How to Take Great Notes (And Remember What You Read), by Jared Henderson on YouTube. 8 min 59 s.
- Video length
- 8 min 59 s
- Time to do it
- 30 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 9
What you need
Steps
Read with the goal of teaching the chapter to someone who knows nothing about it. That mindset makes you slow down and notice what actually matters.
Annotate as you read. Underline key claims, mark definitions, and write short margin notes in your own words.
Keep your marks light on the first pass. Too many highlights make the book useless later because nothing stands out.
When you finish a section, close the book and write a short summary from memory. This shows you what you actually understood.
Open your notes app and create a new page for the book or chapter. Put the title and author at the top.
Turn your annotations into an outline. Use headings for main ideas and bullet points for supporting details, in your own words.
Export or copy the outline into a single master document. Group related ideas together so the structure is easy to scan.
Build an omni-outline or lesson plan that links the book's ideas to other notes you already have. Treat it as a plan for teaching the topic.
Explain the outline out loud to an imaginary beginner. Where you stumble, go back and fix that part of the notes.
Tips and common mistakes
Write your notes by hand where you can, since it tends to slow you down and improve recall.
Do not copy sentences from the book. Rewriting in your own words is where the learning happens.
Keep one outline per book and link it to related notes so your knowledge builds over time.
If a section feels fuzzy, reread only that part instead of starting the whole chapter again.
Questions
Do I need Roam Research or Obsidian?
No. Any notes app with headings and links works, including a plain document. Obsidian is free, and Roam works if you already pay for it.
How long should book notes take?
Expect around 20 to 40 minutes per chapter for annotating and outlining. The time drops as the habit becomes automatic.
Does this work for lectures too?
Yes. Take rough notes in class, then rewrite them as a teaching outline afterward. The rewrite is what fixes the material in memory.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
