The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using I typically come across an article I might want to red when I dont have time to read it right then and there. And there are those to whom the flow matters more, preaching non-stop writing when possible. So starting with a theme narrows my notecard search a bit, but because Ive also found theme-relevant cards where I didnt expect, I sometimes cant help but expand my search beyond what is sometimes necessary. I am actually thinking of usingTaskRabbitto have someone create a digital backup. This process is a process of discovering new knowledge, from combinations of existing knowledge. I could use this in several ways. It syncs across phone, iPad, and computer, but I typically read articles on my iPad before bed. How I Use Robert Greene's Notecard System | by Tony U - Medium Each note card should be as pure and singular an idea as possible, because I want to be able to move all the pieces around and to create a film. I have been thinking about putting this system into place for my own writing. Someone on reddit just told me to google you to read about the system. I, with my cards, can organize all of his ideas and all of this thoughts, bring some order and show you the amazing pros of wisdom this guy has gleaned out of his mad, syphilic brain.. Why? (intro), Gamanthe Japanese word for endurance (Persistence), Our actions our constrained, our will is not. If I am working on chapter 2I take those cards. When he was coming up as a writer, the author and journalist Rex Murphy would write out longhand favorite poems and passages. There were thousands of songs in his head. Last thought. His work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review to Fast Company. As said in 48 Laws of Power: Theres nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous. Because, he would point out, by the time he came to a card a couple days/weeks/months later, he would be someone else. The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann published some 50 books and 550 articles in various publications. Ive created a list of 15 books youve never heard of that will alter your worldview and help you excel at your career. If theres a good story in a book or a good line in a movie or a good lyric in a song, he writes it down on 46 index card and puts it in a box. But I think youll love this system. It can work, he said, but in his experience, its rare that a synthetic startup works. But so what? So I make every note card with the assumption that I will later have forgotten just about everything about the book/article/paper/interview from which the note card comes from. It facilitates every other step of the researching and writing process. In a way, we can see it as an alternative version of Ray Bradburys idea of setting up words/ideas upfront to create the text later. What he taught me was neat, clean and orderly. (Life), Just because youre winning a game doesnt mean its a good game. Seth Godin,Icarus Deception(Life), Q: Ok, but what should I be most worried about here? The importance of re-reading notebooks - Austin Kleon Im not usually writing, because my books require so much research. He adopted the system from his mentor and fellow writer Robert Greene, who no-doubt adopted . The discerning will readonly the authentic utterances of the oracleall the rest he rejects.. Thats why doing it physically is so important. Another important point: you need to do something with those notes, which Robert Greene turns into a commonplace book (Roberts ex-apprentice, Ryan Holiday, wrote about them here). How much time do you spend reading per day? Do you or did you ever feel the same way? The more I heard about the system, the more I became obsessed with it. I have hundreds that just have a ONE or TWO words on them. Fix them! I can gather resources and stack the materials necessary . We all have our own preferences. I am now inspired to do this constantly and to use them. It would be so easy for him, with established worldwide fame and prestige, to step in his previous successes to write more-of-the-same books and convert all the attention in cheap money. Maybe for you but not for me. If anything, I use a perverted version of a system taught to me by the genius Robert Greene , when I was his research assistant. How to Design a High-Performance Life (Style) The interesting information, you realize, actually isnt that interesting. They almost always are. Regards I am invested in each one of these cards. the reported asked. The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who was famous for his slip box or zettelksten method, called his box of notecards his conversation partner. Emerson liked to identify four classes of readers: the hourglass, the sponge, the jelly-bag, and the Golconda. Thanks much for sharing. No. A notecard system is a system for storing and organizing knowledge. So those are the kinds of notes I write to myself. And now, I will make a different argument. Robert is surely the person I want in my corner when it comes down to writing non-fiction and we already know his apprentice went on to write bestsellers and be successful. Some examples: Dont be the slave of circumstance. (intro), We know objectively that we learn from failure, yet we spend all our time trying to avoid it. One of the things I like about Ryan Holiday's notecard system, the one he learned from his mentor, Robert Greene, is its emphasis, not just on taking notes, but on going back and revisiting your notes: after you take notes in a book, you let the book sit for a week, and then you go back through the book and transfer your notes to notecards . Then, I have a pretty good sense of where I might find notecards that fit with that theme. I could also take out all the cards of one color to see which story I liked best, etc. For every single book, he has a . How would you explain this process to a 5-year-old? If you dont currently create or have plans to create blog posts or books or songs or sneakers or etc., I thought I might argue, a note-taking process is a waste of time. 1.3K subscribers in the PersonalKnowledgeMgmt community. Then the email can be organized into folders for the different themes. All I can say is that since learning it about 7 years ago, it has totally transformed my process and drastically increased my creative output. Writing is something extremely hard to do and with a non-linear complexity: it increases faster than the size of the project. I paid closer attention when I was taking the pains to write things down. Though again, his discipline seems to exceed mine because I am a lot less ordered. We come down, miss another shot. Ronald Reagan also kept a similar systemthat apparently very few people knew about until he died. And a Johannes F.K. Then, like I do in the margin of books, next to a time stamp, I put either a question or a phrase that corresponds to what the person said. I havent had a chance to really dig into it yet, but it explores how Pattons personality and spiritual beliefs shaped his decisions, as opposed to just another recounting of his military exploits. Ryan Holiday & Robert Greene's Notecard System Your thoughts are downstream from your inputs. I note-carded it. The sponge holds on to nothing but a little dirt and sediment. Some asked me bluntly: What the hell is a digital note? send out my reading recommendations every month, an interview with Andrew Warner at Mixergy, into a book edited by the historian Douglas Brinkley, I wrote this post exclusively off my notecards, 12 Essential Writing Routines To Help You To Craft Your Own. He has a warehouse of notecards with ideas and stories and quotes and facts and bits of research, which get pulled and pieced together then proofread and revised and trimmed and inspected and packaged and then shipped. -When I go back through the cards, Ill often remember other things from more recent reading or thinking and add to them. My house recently got robbedand I was so fucking terrified that someone took it, you have no idea. Robert is not just the author of multiple bestsellers. the speeches of Ronald Reagan, that ended the Cold War. We always decide whether we continue or not. (Will), Ulysses S. Grantincident at Mathew Bradys studio where glass fell on him and he didnt move. For instance, as I was preparing for my next book,The Obstacle is The Way, I filled out thousands of these cards for ideas and concepts that I wanted included in the book. Putting the puzzle together, piece by piece, what follows is how he writes books. He analogized it to taking the Rubiks cube out his head, putting it on the table, letting others have it for a while, then putting the cube back in his own head. Also being able to physically arrange stuff is crucial for getting the structure of your book or project right. Usually in the afternoon after Ive completed work-related writing/tasks. I will show you those various methods, starting with books. I used a simple design and I had three boxes or sections at the top to write in to help me categorize my cards. But I dont want this to be easy. Tiago is the authority on digital note-taking, orto borrow from the title of his popular online course and recent bestselling bookon Building A Second Brain (course, book). In a few words, the basis for the better knowledge retention is in a more significative interaction with the book, through the centuries-old practice called marginalia: taking notes, highlighting, commenting and criticising the work as you read it. Its necessary to create a method to extract the most out of each book. I wouldnt. For instance, according to the bookOne Summer by Bill Bryson, the hotel that Babe Ruth lived in for most of his career had a live seal living in the lobby fountain), *Trust Me, Im Lying(Media manipulation), *Education(Wisdom and ideas about learning). Go To Link Ronald Reagan actually kept quotes on a similar notecard system. By working through it you gain proficiency and competence. Exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness, Brooks writes. Almost every important writer in history has already written about writing. I have a box and ~1/4 full of cards. According to his biographer, Michael Keene, General Patton used to use a similar system: He read every treatise on warfare ever written. (much more on this and many examples below). Tiagos methodology is app-agnostic. I didnt even perfect it. Comments can be seen there. Because stuff from videos, as I said above, only makes up ~2% of what I ultimately transfer onto notecards, I will just say the following. So he could almost anticipate what the enemy was going to do next.. To bring things into existence, your brain rearranges and reconstructs the material available to it. What do you do when a box gets full? They're simple, cheap, and easy to categorize into topics. Reading this updated version has inspired me to upgrade my organization! It is also known as the "commonplace book." Though I took some amazing tips from it, and will implement them. I was searching for notecard systems after reading Will and Ariel Durants dual autobiography and not having much luck. The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read Shoe Dog: https://amzn.to/32zo2bu2. In mine, my two most important categories are Life (which is mostly advice for myself) and another called Me, where I put things that I think are important criticisms or places for improvement in my own life. I review the cards way more than I originally thought was necessary. So originally I thought, I need a bunch of categories and themes first then Ill keep my eyes and ears out for things that fit into those topics and themes. It also made the shoebox look pretty cool. Thanks for clarifying, keep up the inspiring work and enjoy your weekend! Hes a systems and principles kind of thinker, so even though I use physical notecards, his work has influenced the evolution of my processes. I was watching a show about Joan Rivers and she had a 3 x 5 index card system of her jokes and categorized them by type. -Get in the habit. Billy Oppenheimer is a writer and research assistant based in Austin, TX. Ryan, So he had no problem moving on from a book after the first page, the first chapter, the first halfwhenever he caught his attention fading. Its bizarre because, as I said many times above, for the most part, I cant remember the notecards Ive made. I've opted to use 3x5 notecards as my commonplacing system. Do you review the cards? 1. The Notecard System: Keep and Organize Everything - Robert Moszczynski My thoughts just seemed more important on a nicer card. Theres nothing more fit than leaving you with this inspiring Nietzsches quote, extracted from the last page of Roberts latest book Mastery. It has been a lifesaver, and really helped save my sanity. So I started to use my skills as a filmmaker. Personally, I look for actionable, small sized chunks. I told you that. They both laughed then Kail added, Thats why youre cut out for theater, because youll tell it like its the first time. So in the margin I wrote, LIKE ITS THE FIRST TIME: Ill draw those squares around names, book titles, a good phrase, anything I might want to catch my eye when I am going back through the book. And there are a lot of pictures and examples throughout, so dont let the scroll bar deceive youits not that long. The 'Robert Greene' Method of Writing Books - Medium The reason to wait a week or two? I read a book, very carefully, writing on the margins with all kinds of notes. Now my thinking is, it caught your attention for a reason capture it and figure out where it belongs later. Thank you for the article it has given me the push I needed. The only thing new to report here are some tools. Robert uses a system based on flashcards, where he puts the most important ideas he stumbles upon in the book. The Notecard System. He collected facts and notes in different portfolios based on the subject matter. A space dedicated to the exploration of knowledge, sense-making, learning, writing, taking If I am capturing an interesting idea, for instance, I surround it with contextthe way it might appear in a paragraph in an article. You dont want to know everything about it, but with this there now, if Ive done all that work and I sit down to write, I have at my fingertips, all of this. This is helpful when I finger-tip through the cardsin a glance, I can tell if its what Im looking for). But youd have them. His way works best for him, and I have a way that works better for me. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. In one interview you mentioned your research method for your books (with index cards and shoe boxes). In his system, he used 35 notecards and kept them in a photo binder by theme. As I said, he is one of the most brilliant minds alive and that's why he understand the success traps. What are the chances that the most creative, most innovative approaches will instantly be top of mind? I bet its a pain in the ass to carry these around with you if you get sick of working from home. I got a Kindle roundabout Christmas 2011. you can't just keep repeating what you did on the past. My article reading process is an adapted version of my book reading process. A lot. One quick question Do you prefer to underline/write in the book/tag etc. . As I shuffle through the cards, I bump into stuff I had forgotten about, etc. Robert talks about his system and shows one of his boxes of notecards here. Photo by the author. As the master zen Shunryu Suzuki said: In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts there are few. Like you, I go back later and review, but I review my notes and not the book. After finishing, did you ask yourself, "What did I just read?" Leveraging the notecard system will help keep that from happening. With a structured summary and ideas at hand, the last third of effort goes into the writing process (which is shared between author and editor, maybe 9:1). I like my Kindle (Im on my 3rd one!) Self-development without the BS at estrategistas.com + Startup strategy and growth, Helping to change the real estate market by solving operation problems @loftbr, whether writing is a torture for the artist or not. This article rang for me, because Ive personally found something very similar to have been very helpful to me for many years. Because its not my job to compensate for other peoples laziness. -I think its important that the notes are not just about work. We came back on the defensive end, and we got a stop. I spent more time with my notecards. What he taught me was neat, clean and orderly. Im going to add some index cards to my Kindle and start benefiting from the simplicity of this. If you found value in this article, it would mean a lot to me if you hit the recommend button! Isnt it hard to carry around? Hello! In the beginning, I picked six random notecards and essentially transcribed them into the email service provider. Lets not even put writing a book on the same page, because its orders of magnitude more difficult. You can also download the free PDF 12 Essential Writing Routines To Help You To Craft Your Own.. How The Index Card Method Improves Your Knowledge Gathering I also read your post that mentioned that these cards are the first thing you would grab in a fire. Absolutely. If its the right-hand page, I fold the top corner. Before, I used the smallerVaultz 46 Index Card File boxes. Use the notecard system; Think back to the last chapter you read. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing, Emerson said. Basically, he only takes a job if it will be challenging. I believe this to be not because I dont remember to but actually because they arent something physical for me to see. Im not going to repeat what I did in the past, Im not just going to do the same formulas. For longer quotes, I will type them out and print them. I use these notecards for my life. How to remember what you read | The Jotform Blog Reddit - Dive into anything I also send myself articles that I like and its nice to be able to write my thoughts or key words to go with it. In Getting Things Done, David Allen talks about how when you write something down, you are essentially telling your mind, mind, you dont have to remember or remind me about this. This is very helpful in the context of task management: if you are trying to focus on Task A but Task B is lingering in the cognitive background, if you write down when/where/how you will complete Task B, Task B tends to disappear from the cognitive background (in other words, your mind stops trying to remind you of Task B because it trusts it doesnt have to). I dont make sure I dont lose track of cards. Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me, Im Lying, The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is The Enemy, and other books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. So those are the processes and tools I use for various mediums. Jan 30, 2022 -- Image by the author on Canva. These were the three answers most people gave me when I asked them about their digital note-taking habits. Khachigan said, he had all this stuff he had stored up all these years all these stories, all these anecdotes. So their Evernote or Roam or Notion database is unwieldy. I saw a post about a similar system a while back, I believe it was from you Ryan! There are also cheaper cardboard versions out there. And I can gauge a good book will generate 20 to 31 notecards. But I think there is something irreplaceable about the physical aspect. When asked about his high quality and high volume output, Luhmann would credit his slip-box (or zettelkasten in German). For every good idea that comes out of you, you need ten good ideas coming into you. Even though life is not about going over a checklist, this saying conveys the importance we give, as a society, to the act of writing a book. They took it out on the sideline. Although Robert never wrote about his method publicly in general, he prefers books over blog posts I was able to capture the essence of his creative process researching through several interviews with him. If you are going to go through your process then spend a couple bucks and do it on a custom made Ryan Holiday card and then tell me if you didnt think its worth it. Great Writing is Not WrittenIt's Assembled - Be a Brilliant Writer After you finish reading a book, do the following: Wait a few days or weeks. If you dont, youll regret it. If you only had 30 seconds to tell someone (Cliff Notes-style) how to do it before the elevator got to your stop, what would you say Ryan? You can check out the archives here, and if you want to start receiving SIX at 6 in your email inbox every Sunday, drop you email in the thing below. Simons memory is prodigious, Gladwell says. the classifying and. Then when he had an idea for a jokeif he couldnt convince himself to get up and go get the pen and paper, the joke must not be good enough. With positive effects already verified, the elaborative interrogation consists in asking the student why such topic makes sense or why it is unexpected. For instance, in Mastery, the theme of mirror neurons. Ebook notation just isnt there yet, and you cant mark up the library books, LOL. -Its difficult to describe this in any linear way so I am just going to do this in kind a brain dump way. You know it if you know it. And a film is not what happened. Done! When I am looking for material in my writing, I use them. Recently, Ive taken a more thematic approach to the newsletter. In the meantime, these boxes are what Im running back into a fire for to pull out (in fact, I sometimes keep them in a fireproof safe). Other People Who You Use The Notecard System, Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, a piece about a race to the South Pole and ice ages, 10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman: What I Learned, this short article by biographer Andrew Roberts, the ability to be in uncertainties and doubts without getting too stressed/anxious, his interview on the Knowledge Project podcast, Niklas Luhmanns Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine, George Carlin said his system started when. The Robert Greene Research Method (Note Card System) But thats just a little thing. Look at what you did with Trust Me Im Lying. Thanks so much for sharing this! Time is a great filter. This is your system. Simons musicianship is a function of the library of musical components in his head. In these cases and others, I copy and paste the link into the read-later app Instapaper. Where I got it. Of course, I do not think of all this on my own; it mostly happens in my fileIn essence, the filing system explains my productivityFiling takes more of my time than writing the booksWithout those cards, just by contemplating, these ideas would have never occurred to me. This stimulates the formation of more elaborated networks around the knowledge, connecting the new material to what the student already know, making it stick longer. Its interesting because, wow, Ill think, this experience couldnt exist in this way if I hadnt made that notecard. If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading, Robert says, hour after houra very tedious processcreativity will come to you.. When I starting prepping the paperback ofGrowth Hacker Marketing(out in 2014), I went through the cards and was able to find a place for some that I hadnt used the first time. You are correct that some of what I found interesting on the first readthrough was not as remarkable on the second pass. I think this is a terrible thing to do.) At least once a week, I sift through all my notecards before I write my Sunday newsletter. Robert Greene's Notorious Notecard System May 28, 2016 by Tony Francisco 1 Comment 0 0 0 0 0 I kept hearing about Robert Greene's note card system. Your post was a good reminder to order your two books. Of his huge book collection, it was said that Emerson had a bigger appetite than intake. 5 Lessons from Robert Greene That Will Inspire You to Write Fold the bottom corner of the page where youve made a note or marked something (alternatively, use post-it flags). This is an awesome post, but for those of us that are visually orientated why dont you create a video of the process and how you use this to create and write books. If Im frying an egg, for instance, Ill read while the pan is heating up, while the egg is cooking, and while Im eating breakfast. user: Ahfound it! Almost daily, I engage with the boxes in one way or another. Remember there is no right and wrong way to do this. Thus our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius: for only if we think of him as being very remote from us, as a miraculum, does he not aggrieve us But, aside from these suggestions of our vanity, the activity of the genius seems in no way fundamentally different from the activity of the inventor of machines, the scholar of astronomy or history, the master of tactics. How can he process such a huge amount of information during the research period? When I have a problem, I flip through them. Boring, uncomfortable, and unnecessary. Another example: When I wrote the new foreword forTrust Me Im Lying, I started by going back through the cards. But no, in the process of writing a new book, hes a layman developing his research. You can do it linearly as a reading journal. I use this one. We came back down, we ran a set for Jordan Clarkson. Its very important that you mark quotes properly so you never risk forgetting to attribute. (Quick aside: I hear from people who somehow have their Kindle app and their note-taking app synced up so that everything they underline goes straight into their note-taking app.