How I capture and organize notes from books, articles, and more
Four tools and the databases I use to store and refer back to content with.
Hey there, it’s Meighan! Welcome to ⚙️Ops+Bots my newsletter where I share insight into technology, creating better systems, and running an online business.
Some housekeeping before we get started:
For paid subscribers: this Thursday, February 1st at 3:30PM ET, is our very first office hours! Watch this space for more info! But save the date if you’d like to join live.
If you missed it, I’ll be raising the pricing for the newsletter tomorrow Jan 30th. If you join before then you’ll be locked into the current pricing. By becoming a paying subscriber you get access to subscriber only posts, exclusive workshops, work sessions, and our upcoming interview series with makers, creators, and small business owners.
Please note there are often affiliate links in my posts. I may get a credit or earn money from your purchase. I only ever share affiliate links to products I believe in and have used.
Today, I want to share the tools I use that continually help me improve my reading retention, take notes, and manage and capture important content I consume online so I can refer back to it. I hope what I share today can offer a few tips to help you, because what good is reading if we don’t retain it or can’t refer back to it when we need it?
Analog to digital system
I’ve always been interested in saving things I read and am inspired by. When I was in my twenties and early thirties I carried a 4x6 notebook with me everywhere I went. I used this to save notes, cut outs from magazines, clips of fabric, music I wanted to listen to, stores I wanted to check out, and even websites! These notebooks were my world, and were my portable little knowledge bases.
Collecting things in analog changed for me around 2008 when I bought my first iPhone, and then the process was essentially obsolete by 2010 when I discovered Evernote. Their web clipper was top notch and showed me the magic of filing digital information and notes for reference. Search? Yes, please.
Over the past decade and a bit I’ve used all kinds of digital tools, but I always seem to come back to Notion. I started using Notion in 2017, when introduced to it by Marie Poulin. I come back to Notion time and time again because of its databases. They are powerful and work well with my brain. They just make sense to me.
I also finally admitted to myself last year that Notion is tech debt for me. I’ve used it for so long and it has so much information in it that it simply doesn’t make sense to try and make another tool do what it does for me.
New found focus
I don’t know how to say I’m a voracious learner without sounding like a navel gazing nerd 🤓. I had undiagnosed ADHD so school was always hard for me, paying attention and actually retaining information was almost physically painful for me. When I discovered the Internet, and realized I could learn at my own speed and whims I was hooked.
Going on ADHD medication changed my life overnight. This isn’t hyperbole. I went from only reading maybe 2-3 books a year to over 60+. (I have so much grief about being diagnosed late in life.) And I was able to focus on things in a way I never had.
With this new found focus, my systems have also improved enormously. I no longer hoard content and never look at it. I now have a system that allows me to save content and a process to refer back to it over and over. This has become an invaluable tool for me especially in my work and creating content.
Ok, so enough reminiscing about days gone by let’s jump right in and talk about the tools I use to capture content, and then the databases I use.
Readwise + Reader
I discovered Readwise a few years ago when my friend Meagan Beltekoglu mentioned it, and I’ve been sold ever since. They offer two main products: Readwise and Reader.
The original product Readwise collects digital highlights across various mediums: books, articles, and tweets (we’ll cover Reader below.) Every highlight and note I make in my Kindle is captured automatically and imported into a Notion database thanks to their integration.
Over the two years I’ve used it, it’s helped me capture countless ideas and notes to share or reference in the content I write and the products I create. It’s also enormously helpful to be able to go back and reference a highlight from a book I read a year ago -- there’s no having to search through highlights in the Kindle.
I recently ran a workshop where I discovered a book last minute, and being able to gather notes and thoughts straight into a database not only saved me a ton of time, it made my workshop much more valuable.
At a little under $100 a year it’s worth every single penny because it saves me countless hours and makes reading even more enjoyable. You also get their save for later app, Reader (which I’ll get into in a moment).
My only wish is that Kindle played nicer with it. The notes get imported to Notion with a link to the location in Kindle, but it doesn’t actually work - or I’ve been unable to make it work. If you have a workaround, please let me know!
Hands down, if you read a lot on the Kindle, Readwise is a must have.
Readwise’s Reader
Readwise rolled out their save for later app Reader at the end of 2022, and it’s something I can’t live without. I was able to use the beta version before it went public since I was a Readwise user and it’s just gotten better and better.
Because I’ve used save for later apps for so long, I’ve established a habit of anything I find online that I’m remotely interested in goes straight into Reader. This saves me from being distracted or ever having more than 5-7 tabs open. Any more tabs and I get anxious.
There’s many things I love about Reader, here’s just a handful:
Auto-highlight: Hands down the auto highlight is my fav. This allows you to save an article and highlight right there on the website, those highlights are saved within Reader and the Notion Readwise database. You also have the ability to share a link with those highlights - this is great to send to clients to give them high level takeaways.
Ghostreader: It’s a bot powered by ChatGPT which gives you the option to summarize or ask the document questions, among other prompts. This is incredibly helpful for papers or long form articles I’ve saved. It allows me to grasp the content quicker and actually interact with it. Such a lifesaver for an ADHD brain.
Listen to articles: This is a little clunky (it will read the ads) but it’s super helpful when I’m doing the dishes or knitting.
Organize by content: Articles, books, emails, PDF, tweets, and videos all have dedicated sections outside of your inbox. This makes it much easier for me to find things I need quickly - although their search is pretty helpful too!
I confess I don’t use its tagging system, but there’s a reason for this. Items I save in my Reader that I refer to over and over again, get filed in one of my databases I cover below. These databases have tags and properties that allow me to file and find information quickly.
I try not to spend any time digitally organizing anything that I don’t use often - I find this to be a waste of time.
I’ve used save for later apps for over a decade and in my opinion they’re one of the smartest tools to use today. If $100 is too much of a commitment for Readwise (it comes with Reader), check out Instapaper or Pocket. Both great save for later apps - and they do offer paid tiers with more features.
Two more tools for content management
Two extensions I can’t live without:
Save to Notion: I prefer to use this 3rd party app than Notion’s native clipper. It’s just better. It gives you the ability to file content to different places and capture various data depending on what you need. It’s free, and I’ve used it for years.
GoFullPage: This extension allows me to clip entire web pages and turn them into PDFs or images. Great for grabbing inspiration.
Core Notion databases
Ok, so now let’s chat about the databases I use to help me stay sane and organized with all of this content. One thing I’ve learned with Notion is that less databases are always better. But each of the below databases have very different use cases, and therefore have different properties to help me file content. (I’ve tried to combine them and it’s been a nightmare.)
I’m a stickler about not using my Notion as a digital dumping ground. Anything that goes in there has some sort of value to it. It has to be something I will refer back to at some point. I tend to use Reader a little bit less rigidly and just throw things in there.
Anything I refer to often in my Readwise database and Reader, gets moved to one of my three core databases for saving content:
Reading + Resource Library (My Readwise database is connected to this.)
Inspiration
Daily Notes
Let’s go over each one; and how they all work with each other.
Reading + Resource Library
This database has evolved over the years, it was three different databases at one point, but as I said above I’ve learned less is more with databases.
This database is used in a few different ways for me:
Reading: Any book I take a lot of notes in and use in writing or product development/education goes in here. My Readwise database is connected to it as a relation. I use this as a place to gather the notes and highlights from what I originally captured in Kindle. This allows me to flesh out my ideas further without disturbing my original notes.
Learning: This is where I take notes for any learning I’m doing with courses, professional development, etc. I also store podcast notes in here (I really wish someone would create a tool to create notes for pods!). This has been so helpful, because I’ll often take a course and completely forget what I learned, but will need to refer back to it. Now having those notes on hand is a huge time saver.
Resources: This is a little meta because the above are also resources, but I needed a type for articles and papers I refer to often. Things I refer to often in Reader go in here.
Inspiration
This database is for inspiration I find online such as design and swipe. Think sales pages, email copy, color, great product ideas, etc.
I use this database for inspiration when I’m feeling like I need a boost. It’s also great for market research to see what the trends are in design and product development. This is more of a storage area for things I see that I know I want to refer back to - so it’s not as interactive as my Resource library. But it’s useful and something I’ve had for years to get creative juices flowing.
Daily Notes
This is my capture database. I use this for a variety of notetaking:
Notes: Important info I need to capture but it doesn’t have a home yet: general notes, brainstorming, etc.
Ideas: Exactly that - ideas I come up with so I can revisit later
Bot notes: This is a system Thomas J Frank created - it takes your audio notes, runs them through ChatGPT, and creates an outline. I don’t take audio notes a lot - but when I do I love this process. HIGHLY recommend setting it up.
This allows me to capture things in the moment without losing them or storing them in Reader when they don’t really belong there. Think of this as a digital post-it pad - each page is a post-it. When I review the notes I then archive them or file them in one of the databases above.
My overall process
This has taken me years to get to where I am, but I find I’m still refining and figuring out new ways to capture and refer to content. The thing I find most helpful is to just keep using the tools. I’ve found it’s like a muscle that needs to be built over time.
The most important thing I have learned is to not save everything. Only save things that make you feel something - that make you think or give you a new perspective or help validate an idea you have. If you keep coming back to something, save it.
If you need some help figuring out how to process your own content I’d love to help you design a system. My 1:1 Strategy Session is perfect for this!
I love the idea of the Reading + Resource Library! My brain tends to keep the two separate, but it makes so much more sense to combine them.
I have some guilt about courses I've purchased over the years and never finished (or even logged in to some of them!). I'm working on creating a "menu" with URLs and login info, and I'll have to try out the idea of adding other (smaller) things from my bookmark/highlight app that fit (I use Raindrop.io, which has been great and I'm resisting the pull of Readwise, haha).