How To Take Effective Notes When 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

Channel: Aun Abdi

Views: 26,647

Rating: 4.9756908 out of 5

Keywords: books, book, book review, book reviews, reading tips, how do i read more, how to read more, how can i read more, read more books, reading more book, reading more books, how i can read more, read more, is reading beneficial, how can i read more books, taking notes when reading, reading books, nonfiction books, productivity books, becoming a better reader, taking notes, taking better notes, note taking system, study tips

Id: kTdX-Ua0BAM

Length: 5min 27sec (327 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020