I like reading non-fiction books and taking notes on them. The ultimate goal is to learn and implement lessons learned from the book. I may not be able to implement all the lessons learned from the book immediately, so it’s important to have notes that summarize the lessons from the book briefly.
However, my current note-taking strategy hasn’t been working well for me. Two reasons I can think of:
- Good books have many lessons/information worthy of being noted down. It takes a long time to write them.
- I don’t read my notes since they are so big.
What’s the point of reading non-fiction books if I don’t implement any lessons from them?
What’s the point of taking notes if I don’t read them?
I am delusional for thinking I will understand and implement every lesson in a book. I keep on trying to do just that and fail miserably. Is there a better way?
Simplify Note Taking Even More
I came across this idea while reading Axel’s post: One Chapter == One Action. When I read it, I immediately knew this was what I needed. Simplification of my note-taking process.
I don’t really need to extract every lesson from a book. Impelementing even one idea per book would be life-changing. To give myself more options, condensing every chapter of the book into one lesson/action should be good enough.
Note-taking will no longer be overwhelming. After reading a chapter, I can mull over what action I want to take to improve my life (if any) and note that down. With smaller condensed notes, I will be more likely to go through them.
Conclusion: How Am I Applying This?
Please note that just because I said “One Chapter == One Action”, it doesn’t mean you must condense a chapter into exactly one action. Always be flexible with ideas. If a chapter is good, it can definitely have multiple actions forked from it.
What I am trying to do is extract at least one action and then not worry about things too much. If I miss some actions/lessons, that’s fine.
My perspective has shifted: Instead of trying to extract every lesson from a chapter, I now try to extract only one.