What Question Prompts Do You Use For Book Notes?

Knowledge management
1

I ask myself the following questions:

  1. Who is this book for?
  2. What new concepts did I learn of?
  3. Anything I Particularly Disagreed With?
  4. How Has This Helped Me See the World Differently?

In reality however, I don’t find myself as motivated to fill in anything except section 2.

Am I asking myself the wrong questions?

What do you guys have in your template?

2

One of the biggest things I took from “How To Take Smart Notes” was that it was better not to add too much formal/rigid structure on top of things. Keep it simple and loose whenever possible.

Those seem like some great questions! But I personally wouldn’t attempt to answer them for every book. Especially if it makes it feel like a chore for you. For me, I know my brain begins resisting things I try to do over and over, until it becomes like an itch I need to avoid. And then procrastination is born.

I do like using question prompts like you use, but usually I use them in dedicated “freewriting” sessions, when I’m just setting a timer, and throwing super loose thoughts onto the page.

I do have very general, “My Ideas”, and “Summary”, and “Directives” sections in my template, but I honestly barely ever fill all those out either. I think I could likely collapse it all down to “Notes”, unless a very important book requires digging deeper.

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