The question about using Kindle, or any electronic reading device, brings up many emotions for people. Some swear by them and some swear that they make you dumber, while others feel nostalgic for the smell and feel of a book without weighing in deeper than expressing their personal preference.

I’ve had a bunch of Kindle devices, and just purchased a Kindle for my oldest daughter who ends up travelling for figure skating a bunch and runs out of space for books when she’s travelling. In her case it made lots of sense to have easy access to multiple books while travelling without lugging around lots of paper.

I now use a Kobo because it’s easier to sideload books than it is on Kindle and outside the US Kindle doesn’t work with libraries. Kobo does work with my local library so I can borrow books without the need to purchase everything.

A big argument against digital books is that you don’t really own them. If you dig through the terms of use you’ll find that you’ve purchased the right to display the book on a device, but you don’t own the file. This was tragically embodied when Amazon took back 1984 from consumers due to copyright issues.

The truth is a bit more complicated. If you put in some work with Calibre and some plugins you can download all your books from Amazon and then have local copies of the files that Amazon can’t touch. I do this to load my books on my Kobo Clara colour and while one word on every page seems to be missing a space between it and the next word, overall it’s the same reading experience as I’d get from purchasing the book from Amazon and reading it on one of their devices.

Kindle for notetakers

Firstly, carrying around a notebook was annoying. Handwritten notes are often seen as the gold standard for retaining knowledge, but I’d argue the annoyance and friction involved with note-taking simply isn’t worth it. – Supercharge Your Reading

My biggest issue with using an ereader for reading and note taking is the ease with which you can highlight things. I recently saw this example cited in Supercharge Your Reading where the author says it was way too much work to carry a notebook around and that writing notes by hand increased too much friction into the note process.

As I’ve gone from taking notes only on my Kindle for years, then back to a physical notebook1, I think Maneetpaul is missing the value of friction.

In the Bullet Journal system all tasks are “no” by default in that they won’t move forward and give you a big red notification that they remain undone. Digital systems are the opposite, everything you’ve ever thought of doing is coming with out forever and will show you a warning that you haven’t done the task.

A similar action happens often with taking notes on a digital device. It’s easy to highlight and take notes so you take a lot of them. But simply highlighting and typing something in doesn’t a good note make. Almost everyone stops here. They have their highlights and random notes and think that a book is read and notes are taken.

With a notebook at some point you realize that your notes are locked unindexed in a notebook and that you don’t have access to them. Instead of dropping the notebook I encourage you to take the next step in your notes and process them into something worthwhile.

The reality is that your digital highlights are in the same state as any physical notes you’ve taken. Just because you could search them in Obsidian (if you use Readwise) or on the Kindle site doesn’t mean they’re notes or mean that they’re useful to you. But you’ve been fooled into thinking that they are.

Just like physical notes, digital notes must be processed and thought about to become valuable to your note system.

Friction is filtering

The more effort we put into the book, the more we’ll get out of it. -p Supercharge Your Reading

My second big issue is the assumption that because something is easy it’s good. The friction introduced by a notebook leads to better filtering because if a note feels to hard to write down you must question whether the thought is valuable enough to record. Often it’s not so you don’t bother.

A digital device doesn’t have this friction as a filter dynamic. It’s easy so you highlight anything mildly interesting and then have hundreds of highlights to go through in a book even though only dozens of them are valuable.

Starting with a notebook also means that to get your notes into thoughts in a tool like Obsidian you have to do a second filtering pass. When I do this I find that some of my original notes hold no value but some of them spark lots of other thoughts and get links throughout my system and then develop into writing. This is still possible with digital highlights but you have to be far more intentional about it because you’re fooled into thinking that your notes are “processed” because they’re digital.

Physical vs Digital?

Books should be treated like blog posts. Some will immerse us fully and make us want to read every word. Others won’t be as captivating. For these, I’ve given myself permission to skim, skip chapters, or stop reading them entirely – Supercharge Your Reading

I’m an advocate of doing what works for you. So if you love Kindle read there. If you love physical books, read those. Either way, let readers read how they prefer.

If you want to take notes don’t fall into the trap of thinking that digital highlights equate to a notes taken. Put in some extra work to process the notes. This may mean less books read in the year because you have to devote time to processing, but a well thought about book2 is better read than a book you skimmed through and took some half-assed notes on.

If you’re going to read and take notes on a book then you should whole ass it. Not all books are worth that effort, but those that are should get the time they deserve.

  1. I made this change more than once and now stick to my notebook for physical books. ↩︎
  2. One that is worth thinking deeply about because not all books are worth that time. ↩︎

Related Content