Are You Taking Too Many Book Notes?

The end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 has seen my reading slow way down. I still read over 52 books in 2021 and I'm on track to continue with 1 book a week in 2022 at this point in the year.

Yet, I'm still unhappy with my book progress.

More Fiction

The only reason I've been able to read a book a week still is that I'm reading more fiction. In no way am I saying that fiction is bad, but I want to read 52 "thinking" books in a year and have my fiction simply add to that number.

My Notes are the issue

But, I think I've identified the problem. I'm taking far too many notes on my books. I'm taking notes in such detail that I can get every single point of a book, but I don't need that detail at all.

For years I took notes in a physical notebook and subscribe to the idea that if it felt like too much work to write down something from a book it was because it wasn't valuable enough for me. I'm not going back to those notebooks for my notes, but I am changing my process a bit to see how it goes.

Tabs and Sticky Notes

For now, I'm going back to another old process of adding a bunch of sticky tabs to the beginning of my books along with a stack of stick notes inside the cover. Then when I come to an idea I grab a tab and add it to the page. If I want to write down a thought then I need to add a sticky note to the page as well and write down the note.

Once I'm done with the book I'll need to go back to each tab and process the book.

This is similar to how Ryan Holiday operates, though he folds the corners of the page down and writes in his books.

I should have a week or so between finishing a book and going back to my notes on it to extract value. This will give me more time to think about what was actually valuable about the book instead of just taking notes on everything.

Why Take Notes

I'm going to expand on this in the future, but we need to decide why we are taking notes. Are we taking them to be able to produce a book review and thus need to have extensive notes on the book and if it achieved its stated purpose?

Are we simply trying to capture any good ideas, and maybe dig a bit deeper into the ideas that interest us?

Most of my reading should be of the second variety which means fewer notes is fine. I don't need a detailed index of every mention of everything. I only need to note what seems interesting in the moment, and then write down what seems interesting a week or so later when I process my notes.

How are you taking notes?