One Way to Simplify Your Note-Taking

PayPal, Disney, and Nike recently dropped 50-80%. Are they undervalued? Can they recover? Read Value Investor Daily to find out. We read hundreds of value stock ideas daily and send you the best.

Subscribe with one click.

I have to come clean. Last month, I unsubscribed to 99% of the podcast I had in my list. Wait, before you roll your gorgeous eyes at me, let me explain. 

I LOVE listening to inspirational content - pretty much as much as I love writing it, to be quite frank. Yet, I found myself drowning in content overload - big time. 

Now, let me explain how my crazy brain works. 

This argument is not about the quality of any given podcast. I run a podcast myself, goddamit.

Yet, as a subscriber of over 20 podcasts, I felt like I was inundated with requests for attention. So I came back to the reason why I listen to educational content. 

Yes, I am eager to learn, but also I am eager to share that knowledge through my writing. Doing research for articles is hands down the easiest way for me to retain knowledge.

 Here’s how I do it.

Treating each piece of content I consume for research as I would when writing an essay at university has changed the way I learn.

Yet, it takes a hella lot of time. So for 2024 I decided to focus on my Blinkist account. This allows me to listen to books and learn from them. 

I cut down on my podcast subscriptions and mainly feature fun shows to keep me company when needing a break (top recommendation True Crime Obsessed and No Such Thing as a Fish).

So, how do I build a system to collect my learnings like the Virgo I am? Let’s dive in - is about to get geeky.

The next step was to find a way to gather research and start building a compendium of information for my articles, books and more.

I connected with the team at Blinkist through work. I loved the concept, and trialled the membership. Once again, another life saver when it came to my book. The concept is simple.

Blinkist provides summaries for self help / educational books. 15 minutes or less to condense all the knowledge you need. The book is divided into blinks or lessons, and you can both or listen to them. This means you can also highlight extracts, which is so handy.

In total honesty, you can apply this process to anything, even your podcasts. Yet, I am using audiobooks as an example. 

So, here’s how I do this. You have two options really. Analog or digital. 

Analog toolkit: your phone, notepad, pen.

Digital toolkit: your phone, your notes app

(In the past I used Evernote, right now I use the native iPhone notes app and I can categorise just as well!)

Since I still listen to audiobooks during my lunch break, walking out in nature, I find digital works best for me. The concept is really simple. 

Choose your weapon, choose a block of time that works for you (minimum fifteen minutes) and get ready for some real magic.

First, you need to make sure you have a way of categorising your notes. I like to create folders in my notes app. 

I currently have only two folders, as I do not find the need to niche down even more in my categorising efforts. The title of my note is as important as the folder. The title includes the book title and the category (for example productivity, social media, finances). 

This helps me finding any topic when I need it for articles and what not.

Once I am back at my desk, I add the name of the author, and a link for people to buy the book at the very top of the note. 

Why? For references for my articles, obviously. 

Yes, I am that special. Still, the amount of time it saves me is unexpectedly high. At this point, I have not even started listening to the damn thing. Yet, patience is a virtue. 

When it comes to the actual notes, I categorise them into two types - takeaways and quotes.

The beauty of creating notes like these is that I end up going through my learnings again and again, as I get bits of information from each book in multiple instances.

I often joke about the fact that my bibliography for Reclaim your Time Off is 10 pages long. 

This process will slow down your listening experience. That is a fact. I often talk about how to read faster, well, this is pretty much the opposite. Yet, you’ll retain so much more information.

Coming back to audiobooks, my advice would be to create one note per podcast show, and add sub-headings of individual episodes instead of creating thousands of notes at first. 

I find the ratio of takeaways in books is always exponentially higher due to the length of the audiobooks themselves.

I get asked a lot whether you can use the same process when reading books. Yes, you can indeed.

 However, funnily enough, that disrupts the whole experience for me when reading a physical book. 

This is why I love to use the Blinkist read function or my Kindle when doing research on written books, as highlighting makes my job much easier. 

Looking to find a better way to collect notes, but do not know where to start?

This week’s challenge is, well a gift. No need to manually organise your notes or spend hours looking for that one article you saved. 

With this database, you'll have a goldmine of past ideas and resources to spark inspiration when you're facing a creative drought. And yes, it’s a free Notion template just for you.

Click here for your free copy

Back with some more season six favourites, this time is all about building in public, with the one and only Kevon. I am pretty sure you are going to love this chat.

Give this straightforward process a try and see how much more you retain from your audiobooks.

By actively engaging with the content, you’ll transform your listening sessions into great learning opportunities.

Always cheering you on,

Fab ✌️