside relevant ones.
They do this by analysing notes with AI.
I think this is one of the most ingenious use cases of AI in note apps.
This way, you get to find surprising connections between ideas that you never saw before.
Also I love the sense of discovery I get when I'm jumping from note to note.
Also, it makes it easy to review your notes by generating playlists like in Spotify which
is a mix of new notes and old ones you haven’t seen for a while.
So I usually go through my daily mix every day whenever I got free time.
And I also like I can see the only ideas about a certain topic using tags.
For instance there are some notes I want to see every day — something like my daily
affirmation.
For that, it’s really useful.
So that was my lazy knowledge management system.
It’s not even a system really.
More like a daily habit.
But it’s much easier to maintain compared to other hard core note-taking methods.
And I think that’s what matters — that you enjoy doing it, rather stressing about
it and feeling like an extra job to do.
Anyway, go check out Readwise and Napkin.
They’re both brilliant apps.
The only issue I have with Napkin is that their mobile app is super basic and you cannot
actually see your notes.
But they told me that they’re releasing a proper mobile app very soon.
So I'm very excited about that.
Cool!
Thank you so much for watching.