How to Take Smart Notes

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”

How to Take Smart Notes definitely fell into the last category, at least for me: I had to read a few paragraphs, put it down, let it sink, and only then pick it up again… rinse and repeat. That said, the method described in the book is extremely interesting: trying to sum it up in my own words, it’s about creating, over time, a web of notes (thoughts or references) that grows organically according to one’s interests, feeding itself in doing so. These notes enable learning and thinking processes, storing thoughts so that they aren’t lost, connecting them to other thoughts, and enabling one to review, contrast, or improve them over time.

The book is explicitly targeting “students, academics, and nonfiction book writers”: being none of those, I struggled to relate with some parts of it.