At the moment of writing this article, I’m about to reach twenty books note on my website. I want to clarify what these notes are about and how I take them.
These notes are not summaries and will often lack context for you to understand. The notes are for me and works like memory anchors whenever I feel, need, or want to refresh my memory about the content of a particular book. That’s a great bonus if you read them and leads you to purchase the book to know more about it.
The notes are either written by me or are passages of the book, which I sometimes rewrote for clarity. It’s a very time-consuming activity, but I find it worth it in the long run. The most efficient way to do it is to use the electronic version of a book whenever possible. Using the Kindle application, I can highlight texts and export my notes. Then I enter them manually into my website. It’s an opportunity to re-read my notes and to change them when necessary.
They are many benefices that may come later. Unless you have an extraordinary memory, you’ll probably forget most of a book's content, though the feelings will remain. When you encounter a subject that you know vaguely from a book you read in the past, you can go through your notes and retrieve passages of the book to dig deeper. Doing that will also help you reinforce your memory about the subject.
Another interesting thing is that there’s often a restriction that limits the export of your Kindle notes up to 10% of the overall content of the book. I never reached that limit. What does it mean? It means that when you already have read a book, your notes alone could help you grasp its core message. It’s a nice demonstration of the Pareto principle. With your notes as a memory anchor and coupled with speed reading skills, you have tremendous power.
The last benefice of book notes is that with the accumulation of life experiences, when you go through your notes, you may find other meanings and experience different feelings. A great book ages like a fine wine.
Last Updated
July 27th, 2022