I've just returned from couple of weeks break on which I read a couple of great books (more on that to come) but kind of wish I'd come across this great little life-hack before I went.
In this Tim Ferris interview with the prolific Maria Popova on the theme of writing, workflow and workarounds, Maria explains (at around half an hour in) her daily routine and in doing so talks about her notetaking system.
Reading, she says, is a form of pattern recognition (linking together the writer's key thoughts and themes). She makes use of Kindle highlights and notes when reading digitally but with hard copy books she makes an alternate index on the very last page of the book (which is typically blank) listing out as she goes through the book the key themes or ideas which seem to be reccurring. As she reads she also adds relevant page numbers referencing specific sections or quotes. So she effectively creates her own index based not on key words (like a standard index) but instead on key ideas and uses that to synthesise her thoughts on the book. Wonderful idea.
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