I read a lot of non-fiction books. And it is not so much how much I read, but the value I get from each one. For a long time, I found myself reading, but doing very little my books. I would highlight, but rarely if ever go back and look at the highlights.

Note: In her book, A Mind For Numbers, Barbara Oakley explains that highlighting is a bit of a trap. When you highlight something, and then look at it, you get an illusion of knowing. What is really happening is that you are recognizing the material. It is familiar, but you do not actually know it. To know something, you must act on it, you must do something with it. However, so many people fall into this trap because the feeling of knowing and the feeling of recognition are very similar experiences.

I would take notes, but never read them. So what exactly was I learning?

I have mentioned before that I got into building a digital second brain, not to be more productive (that was a pleasant bonus) but rather to get more out of what I was learning. I read about a book a week, and as a member of the Entrepreneurs Organization, I attend between 10 to 12 learning events a year. That is a significant amount of time and money I put into improving myself, and my skills as a business owner, executive, leader and human being.

It would be a shame to put that much effort into something and have only a pile of dead tree notebooks filled with ink to show for it. I got introduced to the concepts of building a digital second brain because I wanted to get more value from the time and money I invested in self improvement.

And to be honest, I was starting to feel like a chump. If all of this learning worked so well, then why did I keep feeling the need to learn? Was it a waste of time and energy? I knew that some of the concepts I had learned, did have a profound impact on my life (Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now, introduced me to mindfulness and directly contributed to me developing vastly improved emotional self-regulation). I had some big wins, but not that many, not often enough.

My New System

For me, the digital second brain started with a practice seven years ago that I use to this day. Since most of my learning involves books and reading, how to efficient extract knowledge and practices from books is my number one tool. And this process has hardly changed in the last ¾ of a decade.

Steps to Capture the Key Ideas

1. I buy a new book on Kindle and Audible at the same time.
2. I listen to the audio book (that used to happen while I walked my dog, but sadly, Cookie the Dog passed in Sep 2024 leaving me to continue my morning walks alone in rememberance and commitment to health).
3. When I hear a section that catches my attention, I pause the audio book and switch to the kindle version. (sometimes I listen to the audio in the kindle app). WhisperSync nearly always jumps me directly to the words I want to highlight.
4. I highlight the words and phrases that are most relavant.
5. Readwise.io then takes my highlights and automagically intejects them into my digital second brain (Obsidian in this case).
6. Now when I come to my computer, my highlights are already waiting for me.

Making the Most of the Ideas

Simply capturing the ideas is not enough. I need to do something more with them. This next step is just part of my process, but it makes a huge difference for me.

1. Using Zotero the bibliography management software, and it's Chrome plugin, I grab the book meta data from amazon.com.
2. I then use a plugin called mdnotes to export that information into a markdown file that I save directly int0 my Obsidian Vault (goes into the folder /library.
3. I quickly edit the Zotero generated bibliography note to have a few quality of life features, such as ratings, tags, and an alias that let's me type book title, and get a Wikilink directly to the bibliopgraphy. I might also create a page for the author, and using a template (with dataview) I can link a single author to every book they have written in my library.
4. Finally, I create a Book Notes thread in my 3 Resources folder under the appropriate topic. For example, it might go into management, or into Pscyhology, or any other topic I find of interest.
5. When I start a book note thread, this will begin my personal notes that I will start to connect / bind ideas I capture from the book but also connected those ideas to other supporting ideas.

What this means, is that as I'm listening to a book (which can take 1-2 days, or up to a week. Most business books are 5-8 hours long), I am snagging the ideas that resonate via highlights, having them imported directly into Obsidian, and then later on, I take those ideas and integrate them into my own thinking thread.

This process of capture, review, then integrate has proven to be extremely powerful for me because the more connections I can make for an idea, the higher the likelihood I will do something with it. What's more, when I sit down and create these personal book notes, I can also define actions, or tasks, or tests I will try myself to put these ideas into motion.

The reason I call these idea threads, is that each core idea from a book, gets put into it's own note, and like chapters, these notes link to each other in a chain. Somtimes these can absolutely follow the chapters of a book, and other times, they are more conceptual, the groupings make sense to me. But in producing these notes, I am not only summarizing (which is really similar to the Feynman technique), but I am also linking my thinking, connecting the ideas to other similar threads. - much like I did up above with the Barbara Oakley Quote.

Summary

So the way I squeeze maximum value from my system is, I listen and highlight. Then I create my note book notes that take advantage of these highlights, linking them to other thoughts and ideas. The main goal is that I identify what ideas I am going to put into practice and when. Then, because every single step in the chain is preserved, I am able to back trace, any idea all the way through to its source if I need more context.

If this sounds like a lot of work to you, all I can say is this. How much work is it to read or listen to a book then forget everything you read? Isn't that a total waste? For me, these notes don't feel like a waste of time for two reasons.

1. They are interesting.
2. I remember significantly more

These additional steps have made a dramatic improvement in my ability not only to remember what I read, listen or watch, but it is easier for me to put those ideas into practice. Like compounding interest, this kind of learning pays long term dividends in the form of a more satisfying and enjoyable life.