My Simple Note-Taking Set-Up

You’ve talked about your organizational system, which I’ve modified for my own use, but I don’t know if you’ve mentioned how you keep notes (if you do keep notes) when going through a new magic book. Any tips on this? —ES

Sure. This is what I use for note-taking with a magic book or any other non-fiction book that might be of some functional use to me. It’s pretty straightforward, but I know a couple of other people who have adopted it and found it useful too.

The heart of the idea is this: You need to have two places where you’re keeping your notes. So two notebooks, or two different documents on your computer. Or, if you’re the sort of person who marks up the physical book you’re reading, you just need one notebook in addition to the physical book.

Here’s what I do…

When I read a book I keep note of anything that’s of interest to me. It might be a trick I want to try or a quote I like or an interesting concept or a joke or a clever bit of writing. Whatever it is, I capture it in my first notebook. This is my “Comprehensive” notebook.

When I’m done with the book, I read through the notes I’ve taken in my Comprehensive notebook and I take notes on those notes in my second notebook.

Here I just pluck out anything I noticed the first time around that requires action on my part.

In the Comprehensive notebook I’m going to be broadly noting anything of interest that I may want to consider again at a future point. Anything that piques my interest in any respect.

In the Action notebook, I’m going to be plucking the things from the Comprehensive notebook that I need to do something about. It’s part “notes,” part “to do list.”

If I’m reading a book about starting a doughnut making business, I may note some different recipes and some fun doughnut trivia and some inspirational doughnut quotes in the Comprehensive notebook.

Then, from that notebook, I will pull the things that I want to be proactive about. 1. This is a doughnut recipe I want to try soon. 2. This is the paperwork I need to file. 3. This a book recommendation I want to follow up on. That sort of thing.)

I came up with this system after vacillating between the two for a while. Either I’d keep notes that were so all-encompassing that the important action-oriented things got lost. Or I’d just take notes on the things I wanted to take action soon and I’d fail to note all the things I might want to revisit at a later date. So I’d have no way to recapture the nuance and flavor of the book I read without going back and rereading the whole thing.

Breaking it up like this gives me the best of both worlds.