29. How to Take Useful Notes from Books

Episode 29

In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, we are talking about a skill that comes in handy for students, working professionals, and basically anyone who reads books.

Yep, we are talking about note-taking!

Specifically, we dive into how to take useful notes from books, whether you’re reading a book for school that you need to write an essay on, or you’re reading a book for professional or personal development that you want to learn from.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be an expert on:

✅ Knowing when NOT to take notes from books

✅ Determining what to take notes on and what to leave out

✅ Taking notes that are useful and serve an actual purpose

✅ Formatting your notes so that they’re useful to you when you need them

So get out your pencils and your paper so you can take some notes on taking notes ;)

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• Get the transcription

  The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)

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  29 How to Take Useful Notes From Books

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  [00:00:00] 

  Hello, and welcome to episode 29 of the learn and work smarter podcast. Whether you are listening to this on a walk, or maybe you are driving, I appreciate you tuning in. If you are watching this on the learn and work smarter YouTube channel. I am happy you're here too. 

  So I try to strike in equal balance here on the podcast of topics that are beneficial for both students and working professionals. 

  And that is because many of the skills that are required for school and learning are the exact same skills that are required in the professional space. 

  In my online course, SchoolHabits University, I teach some of the most critical skills for school and work. So if you are liking what you are hearing or seeing here on the podcast, just know that SchoolHabits University is 1000 times richer than what I cover here. Now, one of the skills in particular we are going to talk about today. 

  We are going to talk about taking notes. Specifically [00:01:00] taking useful notes from books. 

  Now the reason why this is the topic of today's episode is, well, honestly, I'm asked about this question a ton. But it's also one of those things that's required in high school and college, but it's also a really useful skill in the workforce and even in our personal lives, when we read books just to learn something that we're interested in. 

  So, if you are a student or maybe you are working or you are both, or you clicked on this episode because you are maybe just an avid reader, then this episode is for you. 

  [00:02:00] 

  Now I want to start with a distinction between annotating and note taking. There is a difference and the words are often, um, interchanged, although they're not interchangeable. 

  All right. So, annotating is when we mark up a text directly on the text itself. While we read, we are underlining and highlighting and writing notes, usually directly in the margins or between the lines. 

  Note taking on the other hand is when we extract information from a text and we put it somewhere else, usually in a paper notebook, or maybe a Google doc, you could, you know, use a note taking app on an iPad with an apple pencil. 

  And both annotating and note-taking can be helpful. And whether you use one strategy or another depends on what you're reading, why you're reading it and what you want to get from the text. 

  But in this episode, we're going to talk about note-taking not annotating and that's why I have titled the episode tips for taking useful notes [00:03:00] from books. Perhaps in a future episode, I will do a deep dive about annotating. And I probably will. So that is a note to self.

  So the first tip or it's really a pre tip, I guess that comes before the first step is to decide if you want to annotate or take notes. If you are not sure, listening to this episode might help shed some light on whether note taking is the right approach. 

  So listen all the way through. And if what I am teaching here is making sense and matching what you want to do. Well, then there you have it. 

  Okay, so now we're going to start with the first real tip. Which is to find your purpose. This is absolutely the most important tip of all taking notes is entirely useless, entirely useless if you don't nail this first step. In fact, annotating text is also really, really useless without nailing this step too. All right. 

  So what do I mean by determining your purpose? Before we take notes [00:04:00] from a book, we have to think about why the heck we are taking notes from the book in the first place, because honestly it is not always necessary to take notes from books. I mean, if you are reading a book for pleasure or for entertainment, there is just no reason at all to annotate it or to take notes from it. 

  But if you've decided you want to take notes from a ,book okay. I'm assuming it's because you want to get something from that text. You want to learn something from it. You want to extract information that's going to be useful to you at some future point. 

  So, what I'm seeing here is that we have to figure out what that is. What is the purpose? What do you want to learn from the text? 

  When we determine the reason we're taking notes in the first place, we're immediately able to assign our notes some kind of structure they're going to have- [00:05:00] excuse me- some kind of shape. 

  Determining the reason why you're taking notes from our text or in other words, like what the heck you're trying to learn from your book gives you like a filter to help you hone in on what you're going to look for and take notes on. 

  Does that make sense? So I am going to give you a few examples because everything is obviously better with examples. 

  So I am going to start with an example that applies mostly to students. 

  And then an example that applies to more of a reader who's reading for professional development or maybe even for just personal knowledge acquisition. 

  So if you are a student and you're reading a book for a class, it's likely that you're reading that book for one of two reasons, or honestly, maybe even both. 

  First, you might be reading a book to gain a deeper understanding of your course content. 

  So if you're taking a course on women's rights, you might be reading a book that addresses women's rights, perhaps in the [00:06:00] early 19th century. We actually had no rights at all. So very short book. 

  Or perhaps the other reason you're reading this book is because you're going to need to do something with the material when you're done with it. 

  Usually this is in the form of an essay or a project or presentation. 

  Now, each of these reasons is a different purpose and would inform what kind of notes you take and how you take them. 

  So let's start with the first one. If you've been assigned a book so that you can get a maybe a deeper understanding or a new angle, right? 

  Then your note should essentially become kind of an outline of the book. 

  You would extract key points from the chapters, perhaps writing chapter summaries. Um, and by the time you are done taking your notes, your notes would provide sort of like a high-level overview of the entire book. But of course in your own words and with all the key concepts distilled into simpler language. 

  Now, if you were reading a book that you're going to eventually write [00:07:00] an essay on, then I would suggest taking notes that are aligned with what your essay is going to be about. If you have a general idea of what your thesis is going to be, or at least the theme that you're going to be reading for, then you would take notes on any parts of the book that are related to that theme or to your thesis. Perhaps, as you read further in the book and you start to shape your thesis more like, um, granularly you start taking notes that might be future evidence to support your thesis, things like quotes and stuff. Right? 

  You would not take notes on absolutely everything that you're reading. You wouldn't take notes on all of the key points. Rather your notes would align with the essay that you're intending to write about that book. 

  Is that making sense? And everything else you would just leave out. 

  And let's move on to an example that's more professionally based. All right? 

  So let's say that you are reading a book because you want to improve your copywriting [00:08:00] skills. I think I'm drawing from personal experience here. Perhaps you have a job in marketing and you've been doing more copywriting and you want to get better, or perhaps you own a small business and you wear all of the hats and you want to get better at copywriting. Like me. So in this case, it's still start by determining your purpose. 

  I'm going with this copywriting example, but if you were reading a copywriting book, It's going to be tactical and strategic and full of examples as opposed to a novel that has like characters and a plot line. Right. So let's say that you are reading this copywriting book and you wanted to apply what you are learning to some marketing materials that you're creating for a new campaign or new project. 

  Now one approach would be to read the book and extract the strategies from the book, writing those strategies in a notebook, or you can do it digitally too. 

  It doesn't matter. And then applying those strategies to your real life marketing project below that in real time, [00:09:00] okay, also in your notebook. 

  So if the author of the book says something like always open with a pain point, all right, you would write that in your notes. 

  And then underneath that you could have a few bullet points where you sort of try out a few iterations of pain points for your audience, for your very real marketing project that you're working on. 

  And when you work your way through the book this way, not only will you end up with notes that are full of like the key takeaways and the important points, but you'll also have workshopped some of the material to use in your future campaign. 

  Now I want to go back a minute to the title of this episode. I did not call it tips for taking notes from books. I called it tips for taking useful notes from books. 

  So let me be clear if your notes are not useful they are absolutely pointless. 

  And so that's why I'm making such a big deal about having you think ahead of time about what would make your notes useful to you. 

  And that will change depending on who you are and what [00:10:00] you're reading and why the heck you're reading it in the first place. 

  So honestly, I feel like I could. just end the episode right here, because once you figure out the reason you're taking notes and how you want your notes to serve you for that future purpose, it's almost like the notes themselves take care of themselves. Right. 

  When, you know, you're only taking notes on. Um, I don't know. Let's see like the American dream, right in of mice and men, then your notes become streamlined, streamlined. And, you know, not to include notes on anything other than something that is related to references of the American dream. 

  But do not worry. I am not going to stop the episode here. I do have some more tips. 

  All right. So a, another tip for taking useful notes from books is about formatting. Remember, you want your notes to be useful. I cannot emphasize that enough. 

  And to be specific, you want them to be useful at some point when [00:11:00] you will need that information again, in the future? Because if, think about it, if you're not anticipating needing that information again, then why are you even taking notes in the first place? 

  Right. So for this step, I want you to think about the future you. Fast forward to the future, you who is going to be coming back to these notes and using them for whatever purpose that you determined was your purpose. Right? That was like, step one. I just spent like 20 minutes on that. How would that person want your notes to be formatted? Would that person want them to be digital so that, you know, you can copy and paste quotes easily into a final essay. 

  Um, do you want them to be digital so that you can search easily for certain words that, you know, you took notes on like using control Africa command app, right? Do you want them to be in a notebook because you like that? Or do you want them to be in a note book because you're more of a visual learner and you know that when you go back to your notes, you tend to remember like where on the [00:12:00] page you wrote things like you remember writing something in the top right corner or the top left corner or something. 

  That's a real thing. That's kind of like a spatial memory. And that, that is helpful for some of us. The format of our notes also depends on the content of the book you're reading. 

  Are there a lot of charts and graphs and visuals that you want to copy down? Well, then maybe it is best to use a paper notebook or something like an um, apple pencil on an iPad. One question. I am asked a lot about this is related, but it's about speed. Many of my students say that they like to take notes digitally because they can do it faster. 

  And for some people that is true. But as your goal to get information from the books faster, or is it to create useful notes and actually understand what you're reading? Because it's true that many people can type faster than they write, but that increases the chance that you're going to take more notes than you need. And that's going to overstuff your notes. 

  And when you do that, your notes become less useful. [00:13:00] And again, the entire point of taking notes is so that they will be useful to the future you. Now I'm going to give you a personal example from my own life. 

  Maybe that would be helpful. I do read a lot of books. If you follow me on Instagram. At @SchoolHabits. You'll see that I share the books I read each month. 

  Although to be honest, I've been really, really behind in these post-laser lately. But I do read between three and five books a month. Some of these books are for my pleasure and for my entertainment, some of the books I read with students who are reading them for their classes. And some of the books I read for my own professional development, because in case you didn't know, I do wear all the hats. 

  I do every thing for SchoolHabits and SchoolHabits University, my Executive Function Journal, the learn and work smarter podcast, all of that by myself. And so, yes, I read a lot of books about how to do things. 

  So first things first, I [00:14:00] personally never take notes on books that I read for entertainment. 

  I don't annotate them and I don't take notes on them. The only time I do is if I come across a quote or a sentence that just strikes me, I do have an app on my phone, Google keep and in Google, keep I have a list called quotes. 

  And when I come across an impactful quote from a book, or maybe just a sentence that I thought was like, beautiful, I grab my phone right away, I open the list and I add that quote to my Google keep list. Other than that, I am not taking notes on books I read for entertainment. 

  Now when I read books for students. But honestly, in most cases I've read like all the high school and college literature books, like 10 or 20 times at this point, so I'm not really taking notes on them anymore, but once in a while, a student is reading a book that I haven't read before. And I read it with them. 

  That's part of what I do with my coaching. And I always try to be one step ahead of the student where they're on the books that I like, know what I'm talking about. And in these cases, when I'm reading the book [00:15:00] myself, I am taking notes on areas that I think would be important for me to help explain to the student. 

  But hold up because in these cases I'm actually usually annotating the text. I am not writing any of this stuff down in a notebook somewhere. Because that would not be useful. 

  I write them in the actual book so that I can see my annotations in real time when I'm sitting across from my student or on zoom and they have the book in front of them too. Because that's the most helpful, right? We need to take notes that are useful. 

  So, if you remember at the top of this episode, I said that like one of the like a pre tip to the first tip is to figure out if you're going to annotate a text, or if you are going to take notes on it. And again, Which path you choose depends on what you're gonna do with that information. And in the case of me reading a book with a student and sort of teaching that material along the way, annotating the book. Is a thousand times more [00:16:00] useful to me when I'm in my coaching role. Does that make sense? 

  But when I am in my business mode and I'm reading a book for business and for professional development, I take notes. Okay, because I do read a lot of books about branding and copywriting and marketing and product development and executive functions and ADHD and learning disabilities and all of the things that are related to my job and running my business. 

  And like I said, these are the books that I personally take notes on. 

  Personally. I take all of my notes in a notebook, like a physical notebook using a pen. And I know that my future self would never open up an iPad and swipe through, you know, previously written notes to find something for me. If it's out of sight, it's out of mind and I don't want that. 

  Do I have an iPad pro and do [00:17:00] I have the cool new apple pencil and the Notability app? 

  Yes, I do. Yes, I absolutely do. And I have a different purpose for that. I use that for like mind mapping and brainstorming and sort of more creative efforts. All right, but I am not taking notes from books that I'm reading on my iPad because I know it's fun. Actually love the act of taking notes on an iPad, but I'm thinking to myself, In the future when I go back to these notes, that's the whole point of taking the notes, right? 

  Because your future self is going to go back to them and use them for something. Do I want to open up my iPad and find which, um, where I put these notes and, you know, swipe through or scroll through. That's not how I like to search through information. Right. 

  So I had to find a compromise. I like writing notes on an iPad because if I mess up, I can make it neat and I can sort of straighten things out and have it look awesome. But then in the [00:18:00] future, those notes notes, aren't useful to me because I don't like the mechanics of searching through digital notes. 

  I would prefer to flip, open the pages of a notebook and sort of like scrub through them and be like, oh yeah, that's where it is. Right. 

  Now. I have a very simple method of taking notes. And to be honest, I use the same notebook to take notes on all the books I read. Sometimes I read more than one book at a time, and that's why I personally use a disk bound notebook for note taking so that I can rearrange the paper and insert more paper where I need it. 

  But here is what I do. Remember. I am sharing what I personally do, and this is something that I often teach students, but. If you're listening to this podcast, because you want to improve your systems, you want to improve the way that you do things you've got to know that that comes with a willingness to experiment. 

  Right. I am sharing what I'm doing. And then I share alternatives and I say, oh, other clients like this and other clients like that, students like this, right. [00:19:00] But it is on you to take what I teach here and try it. And give it like a good effort, right? Don't take like one sentence of notes and be like, well, that didn't work. 

  Like, give it a good, solid effort. And if you're like, well, you know what? I didn't like this part. Then change it. Make a tweak. Self-assess. Right? That's that's all part of learning and working smarter. Okay. But anyway, here's what I do. 

  I put the name of the book at the top of the page. And every time I come across, something that I know is related to the reason why I am reading that book. I write the page number in my notebook on the left, and then I write either a paraphrase of the material, or I write my own thoughts on the material. 

  Like why I even think that's interesting or why am I taking a note on it? For example, let's say that I'm reading a book about. ADHD. If there is a new study about an ADHD treatment, then I would write the page number down and I might paraphrase the study. 

  And then I would ask myself, Why am I taking notes on this? What am I going to do with this information in the [00:20:00] future? Am I going to make an Instagram post on it? Am I going to write a blog about it or incorporate it into a blog? Am I going to record a podcast episode on it? Do I want to look into it more. 

  
  If I want to make an Instagram post about that ADHD treatment. I would write, I G post underneath where I wrote my little paraphrase. 

  If I wanted to write a blog post about that new ADHD treatment, I would write blog posts, under wear. 

  
  I wrote my paraphrase and then maybe, you know, a quick brainstorm of, uh, some, some blog post titles. Right. If I wanted to research it more, I will start by writing the paraphrase of the study and then write something like find out more. Or Google this. 

  Now somebody else reading this exact same book might be reading it for a different purpose. And so their notes will look entirely different. Right. So if a medical student is reading this book, they're probably not thinking about making an Instagram post about this new ADHD [00:21:00] treatment. 

  Right. So my notes would be useless to them. And again, this all comes down to, what do you want to get from the book you are reading? 

  
  All right. So my final tip for taking notes from books still has to do with formatting. All right, now I talk about this in so much more detail inside of SchoolHabits University, but it is important that your notes are readable and accessible to you. 

  Otherwise they are not useful. All right. So for most people. I recommend simple bullet point outline notes. If you were reading a book like a novel or a how to book or something related to self-help or professional development or anything like that. Using bullet points in a simple outline format is probably your best option.

  If you're taking notes from a textbook, which this podcast episode is not about, perhaps that's a future episode, then you have different options, right? You can do two column, you can do Cornell notes. [00:22:00] But for the books we're talking about today an outline format with simple bullet points will probably serve you best when you come back to your notes for whatever purpose you took them for in the first place. Okay. 

  So I do have a few more micro tips sort of under this larger tip. 

  You want to use a lot of white space. So this means skipping lines, like skip new lines every single time you take a new note. 

  Use your original own language instead of copying directly from the book. Unless of course you're, you know, extracting a quote. 

  Use abbreviations when it makes sense to. Don't take notes on things you understand. 

  I see this all the time. 

  Somebody will write something down because it sounded smart. It sounded, you know, important, but they don't even understand what that. Meant like they don't have the comprehension, so they're just like copying it down. So that means that they don't understand their notes. And how many. How many times can I say [00:23:00] this? The only point of taking notes is so that they are useful for some future purpose. 

  
  And so if you write something down that you don't even understand. I mean, I can't think of anything. More useless. You know what I mean? So don't do that. If you are struggling with comprehension, take a second, make sure that you're understanding the author's main message. First, try to dig into the author's language and then look away from the text and say, okay, without looking at the text, see if you can simplify it, summarize it or paraphrase it. 

  And you would write that down. 

  Another tip is to do everything you can to enhance your writing experience. 

  So that means get some good quality paper that doesn't have the bleed through. Get a good pen that you like experiment, right? We are. We are the scientist and we are the experiment. Um, do you like to take notes in like a typical eight-and-a-half by 11 size notebook? Do you like the ones that are the junior sizes? 

  
  Do you like to take notes on [00:24:00] only one side? I've got plenty of clients who refuse to write on the backside of a piece of paper. Um, just because they don't. 

  Figure this stuff out for yourself. The, the very sort of like sensorial experience of taking notes matters. And if you're annoyed, because you're a left-hand, um, writer and you're smearing the text as you're writing, or maybe the coil of your notebook is too big and it's like interfering with your, the mechanics of your hand. Okay, then make an improvement. 

  Make a change. 

  These are the simple adjustments that can really make the note-taking experience better. Okay. If you're going to use a digital app, make sure that it, there's not a lot of friction and it's not annoying to you. Notability I think I already mentioned that that is a good one. And then be consistent with where you store your notes. It can be so confusing to your future self, if you sometimes take digital notes. 

  And if you sometimes. You don't take them on paper. And if you use like five different [00:25:00] notebooks, right. Because when it comes time to find those notes later, You want to know exactly where to look. So once you find something that works for you. Stick with it. 

  Okay. I know that was a lot. Maybe you need to even go back and take notes on this episode, if you don't want to do that and you would rather have a transcript of everything we talked about here today. Then you can go to learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/29. That's how all of the podcast URLs work. So if you were listening to episode 15, you would go to learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/15, and you would find all the resources and links and transcripts there. Now the links I mentioned today will of course still be in the show notes and the description box on YouTube 

  if you were watching it there. I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions, let me know. And if you did indeed [00:26:00] find this helpful, please share that with me. That brings me the greatest smile to my face. 

  All right. As always, never stop learning.