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Matthew Long's avatar

Love this Sam. Simple systems work best.

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Sam Rinko's avatar

They really do!

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Amelia Zimmerman's avatar

Aaahh, this makes me nervous! I know you're right, but I'm SO used to doing things digitally.... maybe I'll compromise with digital highlights (on eReader) and handwritten notes...

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Sam Rinko's avatar

No need to fix your note taking strategy if it’s already working for you! This is just one of many unique approaches :)

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Amelia Zimmerman's avatar

It does work, but I have the same problem you outlined in the beginning — too many notes leads to overwhelm/a reluctance to actually sort back through them. So maybe I'll give this shot!

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Sam Rinko's avatar

Ohh gotcha - well let me know how it goes!

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Caleb Phares's avatar

Beautiful write-up. I believe analogue note-taking also helps organize our life in a unique way, as well as embracing imperfections that make us all special in our way.

Thanks for this post.

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gabby's avatar

Loved this post! I went analogue a few years back and I do believe it has not only improved my writing and notetaking skills, but also my memory. I tend to remember what I've read so much better when I take notes this way than digitally.

Parknotes on youtube is a great inspiration!

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Camilo Jimenez's avatar

Great article! I have a similar system using Readwise. Is a system to capture your highlights and set daily reminders of what I’ve highlighted in the past: what I like about your system is the reflection section. I guess in Readwise I could add comments of my highlights and add a reflection on them

What I like about your system is that is analog, promotes self reflection. The advantage of using Readwise is that over the years you can curate or sort your highlights

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Caroline Pankhurst's avatar

I read an article on substack about note taking and it’s transformed how I keep my written notes.

There is something that happens when we write our own notes to do with commitment and ownership that I don’t think digital note taking offers. I love to read my notes like a book and I’d never do that work word documents or notion or whatever.

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Maddie Wilcox's avatar

Great article. I've been thinking I should start some sort of filing system to organize important quotes/themes/thoughts from my reading. So much falls out of my brain otherwise!

I like your idea of several books for each general topic. Do you use an index within each notebook?

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Pamela Wang, PhD's avatar

I’m getting an e-reader to annotate by hand, but still be able to process my highlights into Readwise.

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Ripudaman Singh Gajawat's avatar

Thanks for this. Amazing

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Mel Tan Uy's avatar

My challenge is indexing for the commonplace book!

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Mar 23
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Sam Rinko's avatar

Couldn't agree more on the wider margins lol.

I might have to give those sticky tabs a try. Thanks for the tip!

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Mar 19
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Sam Rinko's avatar

I really like the leuchtturm 1917 notebook. I use it for my wisdom commonplace book (where all the wisest quotes go). Other than that, I just use basic cheap colored composition notebooks. Maybe one day I'll upgrade.

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