[0:00]People can't read. At least not properly. Piss off, of course I can. I learned it in school. No. Sure, you can read the words of a page. You're not stupid. But who taught us how to read deeply? Who taught us how to get through hard books without wanting to jump off a bridge? Who taught us how to truly understand the book's ideas, rather than just forgetting them all? Who taught you how to feel satisfied at the end, without feeling like all of those hours you put in were wasted? Your natural curiosity calls you to explore great books and to get the most out of them. But nobody showed you how. And maybe like me, you had to struggle with teaching yourself that, which is bloody difficult. Let me tell you. Through years of study, trial and error, failing, lots of failing, and lots of writing too, I did pick up a thing or two about book analysis. How to really go deep and remember the ideas, and feel like the themes in the book touch you and really are carried with you in life. So that all your effort actually means something in the end. This is my life. I love it. And I want to share my system of analysis with you, in case you find it valuable. And that's not to say you should copy it. Be inspired, of course, but also make it your own. Because what works for me might not work for you. And unlike a few other YouTubers out there, I will not say that there is a perfect system or that mine is the right system that others must follow. What the hell is that? So be inspired, and of course, tinker it to make it yours. Good systems are simple, not necessarily easy, because, you know, I'm not promising a magic pill here. It will take effort, but that doesn't mean they're not simple. This is not a bullshit 30-step flowchart. This is straightforward enough that anyone can follow. There's six main steps: book selection, book inspection, note taking, analysis, archiving, and finally synthesis. I'm in the analysis stage for The Epic of Gilgamesh right now. So I'm going to use him as my assistant to show you the process, and let's get stuck in. First comes book selection, and this matters because if you pick the wrong book, then you've screwed yourself before even starting. When you walk into a Waterstones or a Barnes & Noble or any other bookstore, you're met with thousands of good books. And that sheer level of choice is, it just makes you think, what the hell do I read? When there's all of these options, what do I pick? What's the right book? Let's get the obvious out of the way. You have to read what actually excites you. I made the mistake of reading just what was trendy, or what were the NPC Twitter gurus were recommending. Or maybe classics that I didn't really enjoy, but I felt like I had to read so I could flex that on others, like tell them about it. I mean, come on, man, what is that? It's all performative, and rather than serving yourself and your interests, you surrender that freedom to the internet to people who have a completely different taste from you and completely different goals in life. Doesn't make sense. When you pick books that you're genuinely interested in, you're not fighting an uphill battle, because your interest is not lubricating, it is paving the way for fun learning. Reading becomes fun because you're interested in it, simple as. I keep using that stupid term lubricated. There's other words, paving, clearing the way, for God's sake. But even if you do follow your taste and you're true to yourself, there's still a lot out there. Maybe like me, you're interested in a million different things, and it can be hard to narrow down the choices. To be honest, I can't say that I've fully solved that myself, but what I do like to think is two questions. First, what do I want to know? And second, who do I want to be? And I let the answers to these questions guide my choices in reading. Well, the first question is, what do you want to know? And ideally, what do you want to know the most? Because that will help you narrow down on the topics that speak to you the most, even beyond other things. Like, what is most pressing? What is the most urgent? What is the most interesting? For example, I am more than happy right now to not read books on maths, on geopolitics, and murder mysteries, because I don't really care about them as much as things like classics or anthropology or psychology. It's not like I don't like those other topics, but there's fields that interest me way more, and I'm more pressed to learn them now. Of course, there's limited time, and even if you have loads of interests like me, then you do have to make compromises and focus your time on some things that are maybe a little bit more valuable to you. The second question, who do you want to be, is a bit more practical. It kind of sets you a ultimate goal that all of your reading is centered around in some way. For example, if you want to become a fantasy writer, you have to read fantasy books. There's no way around it. If you want to become a good father, that's kind of your purpose in life, well, it's good to read books that have family as a core theme, or practical guidebooks on raising children, good parenting. Personally, I have three big goals. First is to improve my writing. Second is to read great books and share the ideas I find interesting with you through, you know, book reviews, articles, these videos. And finally, I want to read the best books that history has to offer, the ones that really define our civilization. The big hitters, the classics, the masterpieces. And so those three goals are what drives basically all my reading. Of course, there's room for flexibility, you can have fun sometimes, you can take the piss. And screw it, if your purpose is to just have fun, read fun books. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's a deeply personal choice. And of course, you can have multiple goals. You know, I read manga from time to time. Yes, it's not in line with my core mission of life, but it's not that serious. Just have fun sometimes. The point is to embrace your individuality, read what you want, and not be dictated by internet hype or what other people are reading. This is about you. Once you have a good image of yourself and what interests you, I would then go to bookshops and having a look around. I'd go to Reddit, unfortunately, I'd go on Instagram, I'd go online in general just to find good books, recommendations, things that are in that field of interest. And if this sounds vague, because it is, then don't worry, because the next step, inspection, is how you can actually narrow down on the book and be sure that it's the right book for you before you invest all your time into it. And finally, if you're more of the structured type, you like to have a very clear roadmap on what you're going to read, I recommend you create a custom reading plan, or maybe follow one that already exists that you like. That's what I do personally. I have a reading list, and if you want to create your own or find something, I will link to a video I made in the past about it, so go check that out after.
[6:37]Part two of my system is inspection, because I am sick of doing all that hard work just to choose a book and then three chapters in, I'm bored out of my mind, I'm confused, I'm thinking, what the hell am I reading? It's annoying, it's a waste of time, but the good thing is, with inspection, you're saved from that risk, and it only takes like five or 10 minutes. It's the reason I almost never give up on books halfway through, because I never need to. I know the book I'm reading is going to be good. And even if you're certain that you'll like the book, inspection is worth doing because it sets the scene for a good analysis. You pave the way, don't lubricate, you pave the way. To inspect a book, you have to flick through it and answer a few big questions. The first is, what type of book is it? Well, I mean, no shit, it's kind of obvious, right? It should say on the front. Yes, it usually does. It's usually clear at first glance, but sometimes, with the more abstract books, you don't really know what kind of book it is. Is it a novel? Is it non-fiction? Is it a commentary? Is it a memoir? You kind of have to dig a little. For example, let's say I'm buying Animal Farm by George Orwell. I go in a bookshop, and let's say I've never heard of this guy, I don't know what this book is about, I've just seen it hyped online, and the cover looks cool, so I'll buy it. Now, you might buy it thinking it's a novel, just a novel about some farm animals, and you're not wrong, but you also are wrong, because it's more than just a novel. It's also a political commentary.
[8:02]And if you buy it thinking it's just a novel, you might be in for a surprise. Maybe it's a good surprise. That's also fair, but maybe it's something you didn't expect, you don't really want to read.
[8:16]There is a risk there, so it's good generally to know what you're getting into beforehand, at least the type of literature it is. The second question I would answer when inspecting a book is, what is it actually about? Virtually every book has a purpose. It has a reason it was written, and it has a goal that it's trying to achieve. Usually it's obvious. Usually you can glance at a book and say, okay, well, this is a history book. This is a psychology book, it's trying to teach me this, it's trying to show me this, it's trying to entertain me. Sometimes, though, with in the case of more edgy books, more abstract books, what it's about is concealed, and it's hard to see from the title. Instead of just reading the title and the blurb, dive in. Get into the book and read a few pages. Go to the back, go to the front. Read the conclusion paragraphs at the end, and that'll give you a good picture of what it's about. And what I'd be looking for is the author's main arguments, the big themes of the story, or the work. What is he talking about? If you find out it's not worth your attention in the first place, or you're not interested, then, I mean, that's great. You saved yourself a lot of time, and you can go and pick something better.
[9:22]And even if you do find out that it's good for you, you want to read more of this, well, you didn't waste your time either, because now you have a kind of foresight of what's coming. Your analysis in the future is going to be easier. It's like when you have lunch and you're trying to pick a video essay to watch, and you flick through it a bit, just to get the vibe, just to see what the atmosphere is. Is it worth the time? Shall I pick another one? It's the same thing. Okay, so now you have given yourself the best possible start by choosing a book and inspecting it. Now you make a coffee, get relaxed, doubt your purpose in life, and grab a pen, because this stage is note taking, the flesh and bones behind my system. But this time, you're not just letting your eyes passively roll over the text, no, okay, page two, page three, page four. No, you're taking control of the process with a pen. Writing in your books is a tiny effort, but it gives you so much more insight in return, because you turn the whole experience into a conversation. If that doesn't make sense, imagine you're in two scenarios. The first scenario is a one-hour lecture on the basics of art history. And you're just in the audience, you can't say anything. You're chilling. The second scenario is a one-hour on the exact same topic, except this time, it's a one-to-one conversation, and you can talk, you can ask questions, you can do this and that. Which situation would you learn more from? I don't need to explain. But I will, because I'm kind, generous, and humble. In the conversation, you are forced to think. You have to really listen and to digest what they say and to come up with a good response. In the lecture, it's easy to drift off and ignore what's being said. You're not involved in the learning, unless you really do focus. In the conversation, you can ask questions. You can add your own opinion. You can draw conclusions. You can dive into rabbit holes. Not only is that more fun, but you really let the book speak to you, rather than treating it like a podcast in the background that you kind of half-listen to and then forget the next day. This is active. You're investing your time into the book, so you better make sure it's quality time. No half measures. That's my pitch on why it's good to take notes, but how would you do it? And this has to be said, because I've seen a lot of bullshit on the internet where people are annotating their books with entire art kits, and it's just too much. It's not that simple, sorry, it's not that complicated, and, you know, sometimes less is more. I write directly in my books, and if that freaks you out, I understand. First, I was the same, and actually made a video on that topic of how you can deal with that fear and that obstacle. Once again, I came in clutch, just saying, I'll link that down below, so do have a look, or you can just use a separate notebook. That's fine too. I like to highlight bits that I find interesting, not everything, because if you highlight everything, nothing is highlighted. So you really have to be, I know it's hard, but you really have to be selective and pick only the things that stand out to you. The things that make you sit up and kind of get that emotional response in you, like, oh damn, that's something worth it. But underlining isn't enough. Okay, you mark the sentence, so what? What's about it? If you come back to this note a week later, you might be thinking, well, why the hell did I find this interesting? What was I thinking at the time? So to get over that and to make your notes more useful and human, I like to annotate what I was thinking at the time, that simple. I physically write down why I annotated that part. Did it remind me of something? Did it inspire a question? Did it link to some other part of the book, or some other book entirely? Can I give an overview? Can I conclude something? Anything. Really anything. By writing a quick phrase, you give life to your annotations, and they actually mean something. And of course, that makes you understand the text better, but it also helps you later on in the analysis stage, when you come back to, you know, make something out of your notes. Let me show you some examples that I did in the past few days in my reading. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero Enkidu was made out of clay by a goddess, and at first he was wild and animal-like, but eventually he was tempted, and then he gained self-consciousness. And that reminded me of Adam from the Bible. There were some similarities there, so I wrote it down, simply that it reminded me of Adam. This is only a sentence for now, but if you keep watching, you'll see that it becomes something greater and more useful to me. A few pages later, I used annotations to talk myself through the passage. As I write, I'm also thinking, and it's a nice proof that I can understand the chapter without getting lost. If you struggle to explain it to yourself, then it's a good sign to go back and fix those holes in your understanding. On page 43, one of Gilgamesh's actions was a bit shocking, and it felt controversial to me, so I wrote down the question in my head. Was he right to kill the forest guardian, or was that messed up? You don't have to answer it immediately, but writing down the question stimulates you to think. And it's also nice to discuss with yourself afterwards. I also just have fun and take the piss sometimes. Here I wrote how Gilgamesh friend-zoned one of the goddesses who wanted to marry him, and then he grilled her for two pages straight, bringing up all her bad history with former lovers as well. It's kind of, kind of funny. If it helps you remember the text and have some fun along the way, why the hell not? You don't have to be serious all the time, it's not that deep. If all of this sounds like a bit much to you, then you can boil it down to one sentence. As you read, write what you think to help you think. Now, I have to stress, do not copy me, not because I'm gatekeeping my flawless and perfect system, but because it's mine, and what I like may be weird to you, or it may be ineffective for you. So you have to, you're sure, be inspired, but you have to do some experimentation. You have to tinker with it yourself, and find out your own method. What really works for you the best? Some people like to use index tags, and you know, even I do sometimes. Some people like to use color-coded highlighters or pens, just to categorize each type of note they make. Like that's all perfect if it works for you, but the point is to not not blindly follow someone else's system just because they're the one saying it. Snack. Don't worry, bro.
[15:28]Chill.
[15:32]Relax, bro, you'll get your food. Look at that.
[15:39]I'm just buying his company with food. It's shallow, but it works. You drop your food all over you, what is that? Clean up this mess, man. The next step is analysis, which is slow, thorough and sometimes difficult. So why put yourself through all that work? Why not just drop the book and then go to the next five ones and blitz through them? Well, you clicked on this because you wanted to get more from your literature. You wanted to be able to talk about them, to remember the ideas, to be touched by them, to carry them through the rest of your life. And that's a meaningful goal, I respect it, but nothing meaningful comes without effort, and so we have to accept that it's going to be a big investment, but you're going to get a lot in return. You may not always find it fun in the shallow sense, like the type you get with video games or good food, or midnight cigarettes at the pub, but that's okay. You know, there's a time and a place for fun things like that, but I value in this method, fulfillment and purpose above that. Okay, so philosophy out of the way. How can you go deep with your analysis? Well, once I finish the book, I turn to page one and I go through it again. And I'm not trolling. And don't worry, because you're not going to have to read the whole book again. What you do in this second run through is you ignore everything and only look at your annotations. I flick through the rest, but whenever there's my note somewhere or something underlined, I pause and I look at that only. These book notes will inspire my analysis in Obsidian, which is my favorite note taking app of all time, and I've, you know, I've raved about it for months, years now, actually. Inside there, I make a source note, and that stores all of my observations and insights from any one book, or article, or video, podcast, whatever you're consuming. Now, it depends on the book, but to analyze, I usually write down the page number, then copy a passage or a quote underneath it, and then below that, I write the ideas in my own words.
[17:31]I give my take on it. I elaborate. I ask questions, I expand on the ideas, I discuss them, I connect them. I just think. I give my analysis. Your pencil annotations were short and they were rough. And this is where you get the chance to elaborate and to make your analysis more concrete and real. Again, which is good for your memory and your understanding. And also, not every annotation is worth writing about. It's quite common, actually. I will find an annotation and think, okay, that was useful at the time for me to understand the book, but I don't really need to expand on it. It was just, you know, me talking about the story or something. This is my Gilgamesh source note in action. Copying the passage feels like meditation, and then I use whatever annotations I have as a springboard for writing my analysis, meaning you're never stuck there like a rock, not knowing what to write. I tried to keep each point at medium length, but, you know, I write as much as I want, or as little as I want. And if you're not the writing type and all of this makes you cringe, maybe that's totally fine. Just shorten it a bit. I know I write quite a lot, but it's up to you how much you want to do. For me, this step takes longer than the actual reading of the book itself, way longer. And I mean, so what, right? I did say there was going to be a lot of effort, and yes, it is a big investment, but at the end I feel so satisfied and happy with how much I've learned. If you have ever read a book deeply, in any way, then first, I respect you, because that is bloody difficult. And second, you'll know that it's even tougher when you have nobody to help you understand what you're reading. With science, history, or classics, you know, with nuanced themes, I never hesitate to pull from other sources to help me understand them. Things like videos, articles, even other books sometimes. Now, that's good, but it's also incredibly time-consuming to dig around on the internet. And even when you do find something, it's hard to be sure of its value, because there's a lot of unreliable crap floating around on the internet. Recently, I've been loving Consensus as my personal research assistant, to help me tackle these big ideas without the usual overwhelm. And I'm happy to say that they are the sponsor of this video too. For example, Gilgamesh is a complicated work with a lot to unpack, and with a quick search on Consensus, I can collect solid targeted research from peer-reviewed sources only. Meaning, I don't have to worry about filtering out all the junk you find on the internet. Before I knew about Consensus, I have to admit, I was often not bothered to branch out and research too far beyond the books, and I have my fair reasons for it. Searching on a traditional browser is laborious, and Google Scholar is not only clunky, but it doesn't give you what you want half the time. I still have PTSD from using that to write my manuscripts back in college, and I'm glad there's no alternative now. Consensus gets rid of the noise and neatly presents exactly what you're looking for in a nice, clean format. I never saw myself as a researcher per se, but now I feel like I can be, it's no longer that intimidating. When I was doing my analysis on Gilgamesh, Consensus let me discover a new angle that I previously missed. It suggested the theme of nature versus civilization, which made me think like, oh, yeah, I can kind of see that now, actually. Since everything comes with a reliable source, I now have a natural next step to get stuck into and explore, and I can use that to add to my notes, or even to make a whole new source note based on it. Rather than having to dig through walls of text to figure out if a paper is useful to you, Consensus gives you a handy snapshot, so you can make that decision for yourself in just a few seconds. It's not just literature too. I had great fun exploring topics like nutrition, economics, and of course, learning, which I usually find to be confusing and hard to approach unless you have a good source of help. Especially with all of the half-baked influencer advice out there. I'm very impressed with Consensus, and I really respect the idea of making research more accessible and easy to get through, not just for professionals and students, but also for people who are simply curious and like to learn as a hobby. To try Consensus at your own pace, you can click the link in the description. It's free to use, and there is a premium plan for unlimited pro researchers. But what's even better is that if you use code 'odysseas' at checkout before the 30th of April, then you get a whole free year of Consensus Premium, a whole year. That's brilliant. So do check it out. I'm sure you'll love it just as much as I did, and again, thank you to Consensus for sponsoring the video. Now, you could stop there. Already, you have put more care and love into your books than virtually everyone else out there. And with enough time and effort and practice, that's going to reflect in you. The very way you think and approach books will be more calculated and intentional, because you're training your eye for analysis. But what if you could use these source notes to create an archive, a library of individual notes that will forever be there to help you revise or use in future projects? That means no more digging through source notes to find what you need, and no more over-the-top complex systems that feel like a nightmare to manage. This step I call archiving, and at the center of it is the atomic note, which is a simple, yet extremely effective way to organize your analysis of books. It's like the shipping container of the note world. It's standard, reliable, and stackable. An atomic note represents a single important idea. They are fairly short, they cover one point only, and most importantly of all, they are all stored in the exact same folder. That's right. Every single note, no matter what the topic is, is in the same place. It sounds ridiculous at first, but I promise you, this is actually a strength, because if you confine notes in folders, then not only is it hard to find them, but it's hard to connect them. And we need connections, because that's what leads to new insight. And if you want to understand your books better, then you have to contextualize new things you learn in a network of existing ideas. Studying physics without knowing any maths is impossible. Reading classical Western literature without any knowledge of the Bible is putting yourself at a disadvantage. Learning sociology while failing to connect it to history, I mean, it just doesn't work. You have nothing to give it context. True wisdom comes from understanding many different fields, and then seeing how they all come together into one universal truth. And it only makes sense then that we should put all notes in the same place so that they can connect. I have a nice physical example to show you, with pages and notebooks. Let's say ideas A and B connect to each other, but you don't know it yet. And each of them is tucked away in a separate notebook. That's a piss take. It's annoying to find. If you turn A and B into atomic notes, you free them from their cage, and you let them mingle in the same place. It lets you physically see that connection, and you can link them to better understand the topic, or to discover something that you never saw beforehand. And don't worry about it getting messy, by the way, which is a valid fear. With tags, indexes, and references, things manage to stay organized. My indexes give me a contents page of every interest I have. So I never fear that I'm losing my notes in the crowd. Before I get into how you can archive your notes, I should let you know that I have a good few videos on the whole technical setup of Obsidian. So if this system looks interesting to you, and you want to do it yourself, I'd recommend you check those out. I'll link them below. Okay, so back to how you can make these atomic notes. Once I finish my source notes, I go back through them and I decide what deserves to be made into an atomic note. And you might be thinking, like, are you serious? Again, we're going through them again? Yes, we are. Okay, but what do I mean by 'deserves' to be made into an atomic note? Well, there's three main things I look for. Three main categories of what I consider good enough to be one. The first thing is I make atomic notes on the ideas that really stand out, like the most important ones. Sometimes things are interesting enough to talk about in the context of the book. Like, in Gilgamesh, I wrote about Babylonian society. I wrote about the script they use, the history. That's all cool. These are cool facts.
[25:11]While they are worth mentioning in the source notes, to understand the book and to get a picture of what it's like, they're not, they don't have that wow factor. They're not special, they're not special enough to be taken from my source notes and archived permanently as an atomic note. Other times, the ideas are so interesting that they transcend the source note. That they deserve to be their own thing as an atomic note. For example, one of the big ideas in Gilgamesh was that it's futile to chase eternal life, so rather than get into a frenzy over it, over something you can't have, you just have to accept your mortality and realize that the most important thing is your duty, and your achievements in the real world as a living, breathing human. Now, that's deep. That's something worth writing about that transcends the book entirely. So I made this into an atomic note. I created it, I applied the template, I gave it the mortality tag. And I then wrote about the theme. Sometimes I copy and paste from my source notes if I feel like it's good enough, and, you know, usually though, I will write more, I will write it differently, maybe in a more focused way. I will polish up my thoughts and give it some proper care and elaboration. Now, typically, I will talk about the idea in general. This is no longer necessarily an analysis of Gilgamesh. It's an analysis on mortality. And yes, I will reference Gilgamesh and whatever else, but it's not the main focus, the book itself. The main focus is the idea, and Gilgamesh is the foundation. I try to make my atomic notes go beyond the source note, and to be their own thing. As for the length, many are very short. Sometimes I write just a few sentences, but most of the time, they are two to 500 words long, and my preferred format is a mini essay, which once again, I have a video on, so I'll link that down below as well. The second thing I look for to write an atomic note is any recurring theme, and this happens more often than you think. In all books, you tend to see a few major insights pop up again and again. In non-fiction, this might be the author's grand argument, and in fiction it might be the main themes or the main morals of the story. They won't always be neatly packaged to you in a nice little summary at the end. Sometimes you have to find it yourself. Sometimes it's completely secret. And so what I like to use my atomic notes for is to identify that running theme and to kind of collect it and to summarize it. For example, mortality is not mentioned just once in Gilgamesh. It's mentioned all throughout the book in many different ways, and so in my atomic note on mortality, I will reference many different passages and many different angles that it's discussed from. I'm referencing many different sections of the book because I know that each passage has something to add, and something to, you know, offer that's different from the last one. The third and final thing I write atomic notes on is my own thoughts. Not everything has to come from the book. And you know what, they're your notes. You can write whatever the hell you want. You don't even have to write them in a way that other people understand. They don't even have to be correct at first. This is your bank of data, your info. If you have an interesting thought, just randomly, you can write about it and reference yourself as the source. For example, while reading Gilgamesh, a question popped into my head that was kind of unrelated, and it was a question of, like, to what extent is the child's success also the parent's success, if at all? So how much is the child's individuality tied into the parent's individuality? What is that link? Is there any link at all? How should we credit it? Just a side thought. But I figured that's interesting enough to write an atomic note on, so I did. It's not like a final formal essay. It didn't go anywhere necessarily, but it was a nice prompt of discussion. I wrote down a few words, and that's that. And that's archiving. Over time, as you add notes, your library of knowledge gets bigger, it gets stronger, it gets more comprehensive. I write maybe one note a day, or maybe every two days, but over time, it compounds, it gets into something really, it grows into something really impressive and useful. It's like a personal bank of knowledge that is always there to serve you and to help you, whether you're writing, researching, or just revising or learning. You saw how I hyped up connections for learning. This final step is synthesis, where, like a true medieval scholar, you cross-reference your sources, combine everything you know, and draw new insight from your books, which you didn't see beforehand. This lets you see a clearer picture of the topic, because you can see new angles that you never saw before, and also you can spot disagreements and inconsistencies between books.
[29:40]Because not everything you read or write is going to be correct, and you can only discover that by reading multiple books. Plus, it's not like one book is going to teach you everything. Some books are flawed, some are missing ideas, some only cover one part of the field, and you need to read other things to gain a full picture. When you read many different books and you connect their atomic notes, you fill in those gaps. If you keep at that process, you become an expert. And that's no exaggeration either. That is literally how you achieve expertise. I hope that sounded good, but what does it look like in practice? I'm going to abandon Gilgamesh for now, he's done well, and we're going to turn instead to a book called Tribe by Sebastian Junger, which is on anthropology and psychology. As you can see, I have a lot of atomic notes inspired from this book because it was right up my alley. Every time I finish an atomic note, I have a look for what other notes it might connect to, both from the same book, but also anything else I've written in the past. I link those related notes in the references section, so that if I'm ever catching up on all ideas, or I need to do some research for a piece of writing, these connections naturally show me to what I need. If you forget something, that's fine, because you'll probably end up rediscovering it through those connections you have made. It's that simple. For example, when I was reading Tribe, I picked up the idea that safety can come at the expense of purpose. Now, when I wrote this, it reminded me of a past note based on a lecture by Jordan Peterson, which was about meaning and responsibility. The idea of meaning or purpose was the middleman between both notes. So, even though they came from very different places, they were related, and it was cool to have that Eureka moment, which connected them. You can see I linked to the other note in the reference section, and also a few others that I thought were relevant. Now, if I ever revisit either one of these notes, I have an obvious bridge to follow that train of thought. A question I get asked a lot is, well, how am I supposed to remember what to link to? Like to to link to something, you have to remember it's there in the first place, so how does that work? That's a fair question, because I struggled with it for months, and I've come up with a few good ways that you can find those notes to link to. First, I search for keywords. When I create my notes, I try to title them cleverly, meaning I include all of the major terms like meaning, psychology, nutrition, all of that. With that, I can use the search function with the double square brackets to just look up some keywords and see what pops up, and chances are, something's going to be relevant. The other thing I like to do is click on the tag of the note, and have a scroll through all of the other notes in that tag. In just a few seconds, I can scan the list and see if there's anything that connects. Now, the third solution, I use a bit less often. I go on the graph view. I like this view because it clusters notes together based on the links, and the more related things are, the closer they are together. For example, you can see that all of my writing notes are close together, and then near my notes on productivity, note taking, and all the rest, because they're kind of related. However, old topics like shoes or nutrition, well, they are wildly different from anything else, so they are much further away, and it makes it clear. Using this pattern, you can have a look around and see if any connections pop up. Now, I have to stress, though, it doesn't have to be perfect. Like, you won't have a perfect network, and you won't capture every single connection. You will miss some. That's just how it is. The point is to do your best and to try and find quality, useful connections, at least often. Even just a link or two is incredibly valuable. And that's the system. I hope you enjoyed it, and I'd love to hear if it's similar to what you do, if you do something completely different. And I always ask you to share your system or how you approach it, because if you scroll through the comments, it's really useful to read what other people do and to, you know, maybe borrow some things, get inspiration. I love to see it and it is helpful for not only me, I guess, but everyone else. And also, if you like these videos, I'm sure you'll love the newsletter. It's free to subscribe down below, and it's not spamming you either. Of course, we talk about some of the similar topics here on the channel, but there's also room for more, more different things, different ideas, and different formats and experimentation, which is just as interesting. It's good fun. And I hope you enjoyed this system. Let me know if you have any questions, by the way, because I know it can get complicated and there's a lot to talk about. So feel free to ask questions. I'll do my best to answer you, and I'll see you on the mailing list as well. Thank you for watching.
