I like taking notes. It helps me to remember stuff.
But I am not very methodical about it. And I don’t do it frequently.
But somehow I like the process.
In my previous two blogs, I talked about note taking habit Francis Ford Coppola and Akira Kurosawa.
And now I have found this amazing article by Ryan Holiday.
In this
article, Ryan Holiday talks about the system – how he takes notes and keeps track of everything he reads.
Ryan Holiday learnt this from
Robert Greene when he was Greene’s research assistant.
This system changed his life and helped him to write five best-selling books.
Here is the system in his own words…
“If I have a thought, I write it down on a 4×6 notecard and identify it with a theme–or if I am working on a specific project, where it would fit in the project…”
“…the key to this system is the ritual: Read a book or an article and diligently mark the passages and portions that stand out at you. If you have a thought, write it down on the page (this is called marginalia). Fold the bottom corner of the page where you’ve made a note or marked something (alternatively, use post-it flags).
-A few weeks after finishing the book, return to it and transfer those notes/thoughts on to the appropriate note cards. Why wait? Waiting helps you separate the wheat from the chaff. I promise that many of the pages you marked will not seem to important or noteworthy when you return to them. This is a good thing–it’s a form of editing.
-In the top right hand corner of each card, put a theme or category that this card belongs to. If a card can fit in multiple categories, just make a duplicate card. Robert uses color coded cards for an extra layer of organization.”
“Some categories I currently use:
*Stoicism
*Life (General advice about life)
*The Narrative Fallacy (Something I’d like to write a book about one day)
*Strategy (Examples of strategic genius or wisdom)
*Post Ideas (Many cards here have been turned into articles you’ve read)
*Animals (Weird stories about animals. For instance, according to the book One Summer by Bill Bryson, the hotel that Babe Ruth lived in for most of his career had a live seal living in the lobby fountain)
*Trust Me, I’m Lying (Media manipulation)
*Writing (Wisdom about the craft)
*Education (Wisdom and ideas about learning)
*Misc (Naturally)
“-Originally I would do one set of note cards for a whole book (numbering the cards 1,2,3,4,5 etc–but I found that limited my ability to move the pieces around because unrelated but important ideas were wrongly joined together.”
And what I like the most about it? It is not a digital system!
He perfectly nails it here…
“Wouldn’t digital be easier? Yes. But I don’t want this to be easy. Writing them down by hand forces me to take my time and to go over everything again (taking notes on a Kindle is too easy and that’s the problem). Also being able to physically arrange stuff is crucial for getting the structure of your book or project right. I can move cards from one category to another. As I shuffle through the cards, I bump into stuff I had forgotten about, etc.”
“But wouldn’t Evernote be better? Maybe for you but not for me. If that’s what you want to use then go for it. But I think there is something irreplaceable about the physical aspect. Physical books, physical notecards, that’s the best in my opinion.”
True. There’s something about physical books, physical notecards.
After reading the article I am inspired to do the same.
But I don’t know whether I’ll follow through on it or not!
Read the full article
here.
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Published by KrishnenduSarkar
Filmmaker, Writer, Bookworm, Film Editor, Educator and Creator of 'The Notebook' Newsletter.
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