Reading With A Purpose

A lot of people read. Not a lot of people remember what they read. The knowledge you retain compounds.

The way to remember more of what you read is to develop a note-taking system (mine is a version of this). Start by highlighting anything that seems interesting as you read and folding the corner of the page. Don’t worry about how much you’re highlighting or what it means for later.

Once you finish the book, leave it alone for a week or two. Then go back through the pages you highlighted and transfer the notes to a notecard or digital system. There are a lot of different ways to do this, some people organize by books – creating a file for each book. I like to do it by themes or ideas. This is what mine looks like:

Having a notetaking system is a way to store knowledge for later. Considering a career change? Hitting a difficult patch in a relationship? Feeling anxious? Lack of creativity? These can all be categories in your system.

Some of mine include:

• Life – General life advice. Random bits I find useful to remember.
• Career – From when to leave a job to salary negotiations. Each time I’ve been considering a career change or interviewing for a new position, I’ve been able to flip through the wisdom I’ve saved. It ranges from Steve Jobs to Abraham Lincoln.
• Me - Questions I find helpful to ask myself. Traits I want to embody or avoid. Simple reminders of things I tend to forget.

There’s no perfect way to do this and I make slight tweaks to my system all the time. But, this little box is priceless to me and more than paid for the cost of the books I’ve read. If my apartment was on fire, this is the first thing I’d grab.

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