RemNote: How to Write Book Notes

Feb 19, 2021

Transcription:

0:00 Writing book notes background

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to my channel. Penolopie here.

Today, I’m going to write book notes using RemNote. As usual, time stamps are going to be in the description box down below and also in the comments. For this video, I’m going to be using Ryan Holiday’s Notecard system, which he learned from Robert Greene. Ryan Holiday just slightly modified it. I’m going to link the blog post of him explaining the system itself if you want to check that out, but I can give you a quick overview of the system.

0:27 Overview of the Ryan Holiday Notecard System

Step 1: Highlight and take notes

While reading the book, you highlight the passages that stand out to you and also take notes of your thoughts if you want.

Step 2: Wait

After finishing the book, you wait for a week or two.

I mean, we’ve all been there where we end up highlighting the full page because we thought, at that moment when we were reading it, everything was important. So I think it’s a good idea to take a step back .

Step 3: Assess the cards

After those few weeks, you go back to the book and assess which passages you want to keep.

Step 4: Transfer

You transfer those “worthy” to 4 x 6 index cards. On each index card, you write the quote, you write the thought below it, and you write the themes of that quote on the top right of the index card.

Step 5: Arrange and review

You physically arrange the cards and you regularly review them. Ryan Holiday recommends to do the system on 4 x 6 index cards, which means writing the notes manually. And he suggested that because he thinks that physically arranging the cards encourages recall, which I absolutely understand.

However I know myself, and it’s just not a sustainable system for me. So if index cards work for you, you can go do that. Otherwise, keep watching the video because I’m going to try to adapt that system digitally using RemNote.

2:06 Step 1 — Highlight and take notes

Step 1: While reading a book, highlight passages that stand out to you and take notes of your thoughts.

For this demo, I’m going to be using the biography of Elon Musk — Elon Musk: Tesla SpaceX and Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashley Van. I’m terrible with highlighting quotes, and I think that’s because, before, deep down, I know I’m never going to go back and read them. I’m getting better at that though.

This one is the only book which has a decent amount of highlights. That’s why I’m going to use it for the demo. I actually read this book using my Kindle. And yes, I highlighted some passages, but I did not take notes, which is honestly fine. It’s more realistic anyway for me, since I don’t want to distract my flow of reading.

3:01 Step 2 — Wait

Step 2: After finishing the book, I wait a week or two. I finished this book in Summer 2020. So it’s been more than a week or two, which is fine.

3:12 Step 3 — Evaluate the cards

Step 3: After those few weeks you go back to the book, and assess which passages you want to keep. Since I read the book on Kindle, it means that it’s connected to GoodReads so the highlights are there, as you can see here.

June 15th to July 17th to 2020 is when I read it.

More than a few weeks and I have 47 highlights for this book. So now I’m going to share my thought process and assess which ones to keep.

As I’m reading through the passages I’ve highlighted so far, I’m realizing that I’m more interested in the passages relating to Elon Musk personality rather than his companies or the technology behind it.

6:20 Step 4 — How I Take Notes on RemNote

Now that I kind of have an idea of which ones I want to keep and I shared my process to you, I’m going to move on to:

Step 4: Transfer those that are “worthy” to index cards

Here’s when we start using RemNote.

Opening RemNote.

I’m going to add a New Document and add the title here. I’m just going to put the author here and I’m going to add a #book. This is going to be under Resonance folder. I’m just going to add a universal descriptor here and ~Quote is one of them. Now, I’m going to copy all the quotes, all the passages that I want to keep to RemNote. Out of 47 quotes, I have these left.

Next step is to add my comments down below it and add themes as well. For example, this quote stands out to me. And then I’m going to add a theme by adding a tag for each quote. So for example, this I’m going to put character. Will this change in the future? Maybe. But only we find out is try it.

11:16 Outro — Overview of RemNote Basics: Rem, Universal Descriptors, Tag

My battery died so I have to deal with this. But as you can see here, I added comments on some of them just to show you how I do it. And what I love about RemNote is you can categorize in numerous ways. For example, you can click ~Quote, and it will show you all the times you’ve used this one.

This is my first time using the system, so I only have one book so far here. But if you have multiple books, you can quickly see the passages you like, and your comments. You can also filter it by theme, which is pretty cool.

That’s it for the tutorial. I hope this has been useful and see you in the next video.

***Read my article on RemNote: How I Take Notes | A Spaced-Repetition Notetaking Tool