How to Take Notes While Reading

Ask yourself why are you reading:

• What am I trying to remember?
• How am I going to use this information? (e.g. on a test, cited in an essay, etc.)
• What do I plan to do with the notes later? Will you be studying off of them extensively? Or maybe you’re just taking notes to stay focused, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll look through them after?

• Jot notes in the margin. These aren’t particularly searchable, but they allow you to reiterate the main idea.
• Keep a small notepad on the side, take breaks each section to jot down the main ideas.
• Create flashcards. In the rarer situations where memorization of details is important, then a simple strategy can be to just create flashcards while you take notes.

Decide whether to optimize for review or retrieval practice.

• For docs you don’t plan to extensively study, review is the obvious choice.
• For texts you need to master perfectly, the Question Book Method (for big idea) or flashcards (for details) saves time.

• Digital: systems like Evernote, make note-taking easier. Although, even the simple note-taking features on Kindle can work quite well.
• Paper: you can even put little sticky tags on the book to mark passages that refer to that.