How I'm Taking Notes

My reason is existential. By writing the things that pop into my head down into my notebook, I teach my brain that those ideas - my ideas - are worthy of being written down at all.

Each note becomes another brick of the house I’m building, a monument to a simple yet elusive truth: that what I notice is worth noticing.

Writing a diary made me happier; keeping things-to-do lists made me more reliable (which, in turn, made those around me happier), and I learned never to go to a doctor’s appointment, or a meeting of any kind, without taking notes of what I heard. But there appeared to be creative benefits too. Every artist I met seemed to have a sketchbook to hand,... See more

- Keep notes on what you read. You can do this however you like. It doesn't need to be a big production or a complicated system. Just do something to emphasize the important points and passages.