6 Steps to Effective Note-Taking While Reading

hello everyone my name is orn and today we're going to talk about how to take effective notes while reading for the

past two years i've been reading on average a book and a half a week

and over that time period i've found a strategic way to get the most out of reading what i'm

going to do in this video is lay out my six step process of how i go about taking effective notes

and i'll put the little time stamps here visa bar no means inclusive so you can take and leave some of these points

but this is the process that i use in order to get the most out of the things that i read the first

point is have your reading accessories at the ready whether it's a notebook a pen and a highlighter

make sure that you are ready for reading now this is sometimes not the case if you're for instance traveling

or you're reading on a kindle but if you're at home make sure that you have all of these accessories ready

to make sure that you can get as much you can out of the book all i use is a fountain pen to write in my

notebook a ballpoint pen to write in the actual book and a highlighter to highlight as i'm reading through

the second point although not specifically related to note taking is for me the most important thing that

i learned from reading over the past couple of years and that is have a question in mind

before you start not only does this enable you to select books that you're interested in reading

based on a skill or something that you're interested in but it also makes sure that the

information that you get from the book is related to that specific question this has done two

things for me the first thing is that it's enabled me to get the relevant information from the

book based on that initial question and the second thing is that it

increased my chances of finishing books because i have a specific reason for finishing it

if you're going to take anything from this video definitely take that second point of having a question in mind

before starting any book the third point is whilst you read highlight and write down any ideas that

resonate with you from the book this could be highlighting within the book this could be writing down little

notes in the margins anything to keep yourself engaged and active in the reading process

my top tip on this point is to make sure that you read the full page before you highlight or take any notes

we have all been there when we have read a full page and we're highlighting as we're going through

and then next thing you know the whole page is highlighted so make sure you read the page first

and then think about the ideas or quotes that resonated with you from that page that you can highlight afterward the

fourth point is related to a question that i often get when people are aversed to taking notes while

reading is because it breaks up their flow and that is to take notes after reading

every single chapter the issue with writing notes while reading the chapter is that you lose the

flow of reading which i totally understand so what i actually do it's based on a

scientific method of learning called active recall where you write down a summary of the

chapter in your own words without looking back at the chapter after finishing it this does two things

it tests your memory because you've just read that chapter and the second thing is that you are able to summarize the

chapter in your own words which makes it more relatable to you i used to write

notes during reading the chapter but what i've found was i was just writing it as if i was taking notes from

a textbook rather than using my memory and getting a short summary

of the chapter in my own words which has proved incredibly beneficial the fifth point has been instrumental in

my ability to put into practice the things that i've been learning from books and that is to

write down five to ten principles that you wanna put into action

after finishing every single book but specifically on a productivity book or a book on a specific skill

this proves incredibly beneficial what i do is i write down five to ten principles

based on that initial question that i had before starting the book and think about how i can implement

these principles into my life and i use this as a process of review the sixth point

is actually something that i derived from the famous book seven habits of highly effective people by stephen

arkovy in the seventh habit he talks about sharpening the saw which is the

about the idea of constantly revisiting the things that you want to do in order for it to

compound and be beneficial to with that in mind my sixth point and the thing that i do

is i review my notes regularly every single week and i schedule in time to do so

this review session usually entails taking the notebook form of my notes and then transferring it

onto the computer i'm currently using scrivener to do that and then tagging

certain areas of interest for further research or down the line when eventually i write a

book it's then tagged in order for me to then go in and have a look at a specific topic

whatever medium you use for note-taking on the computer or in the actual hard copy

i definitely suggest booking in an hour every single week to then review your notes whether that's on a saturday or a

sunday i usually do sunday evening because it's just helpful usually and that's

what i usually do for my review sessions so that's it that's my list of effective note-taking

if you have any further questions then put them in the comments below and don't forget to like and subscribe

for more book related content coming on my personal youtube page thanks for watching and i'll see you in

the next video