As I mentioned before, I realized that I have a tendency to gather information without doing anything with it. It is like consuming empty calories. What does it matter how many brilliant books I read if I don’t take the time to process them and incorporate the learnings into my life?
So, I’ve decided that I don’t consider a book completed until I have processed my notes from the book. A few folks have asked me what that looks like, so I figured I’d share. I’d say I’m heavily influenced by the Zettlekasten note taking method. However, I’d also say that I don’t fully understand the Zettlekasten method. Nor do I fully understand how it applies to the technology I am using. Having said that, I’ve been doing this for almost a year now and am very happy with the results.
My goal is to have process other people’s knowledge in such a way that I can talk about it in my own words and incorporate it into my life. Furthermore, I can relate it to my own understanding and other knowledge that I consume. At any point, I can browse this web of knowledge that I’ve built. Which, by the way, will expand over the years as long as I stick with it. Ultimately, I end up creating new content based on all of the other content I consume!
The results so far
I’ve been doing this for about a year and I already have a rich and connected web of notes. These include highlights from books and websites, transcribed talks and conversations I’ve had, along with my own summaries and takeaways from all of those primary sources.
This comes in handy when I put together thought pieces, like this blog, and also presentations and trainings for work. I’ve slowed down my information consumption and spend more time processing the information as I collect it.
How it looks
Everything ends up in this relatively new note taking tool called Roam Research. Each book, person, conversation get their own page. Even unique thoughts and quotations can live alone in Roam. Each page can link to all other pages, so as I’m writing up a summary about a Seth Godin book, where he stresses consistency is important to build trust, I can cross reference James Clear’s Atomic Habits where he talks about ways we can help ourselves be consistent. Here’s how it looks if I zoom out and ask Roam to show me every note page I’ve ever made. Seth Godin, by the way, is in the top row, 3rd from the left.
Whenever I show someone my system, they want it. I think I have also universally scared everyone away because I then describe the effort it takes to put to do the work to build it. However, I think this is the work that I’ve personally been missing in my own learning journey. In that respect, it isn’t as much the system as much as it is taking the time to process the information I’ve been collecting. The system is an added bonus.
In fact, I’ve been able to automate a lot of the system part. For example, anytime I highlight a passage in my Kindle app, the next day that highlight automatically appears in my note system, categorized under the book and author.
The work I’m referring to is the mental work to take these passages, these conversations, and the rest of the raw material I’m collecting and actually make it mine. I do this by summarizing it, cross referencing it, and writing my own thoughts down based on my personal experiences and my interpretations of the information.
It’s the discipline it takes to do this on a regular (daily) basis that makes this both hard and magical. It is surprising how much that word, discipline, is showing up in my life. I don’t know if it is my Reticular Activating System] who’s just on the lookout for it now or if the world is collectively having this same insight. It’s probably one of the reasons I continually bring up James Clear in all these posts. Clear, would tell me it’s not a discipline issue, it’s a systems issue. What I’m learning is that as my life becomes somewhat chaotic with travel, unexpected meetings, etc., that it’s probably a blend of both. In either case, I’ve learned how important consistency is if I want to make an impact in my life, and Clear’s writing is all about helping us be consistent.
I started out with just loading Roam and working on my notes for 5 minutes a day. I could get almost nothing done in five minutes, but it got the process started. Now, I’m up to a minimum of 30 minutes on most days.
My note taking process
Coming from a guy with a 2 out of 10 in the Kolbe follow through category, you may think that process is antithetical to my very existence. However, as I’ve written about earlier, I feel that structure helps creativity. It also allows for improvement as I don’t think that you can improve something you don’t track. In the spirit of learning as I go, here is my current process.
When I’m consuming content, I mark the sections that are interesting to me. I highlight book and web pages, screenshot passages in physical books, and even jot notes down in a notebook for podcasts, lectures, and conversations (when not recording). The next step is to collect all of this information in Roam.
After this, I take time every morning that I call my “writing” time which is mostly spent organizing and summarizing these notes. Sometimes writing time is actually spent putting an essay together, like this morning. Other times it is spent reviewing and summarizing the information that I’ve captured.
For example, after I’ve finished a book, I may have somewhere between 20 and 100 highlights. For me, those highlights don’t represent learning, they represent interesting information that I want to process. So, I take my time to review the highlights and write up my thoughts. I frequently will reference the passages I’ve highlighted and other information I’ve captured, creating a web of notes.
Even though they are different mediums, the same holds true for lectures, podcasts, and sometimes even conversation that I have
Collect raw highlights
I have a pretty complex system of capture and aggregation. It is by no means perfect and definitely has friction points and things I’d like to improve. However, it does a lot of the heavy lifting of capturing and aggregating.
I use the following technologies: Readwise, Otter.ai, a variety of notebooks, and Roam Research.
Written word
Readwise imports highlights from all of these sources which it them automatically exports into Roam nightly. This includes physical books as Readwise will convert images to text. (We live in the future!) Readwise also lets me highlight right on the browser page and will automatically import that highlight along with a reference back to the page.
Conversations
With permission, I use Otter to record and transcribe the conversation. Using a Roam extension, I can embed the conversation transcription on a given note page within a note page. For conversations where I’m capturing notes by hand, I manually type them into a page in Roam.
Notes
I frequently travel with a small notebook with me. When it isn’t appropriate for me to be using my computer, I use this notebook to capture. I then manually type these notes into Roam.
Podcasts
This one is tough. I used to have a tool that would automatically transcribe snippets of the podcast for me. Unfortunately, it was flaky, so I usually try to jot the good stuff down in a notebook. This doesn’t happen as frequently as I’d like, because I’m usually listening while driving or doing chores.
Audio books
Same as podcasts, I can’t find a way transcribe my bookmarks, let alone import them. When I’m done listening, I check out the Kindle version from my library and highlight there based on the audiobook bookmarks. It usually takes me about 15-20 minutes at a minimum (more if I get lost in the book again).
Summarize and process highlights
The raw notes aren’t enough, I then need to take time to summarize them in my words. This can take some effort and time. For a book with a bunch of highlights, I have two windows loaded. The first window is a blank page and the other contains all of the highlights from the book. I categorize and summarize the highlights in my words, frequently cross-referencing other content, books, articles, conversations, and even people, who I feel are saying complimentary or sometimes contradictory things.
This helps me get my thoughts in order on a particular issue and build a cross-referenced database of thoughts that I can pull from.
This is a lot of work. For a deep conversation or lecture, it is usually a one-to-one time cost. If the conversation is 30 minutes long, it takes me an additional 30 to write up my notes. Books usually take an hour or more. It depends on how valuable I saw the book and how passionate I am on the subject.
Write new content
I start by searching my notes database for content that matters to me on whatever topic I’m curious about. What have I already processed? Am I missing anything? Are there any big questions that still need answers?
I’ll create a new page and start referencing all of the other summaries and raw highlights that I feel are most relevant. I then start filling in with additional thoughts and additional content that I gather.
I’ll confess that it is harder to actually write the content in Roam than I’d like. It is a very hierarchical structure with kind of an archaic way of formatting. In the past, I’ve switched over to OneNote to write. It’s my goal this month to write all of my blog posts directly in Roam.
A note on longevity
This process only works if I stay consistent with it. Furthermore, it takes a while to be worthwhile. The value comes after pages and connections build up over time. Even after a year, it can feel pretty sparse.
It is also technology reliant. Roam Research was founded in 2017. It has fewer than 10 employees and $9M in funding. In some ways, it’s a bit of a risk to bet my note system on this product. However, it’s the best I’ve found in my research, so I’m going all in! I do have long-term fears that this method isn’t viable. For example, 100 years from now, these notes will be lost to the ever-morphing technological soup that we use to manage our information. This is very different from the philosopher Niklas Luhmann’s physical notecard system. I believe something like 6 books have been published from his content in the 24 years after his passing.
For the record, I am not delusional enough to think that others will find these notes interesting enough to use, I just wonder if I’ll be able to continue to access them throughout my life. What will I need to do to export and manage if I still want to access all of this in my 70’s?
Thanks to Shannon Potter for the beautiful shot of the spider web and Thomas Bormans for his shot of the old books at Trinity College.