Let's say you want to study wizardry. (Stay with me.)
You start with Harry Potter. You try to understand the magical system, what wizards can do, and the role and influence they have in the world. You make notes exploring all of that.
A few months later you pick up The Lord of the Rings to continue your research. And something odd happens.
The lens problem
You find yourself reading about Gandalf through a Harry Potter lens, because that's what you know. You keep spotting differences and conflicts. Why doesn't he use a wand? Where's the school? It's hard to reason about, and it's slow.
Or worse. Maybe Harry Potter is your favourite. You start hunting for evidence that Harry Potter's version of wizardry is the right one. You skip over the things that don't fit. You've got a confirmation bias, and you're no longer reading The Lord of the Rings for what it actually is.
Swap wizards for any serious topic and you've got a real problem. Diets. Management theory. Economics. Whichever book you read first tends to become the lens for every book that follows.
The fix: scope your notes to the source
When I study The Lord of the Rings, I write my notes only from the perspective of The Lord of the Rings. I pretend Harry Potter doesn't exist.
That frees my mind to take the book as it is. It doesn't matter if it conflicts with the other one. I want to give both a fair hearing and let either turn out to have the better take on wizardry.
These are what I call literature notes: a self-contained set of atomic notes about one source (a book, a video course, an article). The goal is simple. Show that you understand what this author said, without having to go back to the book.
Only later, when I turn them into my permanent notes, do I compare and contrast. And by then both ideas have equal weight in my mind, uncontaminated by whichever one I met first.
If something doesn't make sense
Sometimes you'll hit a passage you can't explain. That's useful information. You've got two options:
- Go back to the source and try to find the answer.
- Write a note capturing exactly what you don't understand.
That second one is underrated. An open question in your notes is something a future book might answer. You'll be scanning for it without even trying.
"But can't I skip this and write permanent notes straight away?"
I get asked this constantly, and I understand why. At the start, your literature notes and permanent notes look the same. You haven't got any other notes to compare against.
My honest answer: you can, and I won't tell you off. But be aware of what you're giving up. If you try to understand a new book while comparing it with everything you already believe, you can end up with cognitive dissonance, conflicting thoughts that make it hard to reason clearly. You may also fall into motivated reasoning, where you only look for what supports what you already think.
And you're asking your brain to do two jobs at once: understanding the new material, and working out what it means for the old. Separate those and each gets easier.
If you want to be an expert in a field, use literature notes. If you just need to get something done quickly, make your own call. Just don't let it become a habit of not thinking deeply.
Try this
Next time you read something on a topic you've already studied, write your notes as though nothing else exists. Add one line at the end: "Where I might disagree with this." Then park it. You'll be glad you didn't rush the comparison.
There's a catch I haven't covered
Where do these self-contained notes go next? How do you merge them with everything else you know without just copying and pasting? In Atomic Note-Taking I show the full process with a real worked example, from fleeting notes through literature notes to permanent ones.
