Start a Knowledge Notebook: Stop Forgetting What You Learn

In this video, I’m going to show you why you should start a knowledge notebook today to stop consuming so

much information and forgetting it a few days later. Plus, we’re going to do it in a practical way. I’m going

to build one right in front of you so that when you finish the video, you can get started with no excuses. I’m

Elías Sánchez, an industrial engineer , and I’ve spent over 10 years experimenting with habits, productivity

, and paper-based notebook systems to make better use of my time. Let’s get started. I want you to think for a

second about the amount of information you consume on an average day. You go on Instagram, you surely see a post you

find interesting, then you listen to a podcast while doing something else, you watch a YouTube video while eating, and

when something seems interesting, we take an action that in theory should help us learn. We save everything. We

hit that save button as if we’re actually going to look at it later. I’m sure you have saved videos, posts

, screenshots, notes, as if that were enough, right? And yes, I’d bet money right here on the table that more than

once you’ve seen a video that you thought was great, you finish it and think, "I need to remember this." And

surely a week later, someone asks you about that topic, and you remember practically nothing. And this doesn't

mean you have a bad memory; on the contrary, I’d bet my life that if you’re watching this, you probably

have a good one. What I mean is that we are consuming much more information at a much faster pace than we are capable

of processing, because information and knowledge are not exactly the same thing. You can consume 100 hours of

productivity podcasts and still not know how to better organize your day. You can read an entire book on habits

and forget its main ideas a week later. We consume, consume, and consume, but we rarely stop to think about what we

want to keep from all of that, what it means to us, or how it relates to other things we already know. And here lies

one of the biggest differences between simply consuming information and truly learning. Because learning is not just

finding an interesting idea; it’s being able to remember it, think about it, relate it to other things, and

eventually put it into action. And this gives me the chance to talk in great detail about this very simple tool that

has been used for a long, long time. Now, this tool has a rather unique name ; it’s called a knowledge notebook.

It is a system—simplifying it quite a bit, obviously—that consists of having a place to store and organize

the ideas, knowledge, and reflections you want to keep. And before we continue, I want to make an important

clarification. This is not a personal diary. It's not about sitting down every night to recount how your day

went, how you felt, or what you did. No , not at all. It is not an agenda, a bullet journal, or a to-do list that

you have to complete. It’s not just about having a notebook full of motivational quotes or self-help

phrases either. The idea is much more interesting, let me tell you. Think of it as a kind of personal library of

knowledge, a place where you can save an idea you heard in a podcast, a line from a book, or something you learned,

and even make connections between two ideas that you previously kept completely separate. And if we pause

here, the notebook doesn't have to contain only information that comes from outside, right? From the external

context. It can also contain what you think and reflect on regarding a certain type of information. For

example, you can read an idea about habits in a book, write it in your own words, and then add something like, "

this makes a lot of sense with something that happened to me when I tried, for example, to change my gym

routine or when I tried to start my business." At that moment, you are no longer just saving a phrase from a book

; you are building your own reflections on that phrase. And I am going to zoom in a bit because this interests me

quite a lot. Regarding this, because over time you won't just be accumulating information; it's like

you'll be building a place that contains the ideas that made you think, the things you learned, and the

connections you made over the course of time. You are building your own library of knowledge, although simply having it

without really knowing how to use it doesn't guarantee anything either. That is why, next, we are going to see how

all of this works. Now then, why does having a notebook of this type really work? Because our brain is not designed

to store absolutely everything you consume during the day, nor does it need to, not by a long shot. We can use

the notebook as a kind of external memory, like an external hard drive, a place to leave those ideas we want to

keep and to which we can return, obviously when we need it, when it's necessary. But for this to work, there

is something we must avoid. Turning it into another place to accumulate information without processing it. That

is why the notebook has to function as a filter where you won't just save what you learn, but also what you think

about what you learned. And now I want to show you how I would make an entry in my notebook from scratch. And by the

way, in the practical example that follows, I'm going to tell you how this notebook helped me create my own app to

help you reduce social media scrolling, precisely to regain a bit of our attention. If you're interested in

starting to use it and having it help you in your day-to-day, I've left the link for you to download it in the

pinned comment and in the description. I’m not just saying this, but I think it’s going to give people a lot, a

whole lot to talk about. Now then, let's continue. Well, for you to really understand how this works, I want to

make an entry with an idea I developed myself. After reading some comments on several of my videos, many people told

me that they were finding it very difficult to control the time they spent on social media and, above all,

to stop automatically scrolling through them, the famous infinite scroll. And this made me think of a fairly simple

question. How could I create something that would help a person protect their attention? The idea would be to create

an app that helps combat infinite scrolling and makes the use of social media much more intentional. And now,

an important part is that I don't just want to copy the idea I had, I want to write what I think about it, mull it

over, and why I'm also interested in being able to look at it from various angles. In my case, I want it to be an

easy-to-use app that truly helps reduce that automatic use of social media. In fact, I want it to be a tool that I

would use myself in my daily life, because this also comes from a personal experience, which I even talked about

in several videos. There was a period of time when I was super hooked on Instagram, so I decided to just

uninstall it. And the next day, while I was working on one of my deep work blocks, I caught myself scrolling

through Amazon without even realizing it. And that’s when I really realized I had a problem. To what extent I had

turned scrolling into something so automatic that I had ended up on a shopping site just scrolling away. And

finally, I was able to connect this idea with something that is already a part of everything I do. Taking care of

our attention, building better habits, and being more productive. And as you saw, to do this you don't need anything

special. You don't need to buy the nicest notebook you can find, or a specific pen. You can use whatever you

have at home. I use, for example, scrap paper always and always, always on paper, not only because you don't have

notifications or other apps open. Writing by hand adds a certain cognitive friction. Since writing is

slower than just typing, it forces you to choose better what you want to include, to organize what you are

thinking, and to reflect on what you are writing. The rule to start is quite simple. Use what you have on hand and

start as soon as possible. All right. Now that we have our notebook, let's see how to organize it so that later we

can find everything we write with greater ease and speed. Now I want to show you how I organize all of this. I

don't use a traditional notebook; I use a binder with sheet protectors and A4 paper. Why? Because this way I am not

limited by physical space. If a topic has a lot of content, I can simply add more sheets and I don't even need to

use new paper. Often, if not most of the time, I use draft paper that I have lying around and I just recycle it.

First of all, leave a few pages for the index. What I do is organize it by pillars. For example, some of the

pillars I have are business, personal reflections, finances, community, and content ideas. And within each pillar,

I can have different projects. For example, within business, I can have project one, project two, project three

, and each of those projects has its own sheets. So, my structure ends up being quite simple. I start with the

pillar, then go to the project, then the page numbers, and in the index, I record where everything is so I can

find it later. The good thing about doing it this way is that I don't have to decide now everything I'm going to

learn or write over the coming months because it's super flexible and I can keep adding information. I can start

with these pillars, and if in a few months something comes up that doesn't fit any of them, I just add another

pillar. It's no big deal; I don't stress about it. The structure is there to help you find your ideas, not to

limit you to the ideas you might be having right now. And now I want to show you something even more

interesting: how we can connect the ideas we have to each other. What we are going to see now is, for me, the

most interesting part of all this, which is simply saving an idea—that is, how from one opinion, idea, or

reflection I can jump to something else and keep creating based on that. For example, here I have the idea for the

app we just saw. This idea was born after reading for quite some time comments from people telling me that

they had trouble controlling their social media usage and the time they spent on their phones. But while I was

working on this topic, another idea appeared. If the problem is that we are using our phones automatically and

losing our attention span, I can also create content to help understand what is happening and what we can do to

solve it. And from there came a video I published recently, a week ago—surely by the time you see this video it's

already published—called The protocol for doing a dopamine detox. So, as you can see, now I am connecting two

different ideas. On one hand, I have a business idea related to taking care of our attention, and on the other, I have

a content idea that seeks to explain precisely how to recover that attention . What I want you to take away from

this is that the second idea didn't appear out of nowhere, it didn't fall from the sky. First, there was

obviously an input, that is, an intake of information, which is other people's comments. That led me to a business

idea, and that idea then led me to a content idea. And when you start saving these kinds of things for months and

years, you start to look back and find connections that were completely separate at the time they arose. And as

Steve Jobs said, often only by looking backward can we see how the dots were connected. You are not just creating

pages; you are creating a network of ideas. Yes. If you made it to this part of the video and I am providing you

with value, leave me the word notebook in the comments. That way I know who makes it to this part of the video and,

obviously, who will be implementing everything we've been looking at. Remember, notebook. Well, you're

probably wondering now what things you can write in this notebook and how often you have to write. And the truth

is that you have quite a lot of freedom to do so. You can save a quote you found in a book, in a video, or in a

movie, wherever. You can save an idea, but try to explain it in your own words , not by copying it. And you can also

write a reflection, which for me is the most interesting part. What do you think about that idea? What connection

does it have to your life? Or what does it make you reflect on? What does it trigger for you? Okay. And regarding

frequency, you don't have to write every day, far from it. You can go a week without touching the notebook, or

even months, and then find an idea that interests you and write for a week straight, or you can simply write one

sentence. The idea, and this is very important, is not to turn this into another obligation you have to fulfill.

If you're watching this video, you're surely feeling a heavy workload and want to be more productive, but your

notebook needs to keep up with your pace. The backbone of this notebook is having a place to build step by step

and preserve everything you truly want to learn. And after all this, I think you can see why I like this system so

much, because at first it seems like you’re just jotting down random things in a folder or notebook, but if

you keep it up consistently, you’ll accumulate everything you've learned, the ideas that made you think, the

reflections, and obviously, the connections you made between them. You can even realize how your interests,

your projects, and even your own opinions have changed over time. Let's just say it ends up becoming a kind of

map of your own mind. So, I encourage you to grab a folder, a notebook, or something to take notes and write. And

the next time you find an idea that really makes you think, instead of saving it on your phone, write it down,

because maybe that idea will end up connecting with another in a few months and, without realizing it, you'll start

building something much bigger. And obviously, writing down an idea—I’m going to be totally frank and direct—

doesn't automatically make it a reality . You need much more than that. So in the next video, I'm going to show you

how I go from planning my annual goals to executing concrete tasks that I can do on a day-to-day basis. I'll leave it

right here for you to watch next. See you later.