Taking Notes for Physical Books

Usually I’m listening to book on Audible, but the workflow is the same.

I have two workflows related to reading Books:

1. When I see an interesting book, I have a Obsidian Webclipper plugin to add it to my Vault as “want to read” and I fill in the origin: of where I saw it or who recommended it. This helps me later decide whether to read the book.
2. When I read, I already have a note of each book I read, because of the above process. The template (see it here) contains a simple ## Notes during Reading section, and I add interesting thoughts, ideas, etc., as simple nested lists. If it’s relevant to something I heard, I make a connection, or sometimes I create a new note for newly emerging ideas. If I’m on the computer, I quickly open that note and use my default template, link it to the book as origin:. My template contains today’s date; this way, I can always go back to where the idea came from.

That’s it. It can’t be easier than this. If I write articles, I go back to the books and read my notes. If I use them, I might rewrite or reuse some of the notes, but usually, they just stay as is - very minimal, but in my ideas, captured in the exact moment.

Sometimes, if I’m out, I use Ottr to Voice-to-Text a thought and put it back into the book note, or type it in manually. In the beginning, I thought about doing it to avoid distracting the reading experience (or listening, in my case), but if I don’t write it down, the idea is usually gone. But I only do it for very important ideas, not for every little “oh this could be interesting”, it needs to move or touch me in a way, I feel it in my guts. This also keeps me writing it short, as I don’t want to spend 15 minutes writing, so I capture the most important in the moment.

Alternative: if I listen for 1 hour or so, I quickly note down the gist; if the book is extremely insightful, not on a particular idea, but more on a general feeling.

• Reading Books for a Happy Life

Origin: How do you take notes for physical books in Obsidian? What is your overall PROCESS?