Skip to content

Don't take notes while reading

[[Reflection MOC]]


Don't take notes while reading

For as long as I can remember, I have been taking notes in the margins and highlighting important concepts that stood out to me when reading. I would then at the end of each chapter, write out what I thought was the key idea in a single sentence under the index heading of the chapter. Although this feels like work, it never helps me remember everything which I have read like I thought it would.

Something that is advocated by Jordan Peterson is that we shouldn't take notes, but make notes. Don't try and remember it all. Use your book as a mirror to look at yourself and the world around you. Then write about what you see to make sense of yourself and the world around you. Let your heart tell you what to make sense of in your notes, throw out the rest.

See also

make sense through note taking