How I take notes from books

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[@DannyHatcherTech]

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[@mikejaydavies]

I was auto-syncing highlights through Readwise until stopping a few months ago-it actually made me hoard highlights and overall understand the literature less. Now I’m split screening Kindle/etc and Obsidian and copying highlights and making my notes at the same time. Much slower, but much more deliberate and actually more enjoyable!

[@timbushell8640]

Essential watching; "Why I am against Atomic Notes and Mini-Essays" for this one...

[@DrPuneetGupta]

Dear Danny, It is good to see that you are not taking atomic notes and limiting the number of notes. However, I am struggling with this form of note taking. The issue is that, suppose I am reading a book. I come across an idea for this which I use a certain tag. So, I write the point in my words and give it a tag. Say productivity. Another text with tag Health and so on. I will be using Subtags etc. Now, I have made a note on Health - I want to show all text (along with sources) which I have tagged health. Have you tried something like this.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

I dont use tags as I find the lack of context an issue when looking to resurface points. Source files link to project files... points in source files go into project files with links.

[@EranKatz]

Thank you for this video. Processing the books I read is still a pain point for me. I wonder about the setting of you doing this. So you read the book while having the computer next to you with Obsidian open, moving back and forth between them?

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Yes. Or a book or phone to write things down

[@MarkieAurelius]

What's the difference between "points" and "sources"?

[@DannyHatcherTech]

for me a point is like a claim, statement, data or piece of evidence which is in a source file.

[@ericazevedo8351]

Sorry Danny, I'll try to come back and give another chance to this video later... For now, it feels like too much work... I've been too desperate in trying to "fix" my annotation/highlight system and optimize my budget on them and all I end up doing is spending way less time reading or cataloguing important citations I might need later and too much time creating and editing templates, doing OCR, being fixed at my desk (I like reading on the iPad, sometimes laying down, not a great position for typing), optimizing apps...

[@730g9]

I don't know if i am the only one but when i read a physical book i still tend to just take the notes in the margins.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

I don't like writing in the books 🤷‍♂️

[@730g9]

@@DannyHatcherTech having to read and take notes on two seperate mediums (the physical and the digital) is a bit annoying for me. So when i read a pdf, i take notes in obsidian, when i read physical books, i take notes inside them.

[@MarkieAurelius]

Whats the whole "x characters Big | Easy | New | Safe" thing?

[@DannyHatcherTech]

They are constraints for me with my titling to keep things focused

[@MarkieAurelius]

@@DannyHatcherTech Let me rephrase to be more clear, it is like how many characters you want the script to have? Also the Big | Easy | New | Safe, is the point of that to be "I want this script to be "big" i.e. detailed but "easy" to understand to a "new" audience and should be "safe" to everyone (kids and adults?)

[@MarkieAurelius]

Rephrased the question to be more clear, thank you for your time regardless :)