I have/had all the problems that are mentioned in the post, but as of late I am observing that as I read more books on a single topic, it allows me to maintain my natural rythm without having to strain myself to be hyper-attentive. And the added benefit I see is even if I miss some quirky details in the first book due to lack of attention, it somehow starts to come together on its own by the nth book(for me it has been 2nd or 3rd). On the other hand, I don’t think my attention span has improved drastically, but I would say that it has definitely improved by some margin due to meditation and reading more, at least to a point of being able to realize that it has.
As for note-taking, I would also love to know how do people take notes, to me it feels like a flow-breaking activity to a point that I’ve come to detest doing it. Also as you say, sometimes the divided attention b/w I have to mark/note important things vs I have to maintain my focus makes it a tiresome activity to read, and sometimes it just feels like almost everything is equally important. So if someone could answer that I’ll be grateful. To be precise my interest is in converting offline margin notes to online notes, and knowing how people decide what is important in the first read.
And among the books you’ve listed, I have read the “The Art of Reading”, but I felt it was rather underwhelming, meaning, it never says anything about how to read, in fact, the entire book is weaved around the idea of kindling your interest in reading by explaining snippets of various prose written by various accomplished authors on how good reading requires good writing. Not good if you are already interested and don’t want to blame the author for not writing well or making it too dense; and are only looking to up the attention/retention game, note-taking etc.
My approach to the margin note/marking conundrum:
I primarily use digital sources. Most e-book software has an option to just look up your mark ups, and to extract them. This makes things easier. What I’m describing here works with physical books as well, so I will describe different processes for physical and e-books as necessary.
I use mark-ups as a ‘look at this passage a second time’ marker. I use two markers (Marker colors or marks like a cross and circle on margin). One is for ‘moderately interesting’, another is for ’resonated strongly. For the first category, use a marker color that can be overwritten by the second (like yellow, and dark red for interesting stuff).
Reading happens in two passes for me:
First pass, I read the chapter, book part or whole book from front to back, marking anything of note. If I have something to say, it goes into the marginalia (or as a comment for e-books). This is typically just things like ‘?’ or ‘contradiction > p. 53’ ; so short it takes under a second and keeps you in the book.
Second pass, I read only the marked passages and marginalia/comments. In the second pass I work straight into my preferred note taking method (in my case, I use the Zettelkasten method with Evernote as the software).
On the second pass, I copy interesting pictures etc. out of the book either by photographing them with a smartphone for the physical books, or using Windows Clipper to crop them out in case of e-books (WIN+SHift+S) - there’s a similar tool for every OS and device under the sun.
I often use the red passages as direct quotes (with proper sources and page in the external notes!). The yellow passages are getting summarized in the notes. I also try to answer/solve the marginalia in my head and to add them to the notes, as they’re often very insightful.
This way, initial reading is a lot faster and pain-free. On the second pass, you also know the gist of the book and are more easily able to compress the marked information and to sort nice-to-know, have-to-know and irrelevant (that’s why I use two colors; anything unmarked → probably irrelevant). Remember: marking is just for finding things, it’s not note taking on its own. So re-read as quickly as possible. The intervals for re-reading (if after each chapter or after finishing the book) depends on how dense the book is.
This technique can of course be combined with other techniques like pre-reading and skimming Adler talks about in his book. For skimming, I mark interesting passages to re-read vertically down the margin, usually whole paragraphs. For e-books, I mark the first few works of a paragraph. Then I proceed as usual, or do not read non-premarked passages at all.
I have/had all the problems that are mentioned in the post, but as of late I am observing that as I read more books on a single topic, it allows me to maintain my natural rythm without having to strain myself to be hyper-attentive. And the added benefit I see is even if I miss some quirky details in the first book due to lack of attention, it somehow starts to come together on its own by the nth book(for me it has been 2nd or 3rd). On the other hand, I don’t think my attention span has improved drastically, but I would say that it has definitely improved by some margin due to meditation and reading more, at least to a point of being able to realize that it has.
As for note-taking, I would also love to know how do people take notes, to me it feels like a flow-breaking activity to a point that I’ve come to detest doing it. Also as you say, sometimes the divided attention b/w I have to mark/note important things vs I have to maintain my focus makes it a tiresome activity to read, and sometimes it just feels like almost everything is equally important. So if someone could answer that I’ll be grateful. To be precise my interest is in converting offline margin notes to online notes, and knowing how people decide what is important in the first read.
And among the books you’ve listed, I have read the “The Art of Reading”, but I felt it was rather underwhelming, meaning, it never says anything about how to read, in fact, the entire book is weaved around the idea of kindling your interest in reading by explaining snippets of various prose written by various accomplished authors on how good reading requires good writing. Not good if you are already interested and don’t want to blame the author for not writing well or making it too dense; and are only looking to up the attention/retention game, note-taking etc.
My approach to the margin note/marking conundrum:
I primarily use digital sources. Most e-book software has an option to just look up your mark ups, and to extract them. This makes things easier. What I’m describing here works with physical books as well, so I will describe different processes for physical and e-books as necessary.
I use mark-ups as a ‘look at this passage a second time’ marker. I use two markers (Marker colors or marks like a cross and circle on margin). One is for ‘moderately interesting’, another is for ’resonated strongly. For the first category, use a marker color that can be overwritten by the second (like yellow, and dark red for interesting stuff).
Reading happens in two passes for me:
First pass, I read the chapter, book part or whole book from front to back, marking anything of note. If I have something to say, it goes into the marginalia (or as a comment for e-books). This is typically just things like ‘?’ or ‘contradiction > p. 53’ ; so short it takes under a second and keeps you in the book.
Second pass, I read only the marked passages and marginalia/comments. In the second pass I work straight into my preferred note taking method (in my case, I use the Zettelkasten method with Evernote as the software).
On the second pass, I copy interesting pictures etc. out of the book either by photographing them with a smartphone for the physical books, or using Windows Clipper to crop them out in case of e-books (WIN+SHift+S) - there’s a similar tool for every OS and device under the sun.
I often use the red passages as direct quotes (with proper sources and page in the external notes!). The yellow passages are getting summarized in the notes. I also try to answer/solve the marginalia in my head and to add them to the notes, as they’re often very insightful.
This way, initial reading is a lot faster and pain-free. On the second pass, you also know the gist of the book and are more easily able to compress the marked information and to sort nice-to-know, have-to-know and irrelevant (that’s why I use two colors; anything unmarked → probably irrelevant). Remember: marking is just for finding things, it’s not note taking on its own. So re-read as quickly as possible. The intervals for re-reading (if after each chapter or after finishing the book) depends on how dense the book is.
This technique can of course be combined with other techniques like pre-reading and skimming Adler talks about in his book. For skimming, I mark interesting passages to re-read vertically down the margin, usually whole paragraphs. For e-books, I mark the first few works of a paragraph. Then I proceed as usual, or do not read non-premarked passages at all.