read, reflect, write (or at least that’s the idea)
Intro
I meant to, always I guess, write up the process I use for taking what I read, adding what I thought about and then figuring out how to get that (waves hands) out there. And now two people in one week have asked for it, specifically, so here we are. If you are just interested in the workflow, scroll down! There is a bit here at the beginning that I think might be helpful, but honestly might not.
origin story:
First I should note that this is all connected to my desire to a) write down everything I loved as I was reading and b) NOT go back to books and articles when I was using them to write essays (and later other things). I did not have my own computer at uni (I am a dinosaur, people only just started to), so I was lugging books, notes and snacks with me to the computer lab anytime I needed to write anything. And time spent flipping through books looking for "that quote" was time I was stuck in that (very nice but still too bright and not terribly comfy) lab. So, enter my 3x5 notecards (told you I was old). Essentially I would use a set of 3x5 notecards as a standard way of recording quotes and thoughts:
1) one side had the quote from the book or paper with a full page number, book title, etc basically everything I needed for a citation.
2) The other side had a general first impression set of notes and then (sometimes) a sort of thematic impression (ie if a poem made me think of religion, I would specifically note that differently than an interpretation of the actual words on the card).
3) As the thematic impressions started reoccuring, I eventually developed a system where I would highlight the top of the card in a colour that corresponded to that theme, and then group them all together (I had a special card box for this, it was a THING).
That worked quite well, really, all the way through my Masters. First, again, I am not super young and most of my reading was on paper, so I had to make notes anyway and second, the workflow helped me get all my quotes and thoughts all grouped together. At one point, I was able to stack all the appropriate thematic notes and then literally have it next to me as I wrote an essay on the computer, turning them over one at a time and adding them in as appropriate. It really cut down on drafting.
a free picture of someone writing on notecards, pretty sure mine are buried in a box somewhere though, picture by Matt Ragland
As my workload changed and my reading habits changed (hello ebooks, my precious method for carrying literally 1000s of books around at the same time), this system sort of died out. I still kept favourite quotes in a notebook, because words are awesome, but I had devolved to a sort of mishmash of writing some notes by hand, trying to higlight PDFs in various apps (this was always dire) and then ended up dumping some of it (the bits I could remember to transfer) into, eventually, a database that had the same headings as my old notecards. I loved this database! I could scan it by tag or note and group things for papers! But all the work before the database was truly a mess. Articles were in random spots in download folders or on my phone; books were stacked in various rooms in the house or sometimes on the Kindle, and transferring my annotations and highlights was messy and manual.
the current context (nearly at the process I swear)
Eventually I settled on a system that had me reading/annotating/highlighting and manually inputting them into that database. At first this was in Notion. It worked pretty well! (Also Notion is very pretty.) As I was transferring the highlights and notes over, I took a moment to reflect and then added citation data and etc. When it came time to write, I would sort by tag and tada! all the stuff I could possibly use was there. I was happy with this for quite a while, but then I saw two things:
a) Readwise launched a "I swear this can read bascially EVERYTHING" app called Reader. (This includes PDFs, webpages, YouTube and dodgy pictures of highlighted books of poetry I take with my phone. It is basically magic.)
b) Obsidian launched canvas, which allows you to sort of actually physically join your digital notes together (not tags! arrows!) in a way that feels beautifully intuitive.
So, the same year I decided to move to Squarespace because I didn't have time to cope with back-end website stuff, I also decided to scrape off my vague memories of CSS and teach myself more than almost no Markdown to get a handle on Obsidian as my new "home for everything".
I am kind of loving it. So here, without further ado, is what I do as a workflow from "read it" to "want to use it for some way in writing" (with a side line in "just like this sentence and want it somewhere").
the actual process
My actual process now includes a paid for set of apps (Readwise/Reader), but this could be replicated without those apps, it would just take a bit more figuring out how (and probably more manual inputting and etc).
reading
As soon as I know that I want something that I am reading (or watching! Reader really does work on YouTube) to "stick", I import it into Reader. This is not 100% perfect (Taylor and Francis, in particular, seems to have questionable metadata), but it does mean that I don't do a lot of reading and then re-reading (unless I want to). Reader makes it incredibly easy to pull something in, and I then either start highlighting wherever I am (my preferences for webpages) or spend some time pulling it into Reader proper (my preference for PDFs or anything that will take longer than five minutes or so to read).
Screenshot of Reader. Genuinely, Reader is SO easy to use. Also, everyone should read Maha and Mia’s amazing work. You can find it yourself here.
I do two things immediately after I decide I want it in Reader:
1) Tag the document itself with whichever of my (ever growing) list of tags fits
2) Check the metadata (it's amazing how bad we, humanity, are at this sort of thing. Even HUGE publishers, again, looking at you Taylor and Francis)
This means that I can definitely find the piece again and that if I decide to write about it, I won't have to spend time tracking down author and etc for citations (or, worse, forget what was someone else’s idea and what was my own). After that, I go on my merry way, reading and highlighting (and trying to tag each highlight and, if needed, add a note). These notes and highlights all get compiled inside the Reader/Readwise ecosystem.
Reflecting
After the first read, a key part of my workflow is a sort of reflection point, where I return to what it was I decided was important enough to highlight and annotate and explore it again (often asking Kylene Beers’ key question: what changed, challenged or confirmed your thinking? More on that can be found in her book here). At this point, I use the amazing way that Readwise (the companion app that Reader uses to manage the highlights, tags and notes I create) connects to Obsidian to create two different times to bump back into the quote or concept I was interested in.The first is when the current crop of notes and highlights gets imported (I have this set to happen daily). At that point Obsidian creates a landing page per book/article/etc for all the highlights and notes associated with it. I tidy up the page, sometimes add extra thoughts and also often decide I need to reconfigure my output set up from Readwise (luckily this is simple, if addictive). This bit is mostly making sure I haven't highlighted an incomplete sentence in my sleep (it happens) or that the metadata isn't super wrong (again, I ask T&F, WTH is wrong with your metadata?). This is set up so that if I go back and highlight more in a document, it gets added on to the end of the note, keeping everything quite tidy.
A screenshot of the Obsidian “book page” for Cobb and Krownapple’s brilliant book on belonging and dignity. Check it out here
I used to dump all of this work direct into a table based around the book/whatever I was reading, linked to tags that connected that piece to others. Now that Readwise and Obsidian (between them) auto-generate those lovely book/article "pages" in my vault, I don't do that anymore. Instead, I start my second reflection point (usually after I start thinking I want to write or produce something) by creating a canvas around a topic. This allows me to do a few things:
1) Separate out what I actually think goes together vs what has a common tag (or is in the same book).
2) Start stacking and drawing arrows between ideas, texts and quotes and anything else I import into Obsidian.
3) Spend a lot of time going “ooooooh, I wonder if” as a new iteration of what I thought I was going to write about occurs to me.
A screenshot of the very start of an Obsidian canvas for my thoughts on “community”. In addition to Cobb and Krownapple’s book, adrienne maree brown’s amazing Emergent Strategy is also featured. You can check that out here.
I search my entire Obsidian vault (and thus all the book and article pages AND any other notes I may have created) by tag and start dragging and connecting things looking for themes or insights that come when you start shoving ideas up against one another. After I start getting a handle on what might be going on with all the "stuff", I feel much more confident that I have a good sense of what I actually want to write. I used to be, very much, a person that had enormous changes from draft to draft, but that just takes so much extra time, and I felt I missed things. I especially felt I missed being more aware of the breadth of my reading and incorporating more diverse perspectives in what I wrote up. This way, I really get a handle on what is contributing to my thinking and am much more organised about the eventual point I am working towards.
nearly there
After this, the only thing to do is an iteration of my original table in Notion, on its own page for the potential piece of writing. However, this table (it seems; it is early days) works much, much more like my notecards used to, as a vital bit of my writing prep, instead of as a sort of catch all database that has lots of “extra”. Now, I only add in direct quotes or key areas to summarise that surface via my work on the canvas. I have found that one canvas might generate several different potential pieces of writing, each with its own specific page and table. The table is also often more direct, with things I know I want to “centre” in the writing and other bits I want to refer to or synthesise. This means, that when I go to write now, I can scroll down the table and just add things into the paper or presentation as I go, with a second monitor taking the place of my stack of notecards from years ago.
the new table format! With Obsidian, instead of writing all the metadata down in the reference column, I just link back to that book “note” page
well done, you’ve reached the end!
And that's it. Over 1500 words on a process that used to, literally, fit on a 3x5 inch notecard. But here we are. In case it is of interest, the bit of css script I use to create my Obsidian pages layout with the nice headings and etc is called “Dashboard ++”. The blog post written by the person who put it together is here. I also use the “banners”, “advanced tables” and “tags” plug-ins frequently. For the future, I am going to work at creating a template for the “starter note” for the writing, so that I don’t have to fiddle about too much with the table and headings. I also want to get good at using Dataview and a few other plugins that do a lot of heavier lifting in Obsidian (AND, of course, keep playing with my Readwise export settings. As an aside, if you try out this workflow, I highly recommend using the “Readwise sync” note as I find it invaluable for knowing which notes I have updated recently.) Hopefully this helps some of you experimenting with this sort of process. (Even if it is only an example of what you aren’t interested in doing!) What do you do to get what you’re reading and what that makes you reflect on, into your writing?