When I first started reading non-fiction books many years ago, I didn’t take any notes. Today, I have forgotten most of what I read about in those books.
Now, I take notes for every book that I read. I prefer digital notes and use a program called Notion, but that’s for another discussion.
Here are some reasons why taking notes maximizes the positive effects of reading non-fiction books on your life. Also, some tips for how to how to do this effectively.
Reading Comprehension
When you take notes, you naturally have to paraphrase what you are reading, because you can’t write everything down. This means that you have to think and process the content that you’re reading about, which improves learning. Or, at the end of a chapter, you can think about how to summarize the chapter in a concise form.
Also, if you come across terms or concepts that you don’t know about, you can Google them and add them to your notes, doing a bit of research while you read.
(By the way, if you instead write everything down with little paraphrasing, then you won’t get any benefits from taking notes.)
Organizing and Revising
Next, once you’re done reading the book, you can organize and review your rough first-draft notes. When you first take the notes, you’re not always sure what is going to be important. After you have completed the entire book, you have a fuller picture of the main messages. Then, you can give your notes a more logical structure, bolding important ideas, etc.
Taking Action
Taking notes also makes it easier to think about ways to take action and change your life based on the book. This is particularly for self-improvement or productivity books. If you just read these kinds of books, it will give you a good short-term feeling of motivation. However, real improvements come only after the learning. They result from the tangible practical actions that you consciously do in your own life.
Then, your organized notes make this easy to do. This can also be done when reading the book, where you jot down interesting ideas and thoughts, that could be helpful later.
Long-Term Learning
Finally, your notes will act as a summary of the book that you can refer to in the future, to quickly refresh your memory about the important ideas. Also, if you read another book with similar themes, you can compare and contrast the various perspectives.