Reading Better: Taking Notes to Sharpen your Learning.

1. Introduction: I don't think reading is about how many books you can read in a year or a month, or how fast you can finish a book. And then case should be more about how much you actually enjoy what you're reading in how much you're actually getting out of those books, are you reading, how much you are learning and how much you are able to use the learning in order to make your life better, whether it is your professional life or your personal life. My name is brainer Jimenez. I am an educator and I consider myself a lifelong student. I enjoyed reading different kinds of books, everything from fiction and even comic books up to non-fiction books. And in this class today, I want to help you make reading it from formative experience. I don't want you just to read stuff, just to finish the books. I want you to really get the most of what you are reading. So you should take this class if you were feeling that getting through all, all of these books that you see on the Internet and the people recommend to you is not actually making a difference in your life. Who maybe is the province is not the books that you're reading, but the way you are reading. So books, you don't need any kind of scientific or technical experience to take this class. All you need is somebody that you are interested in. Something you want to learn from a computer or even a cell phone with Internet access. So I'm really glad that you're joining me here. Thank you very much for taking the time and welcome. Let's get started. 2. The Reason We Read: There are several reasons why we read. It may be that you just enjoying novels or fiction books. And you'll want to read just for entertainment. That's, that's totally okay. I do it too. Or maybe you just want to exercise your memory and you want to learn some poems or some quotes by heart as also okay? But there are other times in which you go to books. You read books because you want to learn something from those books. Something that's going to help you make your professional life matter or your personal life better, for example. So this is the case for, for non-fiction books. So when you're reading nonfiction, you're going to find mostly three things. You're going to find concepts. You're going to find examples in. You are going to find quotes. So these three things They showed you the lessons of the book has for you concepts, examples, and quotes. What the problem is that we usually tend to, we tend to forget most of the things that we read. Das every so why would you want to do if you want to get the most out of the books that you're reading is start taking notes. And there are three main reasons why you want to start taking notes, because our memory is limited. That is basically no way you can remember every single thing that you, that you have read. We all have a limited memory and writing theme that allows the human being to expand this limited memory that we have. Okay, so when you write a dislike, kind of having an expansion of your memory, let's say the second reason why you want to start thinking notes of what you read is because when you do it, you have an opportunity to process that information once again. So to say that you are bringing something, you understand the idea. But what usually happens is that when you go back to the book or to the thing that you would read it to take notes on it, you usually get beeper on that idea. So this second opportunity that you have to process the idea, you can go deeper on your understanding. And the third reason why you want to start taking notes about what you read is because you will have the opportunity to review certain details. Because it's going to happen that you will need certain fields that you know, you read somewhere, but you just don't remember the whole thing or you don't remember a secondary where you get a front end if you have a record of the things that you're reading, the most important idx examples or quotes and you have Fred, you can easily go back and review those teachings. 3. Paper or Digital?: A lot of people may wonder, what's better. Show you read paper books, regular books we should, you'd read Abel's. Well, I will say that it doesn't actually matter much for referring the case of learning. They both have advantages and disadvantages. Of course, like if you are upgrading a regular book like this, you don't have to worry about battery life or any of that. But at the same time, if you read, if you choose to read e-books, you can also have some other advantages. Now when it comes to getting the most out of this books, one thing that you want to do is highlight important things from the book. And depending on what kind of books you are reading, like if you read down on paper or your reading and using your iPad or talented or whatever. Is it going to be pen of a leaf for l different approach. So let's talk about physical books for example. So if you're reading a physical book and you want to highlight something when you can just use a highlighter is some, some colors to highlight the thin. Or you can just use a regular pen. You can underlining points and ideas and even write a little note in the margin of the book. Now, what if you don't want to write on your books? What if you like me, don't like to write them on the book, then there are other themes that you can use. For example, there are these stickers you can use and they have different colors. I will tell you a little bit more about how to use these colors in a moment. So this sample stickers, you can just take one, for example, and just base it on the part of the MOOC that you want to remember. Let's say that I wonder remember this point over here. And you see that these like little flap that you have now in your book, you can just easily go back there, which is important thing you want to use. That can help you go back to the important thing. So there is one alternative you can use if you do not want to write on your boots. Let's say if you're using an e-book, It's actually easier because you can use bookmarks or it gets highlighted in different colors. So almost all of the apps that you are going to find in the market for it, for reading, able to say, Hey, we'll give you one way or another. 4. What is a Commonplace Book?: All right. So before we get into the actual process of how you are supposed to be highlighting your books and how, how to take notes. We need to talk about something important, which is the commonplace book. A commonplace book is, I like to call them like this brain that you are going, you are going to have is this one place in which you are going to put all of the most important things that you get from the books, right? So instead of having to go to your bookshelf and having to browse or all of your books trying to find what you read. A commonplace book is the one place in which you are going to find all the information. Okay, So that's basically the idea behind it. So you don't have to go by taking now, another advantage of this is that you can easily organize your commonplace book using the titles of your book and the subtitles like, for example, this book by Ryan Holiday, Spanish version, but will, this is the same. This book is divided into three parts. So the author here divided the book into the first part, which is when you aspire and bang when you have success and then when you fail. This is, this is the way in which these particular book is the vitamin. And all of the little books will have different divisions. So for this one, for example, for this book in particular, what I did was I divided though, the document, which I'm going to show you in a moment. I divided it into three parts, and then I made for the deletions to get them out the most important ideas. So that's another advantage of a commonplace book. It gives you the chance to organize this in an easy way for you to, to process it. And another great advantage is that even though some people may like to use regular notebook for this, I think is better if we go digital on this one. And even better if you can use a Cloud service software, because you don't have to worry about losing your information. Remember, this is going to be like your second brain isn't going to be the place where you go if you need any reference or any review beetles and if you have a physical notebook and something happens to the notebook, and you're going to lose all of that. So that's the advantage of having it in using a Cloud service software. There are several different apps and software is you can use. I'm going to show you one that gives a one I'm currently using us as, as an example, you may use any other that you lie because most of them, they have kind of the same principles that would allow you to take notes properly. 5. Creating the Commonplace Book: All right, so now that we understand what a commonplace book is, I'm going to show you an example of what might come on place with looks like right now I am like I was saying before, it's important to use, or at least I think it's a good idea to use a software that is Cloud-based so that you don't have to rely on a particular computer in case something goes from, you don't lose all of your information. So the software that I use for this is called OneNote. Now there are three main advantages of using OneNote. The first one is that is included in the Microsoft software in the Microsoft suit. So you can just get them if you already have the Microsoft software, the Office package, you can also get a OneNote. Onenote is cloud base. So if you have a Hotmail account or Outlook account, you can use one node using the same account. And you can download the app on your cell phone, your iPad, or it on your, on your PC or Mac. Or you can even use a web duration. You have several ways to use it as another advantage. And the advantage is that it is very easy to organize if you never use a note-taking software before, I think one NOAEL is pretty intuitive to use. You will be able to create different notebooks with him, no books, you can create sessions and then you can start writing your, your topic is very easy to use. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail on it because there are tons of tutorials on YouTube. You can find a tutor. I just want to show you what a commonplace book looks like using OneNote. So this is an example from this book. Actually, from the ego is the enemy by Ryan Holiday, great book. And this is what it looks like. So like I said before, this book is divided into three parts. I haven't finished his money. Particular good is just to show you an example. So here I have the introduction of the book on the first part. We have here the first the first part itself of the book, which is the Aspire session in here I have all of the different notes about these particular point. So as you can see, I like to take these notes, use in something that is called the outline method. So the outline method is basically using bullets and different levels for the Booleans. Hey, so you can see here that I have a title and then they have a boolean and then I start getting, if I need to go deeper than I start having different levels for the bullets. That is something that is an advantage of using one node, but this one is also something, this, this is something that you can also do other softwares, right? So this is called the outline method. Another thing that I like to do is using different formats for that I like. So for example, using colors or using tax is also a great way to highlight important things within your notes. So when I went to R0, something that I consider is important, you can use a color, for example, I use here though, kolra, yellow. And I also use a tag for this one. And it says right here, important. Well sometimes I have something like an important concept that I want to remember it like this one for example. This is a concept of the book offers, which is something called a canvas strategy. So I want to remember that this is a concept, this is a definition, so I use a different color, I use green. And another theme that I told you in the beginning that is important is air quotes. When I have a quote, I like to do it like this. I like to use italics and I also use one of the tax. So these tags available in OneNote, like I said, if you want to know more about the 10 legal fees on one note, you don't find tons of tutorials on YouTube. And even if you don't go to the tutorials is very easy to use. And there is another thing that I really like to do here sometimes. And now, uh, well, I usually go to the MOOC, take the information from the book and put it here in one node using the outline method, there are times in which I feel like I want to have something to say about, about the idea from the book or a quote or something. So what I will do in, in my notes is I will write their idea from the book. Maybe just it appear in the book or paraphrase it, but then I will add my own point of view. And when I do that, I like to differentiate it by using italics. Okay? So that's another thing you can do. So if I say something anytime x it is because maybe is a quote or maybe my point of view on the family. Now, I don't want to tell you one thing here. And he said This is just a system and what I want you to do, get started on this, okay? Of course this is not a perfect system and have been changing and improvement is always lack. Probably in a couple of months I will change a couple of themes. We move some and add some other end is going to be the same for you. I just want to show you like what you can do to start getting the most out of your books, like I said. So it doesn't have to be perfect and don't let that stop you from beginning. You have to begin and start trying things, trying things out so that you can understand what is it that you need and wasted that you have to modify. One last thing, I recommend that you use OneNote or sum all your note-taking software. Like probably every node you heard about my Notion, or it's some old yourself for. I do not recommend that you use Microsoft Word, for example. Because if you use some type of word processor like that, even though it is, it has most of the same formatting options, like one node is not going to be easy for you to reach information, to search for the information, because you're going to have a lot of different documents and you're going to have to manually browse all of those documents to find the fin or you need to have a gigantic document and that's going to be like too much in parolees, going to get your computer is slow or something. So I don't think that is the best idea to use our regular word processor, like Microsoft Word. So I will suggest you go with one of these note-taking software like OneNote or Evernote or notion, they are more or less the same in terms of the way they help you organize the information and reach it. They all have serifs, boxes that you can use just to find the specific thing that you need. 6. Using a Note-Taking System: Now we understand the importance of taking notes when we read something and we want to truly learn about reading. And we also know what a commonplace book Gays and how to start creating our own. Now let's talk about the actual process, step-by-step process that we need to follow in order to get that deeper understanding from the books. So it's a simple process only that you need to keep in mind if you want to do is. So first of all, you need to read. We need to take our time saved down and do some reading. Now, you don't have to spend hours doing this. Even if you do only 15 to 10 meters, is going to be more or less a book or something every month. Okay? So please make sure that the time that you are going to take for reading, you can give your full attention to what you're doing. Don't worry so much about finishing x number of books in a month or a year. That is not the point. The point is that you can read truly understand this. So this is not about speed reading. You will need to read at a level at a speed that, that doesn't offend your comprehension, okay? You cannot do it too slow, too fast. You have to do it in the appropriate level for you. And this is going to depend also on the kind of books that you're reading that are going to be books will be easy for you to read and you may finish them in. Even if they are, there are other moves that you will need to do. So more processing that, so don't worry about add them. Pay attention to all of that speed radian thing. Just make sure that you sit down and read at a level in a speed that you can truly understand what you are doing. Okay, so that's the first step. Gradient, the point. The second thing you want to do, and this is something that you actually do while you are reading is highlighted. You can do it while you're reading, or you can just go back to what you read. Let's say that you are reading a chapter today. They say that some books may have chapters of 45 pages and then you'd read the 45 pages and then you go back and do highlight the point that this doesn't gain, doesn't really matter how you do it. You can do a wider reading or when you finish your reading session of the day, doesn't matter. So what you wanna do is just like we said before, use, you can use a simple pen or you can use colors. Now, if you're gonna be using color is whether it's a highlighter or am I care, or you are going to be used in a stickers. I have a suggestion for you. You can start developing your own color codes, but I'll give you mine that, I start with that. So for a general highlights, general themes and you want to, that you can see they're important to remember. I suggest you use the color yellow and which is the most common highlighter you're going to find in markets. A yellow, a yellow sticker or Island. If you find a concept user cleaner, green. If you find an example that you think is timely and relevant for you to understand the concept. You can use the color blue, for example. And finally, if you find a quote that you want to remember, you can use a portfolio. So I've seen, in my experience, I've seen that these are the some of the corners are usually appear in stickers and in highlighters and even in the different greening apps that you can find in the market. So that's why I chose those colors. So yellow for general highlights, dream for concepts or a definition. Blue for example, and the portfolio for quotes. Now, this is going to help you categorize the things that you highlights. So when you go to the computer to your note-taking software, you can easily find and differentiate the things that you are getting from the book. And this is the third and final step, which is we coordinate. All right, so what you wanna do is just take your book, open your computer, sit down and start reviewing everything. So you're going to find out, you're going to realize that most of the things that you highlight, maybe you have, you have a different point of view. You have, like I said before, like a deeper understanding the moment that you are trying to pull that from the book, you want to move it from the book to the computer. For example, that's going to give you another chance to process information, like I said at the beginning. So another suggestion I would give you for this is that tried to take your time. Remember that this is your learning time. This is time the US sperm is, is, is for you is like taking care of yourself. So dawn, russia, don't worry about it. Don't try to do it, to do it all in ten or 15 minutes. Not the case. Try to enjoy it. Try to get something that you some snack that you like something and you see down there for 30, 40 minutes or one hour, whatever you like, and do your thing. This is your time and this is what you are doing to improve yourself, whether it is professionally or personally. So enjoy it. You don't get dosing have to be dreadful time, not at all. So it just try to enjoy it, sit down and try to get those fans into your second brain. And believe me that by doing that, they are going to get in your, in your brain as well. 7. Project: Start your own Commonplace Book: Let's recap some of the most important things we have discussed in this class. The objective is a weekend, get the most out of the fields and we'd read. And I was just telling you about how much we forget about this stuff, about this stanza we read and how important it is that we started developing a system in which we can take notes of the most important lessons and concepts and examples, quotes, et cetera. So taking notes is going to be our, our way to remember and to10 get the most out of the books that we're reading. We also talk about the importance of the commonplace book. Commonplace will be in one place in which you can find all of the most important things that you have learned from the books that you've read. My suggestion is that you use a software like every node or Notion or one node, which is the one I'm currently using. If you use this type of software, you can easily find information using search bar. You can also use tax. Fine. Maybe if you want to find gives your quotes or maybe just your concept, you can also do that and you can use different colors, organize your information. Let's talk now about the project. What are you going to do with all of these things that I just told you? Well, this is what you're gonna do. Basically just find a book that you're interested in. Any book that you like. Well, non-fiction books, some type of book that you can see there is important for you. And you're going to start at USU in assist them. It doesn't have to be a cycle. It I do want to use it if you want to do some type of tweaks to it even better. So try to start using system and start taking notes. So you're going to take notes from one chapter of book and you're going to show us an example of what you need. Okay, So you can just go to your OneNote or every node or an ocean, whatever software you prefer to use. Star taking your notes for at least one chapter and then share a screenshot of what you need here with the rest of the community so that we can see how you are using what we have here in this list.