How I Use My Commonplace Book to Read Efficiently

one of the things I love more than reading is remembering what I read and I'm very good at forgetting what I read so that is where this bad boy comes in and I'm just going to show you uh kind of what my commonplace book is used for how I use it and how simple and useful of a tool it really is what even is a commonplace book in a nutshell it essentially is a storage unit a mini encyclopedia if you will um of just the highlights important information you come across whenever you're reading um it doesn't have to be solely from reading books it could be really anything you come across that you don't want to forget this is what you use to jot it down don't forget about it and even you know elaborate on it comment your own understanding I'll get into that a little bit later but in a nutshell that is what this is for this is a storage unit for stuff you do not want to forget while you're reading it also essentially is just a screenshot of the stuff you want to remember cuz I know for sure I never want to remember remember everything I read I never want to be that guy uh to that would almost be a curse to remember every single detail uh you only obviously you only want to remember the the good stuff the highlights or even stuff you disagree with it doesn't have to be necessarily good it can be stuff that you really stand against or stuff you really disagree with I read a lot of philosophy so that comes with a lot of disagreement a lot of dissecting passages and opinions and thoughts so it doesn't have to be good it doesn't have to be agreeable but either way if it stands out is the important thing and you want it noted down there was a while where I wasn't reading at all and then one day I picked up meditations by Marcus raes and this was really my first book that made me oh my gosh you know I want to remember a lot of what he's saying I want to remember a lot of these points so that's where I first got into you know marking my books noting down these thoughts CU there's a lot of important pieces of information uh that I meant a lot to me and especially uh when it comes to books you don't want to forget that information like I said so how do I keep my Common Place book like how do I you know how do I incorporate it to my reading how how does one effectively do that you know at the end of the day we each have our own you know methods but I do have a pretty solid system at least for myself and it's really simple and that's why I like it I love Simplicity and efficiency that's the most important thing for me so let's just say I'm using meditations again for my example I'm reading meditations right and I come across something that's really you know it stands out to me it really just it's really speaking to me for some reason so for example here I highlight it right there I have it highlighted on this page so a lot of people are against you know writing in books so I understand that too uh it took me a lot to get used to just you know what screw it I'll write in my books whatever I I actually kind of like it I like uh you know kind of writing having some wear and tear in my books it really shows that they're loved but you know if you're totally against writing in your books or annotating in your books totally normal completely get it uh you could even use a sticky note I know there's a lot of people who use book tabs as long as you have some sort of marking here that indicates that you have something noted or that you want to go back to just mark it make sure it's marked yeah that's step one step two is probably the most important but most overlooked part when you annotate books or when you you know whether it's highlight sticky note whatever it may be you want to annotate it but keep reading stopping entirely will break that Rhythm and really just the overall enjoyment of reading whatever book you are that you're reading so most important something that a lot of people I don't think do is annotate but just keep going keep reading until you reach the end of your reading session then you can jump into your commonplace book or Journal whatever it may be but don't don't penalize yourself because you want to take so many notes and you want to take away so much from the book to the point where it becomes just you know a chore where you're you're just essentially studying and studying can be fun but it's only fun if you allow it to be so let yourself enjoy the book still don't take away your reading experience just keep reading but just all you have to do make sure it's marked that's it just make sure it's marked keep reading as long as you want once you reach the end of your reading session then we can jump into the Common Place book so let's say at this point you're done reading reading sessions over you want to go reflect a little bit on what you read that's where the Common Place book comes in that's where you want to pick this up and I'm going to show you some examples I have um just to give you an idea of what it looks like or at least my quote unquote system I think the biggest idea is to not have a system not do not care about Aesthetics um just the most important thing jotting it down jotting down the important information that you want to take away so let me pull open a page here for you so here is an example of just a couple passages that I wrote down so here I have the author I have the title and then I have the passage number and then the passage title um and then this right here is the quote itself that I wanted to reflect on and uh jot down and then right here is where I provide my own thoughts and my own interpretation and understanding and then same thing on this page I do the same exact thing so that is as simple as it gets it's seriously just author title passage title quote and then your own thoughts and another thing is there's no there's no rules or criteria to go off of it could be two sentences it could be two pages it could be half your you know half your uh notebook it really doesn't matter as long as it's important to you you don't want to over highlight you don't want to over annotate you don't want to take in too much details you only want to take in the stuff that's really important to you so here's another example right here I have the author and the title uh the name of the passage itself and then the quote or the passage uh this is uh makavelli uh from The Prince and here are my thoughts all the way down here like I said doesn't necessarily look pretty but it's efficient and you have it down permanently to reference rather than you know oh my gosh I thought this passage was really important really really something I wanted to remember something I wanted to take away from I and if I didn't write it down there's no I there's no way I'm going to remember that there's absolutely no way and while you search certainly don't have to write your own interpretation I always recommend it because it helps it helps a lot and you want to you know you want to jot down and you want to remember the reason why you thought it was important because there were a lot of times where I was reading I highlight something and then I don't comment on it and then I go back and it's like why do I have this highlighted this doesn't resonate with me today but it must have in the past so and I have no clue why commented on it so that's why I end up providing my own thoughts and understanding to almost all the quotes I have not every single one and really that's the key functions of it there's nothing really more to it than that and it sounds a little simple a little too simple to be true I know there's a lot of videos on YouTube that show all these you know complex systems or something way more detailed than what I'm showing you today but I think my goal is to show you how simple it really can be it doesn't have to be detailed it doesn't have to be a complicated or int intimidating process if anything keeping this while I'm reading it actually helps me engage more with the material itself it helps me you know enjoy the book more I'm pretty much drilling the information into my head times 4 um in a fun way I don't feel like I'm dreading trying to even you know process or remember what I'm reading that is why this is so darn handy and so worth it yes I can't lie to you guys it does take a little bit of time because you are setting aside time to reflect this is essentially a book to reflect you gain so much from it I mean you don't ever have to worry about reading something or coming across something and just having it slip from your memory because I know that's something that I suffer with pretty bad I end up forgetting things very quickly if I don't uh really drill it in my head or for this instance write it down and I think admittedly there's just kind of a sense of pride of you know you're really committing yourself to the to the material to the book itself and you have that sense of pride of keeping it here you're you're really studying you're studying but making it fun and then you're only remembering the stuff that you want to remember you're only remembering the parts that really mean something to you cuz once again like I stated before you don't want to remember everything I know there's some videos uh out there titled something along the lines of how I remember everything that I read you that would be a curse that would be horrible I would hate to feel that just remembering every single detail this bad boy right here will remember only the important things to you but essentially that's really all it is so I hope this was somewhat beneficial I know it was really quick but that was kind of the idea to show how simple this really can be and especially if you're someone who really enjoys reading but suffers with remembering this I'm telling you it's worth a try even if it doesn't work for you at least you can say you tried it if you have another method definitely you know keep doing your thing whatever works the most important thing is that you're remembering you're enjoying it and it's not all for nothing right you want to enjoy the process too you don't want to keep something like this but it somehow make you even more miserable right so whatever works for you I just wanted to share because it's so simple so effective so efficient it makes reading so much more rewarding and it got me into reading even more so yeah anyways I'll end it here thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you on the next one thanks

Channel: From the Desk of Collin

Views: 9,827

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Id: FJmCWVIXZ6M

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2024