Recently, I finished the great book How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens. I had bought this book years ago, but didn't take it very seriously. This time I read it determined to learn all I can and to put it's wisdom into practice.

The book is called "How To Take Smart Notes" but it could have been called "How to Read as a Writer" or "How to Get the Most Out of What You Study." It's not just a book about note taking, it's a book about learning and developing strong study habits. It's already revolutionized the way I read and think about knowledge.

What follows isn't so much a review of the book, as just some general advice I'd give to someone who wants to get the most out of their study. I'm just acknowledging that most of this stuff came from that one book. If you are interested in getting the most out of your study, I recommend it. It is a heavy lift, but it's worth it.

I wake up fairly early every day and the first thing that I do is read. I go to my study (which happens to be right across the street from my house) where I can read and study without any distractions. I can read and study there for two to three hours. Usually, my only break is to go get a cup of coffee when that runs out.

You might think that this is a chore or a drudgery but you would be wrong. I actually have to make myself stop and do other things, and find myself pulled back into study throughout the day. 

My suggestion to anyone wanting to develop in their studies is to focus on certain habits:

I rarely force myself to read anything. I mostly follow my interests in my reading. When reading one book becomes a chore, I set it down and pick up another book.

One think I have done to kind of hack my interest is to keep a personal knowledge management library in an app called Obsidian. (Nothing special about this app, you could do the same thing in any note taking app with links.) I keep a linked list of things I'm interested in, things I need to write and questions I want answered, and then I generally read books that answer those questions.

As I read, I write down more questions, and then as my study answers those questions, I write notes for them. At any point, I might be interested in a dozen or more topics, and I'm reading about those topics.

Those topics might be "What does 1 Peter 5:1-4 teach?" or "What is the best way to study?" or "What does the Bible teach about church leadership?" As I read, I'm taking notes, answering questions, closing some lines of inquiry and starting up new ones. The end result of this is study becomes a self-feeding cycle which is never done and is almost never boring. 

Now, of course, I have deadlines and priorities. (As a pastor I have to write three sermons every week, so that directs my study.) I am not free to just study anything. But I do jump around from one topic and interest to another using this system and it tends to work out.

If you want to study regularly, another thing to consider is your setup. You want to make it as easy as possible to study. I think there are six essential to this:

The room where I study is a distraction free zone. I do not even bring my phone in there. I do not have a computer in there that is capable of getting on distracting sites. It is just a place to study and to write. A place to focus.

The tools I use for study are distraction free tools. I prefer to read on either a paper book or a kindle - because neither has notifications. I take my notes either on pen and paper or on my remarkable tablet because they offer no distractions. Kill the distractions if you want to get anything meaningful done in your study.

A second thing you need when you study is good lighting. If you are going to read all the time, it's going to start to effect your eyes. Decent reading lights are something that a lot of people don't think about but they do make studying much easier over time.

3. A comfortable seat and desk

If you are going to spend significant time writing, finding a comfortable seat desk is essential. Neither has to be fancy or expensive, they just need to be somewhere you can sit for several hours comfortably.

You need to pick up a couple of inexpensive book stands for your desk. You will thank me later. The type I use costs $6 each, weigh almost nothing and are easy to carry in my backpack. I usually keep three on my desk so I can hold my Bible open as well as two books I'm reading.

Book stands serve several purposes:

You should always read with a pen and paper in hand. Writing in the margins of your books and highlighting is useless. There is a better way and all it requires is a pen you like and plenty of paper. 

Here is how you use it...

Most people have heard the advice "read with a pen and paper in hand." But most people have no idea what do actually do with that advice. (I know that I have read multiple books every month since I was seventeen and only recently developed a systemized way of getting the most out of what I read.)

Here are the four things you need to do as you read:

You can buy a divided notebook, you can use a stack of legal pads, you can keep a bunch of index cards in some kind of index card folder. You can do what I do and use a digital notebook. The form doesn't matter. What matters is that you have one place for the notes for each book you are reading. 

2. Have a page for each chapter

Whenever you start a chapter or a section, start a new page. At the top of the page, write the chapter title and the page number of that chapter. (This will help you if you want to cite this later, and should make more sense in a second.)

Your goal as you read is not to record a bunch of quotes. You can write down quotes if they are excellent, but that shouldn't be the bulk of your notes.

Your goal is to summarize the argument you are reading in your own words. You read a paragraph or two, and then you write down on your notes what that paragraph is saying in your own words.

If the paragraph is obvious or frivolous, skip this step. But when you are done with a chapter, you should have notes that sum the chapter up.

These are what Ahrens calls "Literature Notes." I actually take the time to type my literature notes into my knowledge management system at the end of the day. I have one file for each book I'm reading, and use headings to separate the chapters. This way I can look back over that book's notes and quickly get caught up with what it was saying.

The final step is...

Remember how I said I keep a linked list of things I'm interested in and questions I want answered? If my reading fills can fill in that "second brain" then I write new notes (always in my own words) from what I'm reading. I can always link back to the literature note to see where those ideas came from.

These notes (which Ahren's calls "Permanent Notes") are the goal. They become the building blocks for my writing. (Working like this makes writing papers easy). I simply take a bunch of related notes, outline them, copy them in that order into a new document and that is my rough draft.

I can measure my study productivity by how many of these permanent notes I'm writing. If I write six a day, six days a week - that's 36 useful pieces of writing I'm producing every week and more than 1,600 a year. 

If each of those notes is about 200 words long, then that is about 320,000 words written every year. (A typical doctoral dissertation is around 100,000 words.) If I do this for the rest of my life, I'll have over 65,000 notes in my "second brain" by the time I am 80. That will translate (no doubt) to some interesting books, sermon series, and courses.

Here is the thing: working like this is fun. I could actually see myself doing this for decades to come. It's not at all hard.