When I speak to people who are new to taking notes from books, articles or videos, the same thing comes up. They highlight almost everything. Or they type up a near copy of the original.
If that's you, I have good news: it's completely normal.
Why you highlight the whole page
When a topic is new to you, everything feels important. There's so much to absorb that you can't tell the nuggets from the filler. So you capture it all.
The problem arrives later. You look away from the page and you can't recall it. Then you read it again and it floods back. That's recognition, not recall, and it's why wholesale highlighting feels productive but doesn't help.
The fix isn't a clever technique. It's time. The more you read about a subject, the more you spot the patterns and the more selective you naturally become. Fluff stops looking novel. Only smaller parts of the text are worth capturing.
So don't worry. But in the meantime, there's something that will speed it up.
Reading is a conversation
Here's how I think about it. When you read a book, you're having a conversation with the author. They have an idea and a story to package it in. It's usually one-way, though.
My highlights are how I pay attention. My notes are how I reply.
This is what turns passive reading into active reading. You're not just taking things in. You're responding. Here are the questions I ask myself when I'm deciding whether to highlight something:
- Does it help explain something I'd need in order to teach it to someone else?
- Does it contain a definition, quote or fact I may want to reference?
- Does it add reasoning or evidence for the core message?
- Does it disagree with something I believe?
- Does it spark an idea?
- Does it remind me of something else, maybe something unrelated?
- Does it make me feel something?
And when I highlight, I try to add a short note of my own. It might be:
- My own words. Can I explain this back? That confirms I've understood it.
- A question. This is me talking back to the author. It also gives me something to look for as I read on.
- A connection. "This is just like..." Often the moment a pattern finally clicks.
- A disagreement. It's important to challenge the author. That's how you think critically.
- A note to future me. "Pay attention to this, and here's why."
- An action. I add #action so I can find it later.
A tiny example
Here's a short bit of one of my own blog posts, as I'd mark it up while reading:
"The worst part is that our brain is not well equipped to tell the difference between actually achieving, or the mere intent to achieve, our goal."
My comment: Where does this come from? What science backs it up?
That one question has done two things. It's stopped me accepting the claim blindly, and it's given me an open question to carry into everything else I read on the subject. When I come across the answer, I'll spot it.
Fleeting means fleeting
I call these fleeting notes. They're quick, rough and temporary. They exist to catch the idea in the moment. They aren't a place to store ideas, and they're not meant to be neat. Spelling can wait. In a live lecture, I'd rather capture one really good idea and let others slip than try to capture everything and miss the key points.
The risk is the opposite one. Plenty of people collect fleeting notes that sit gathering digital dust. They're only the first step. Something has to happen to them next.
Try it this week
Next time you read an article, add a comment to at least three highlights. Make one of them a question and one of them a disagreement. See how it changes the way you read.
But what do you do with the notes afterwards?
This is where most note-taking systems stop, and where the real value starts. In Atomic Note-Taking I show how I capture from Kindle books, PDFs, video courses, audiobooks and live lectures, with a full worked example of an article marked up and condensed into notes ready to process.
