Summary In early 2023 I decided to change my approach to reading by taking multiple levels of detailed notes on each non-fiction book that I read. I undertook this endeavour because I realised that, for numerous reasons, I had very limited retention of what I was reading and that many of the books on my bookshelf were essentially expensive paperweights. I’ve found that taking notes every 1-2 chapters in a stream of consciousness format with summarisation steps at the end to be the best approach to retention and idea synthesis.

Nothing in this post should be considered advice. I am comfortable running personal experiments on myself and in my life and acknowledge the increased risk that this implies. You are responsible for making your own decisions and you should seek appropriate advice for any changes you’re seeking to make. This post is predominately to document my own experiences and rationale This post is a continual work in progress, it may change at any time, if it does I’ll aim to keep a changelog up to date, I won’t update the changelog for inclusion of additional data in the results section or additions to the result log.