Continuing to tweak my reading process

As I mentioned a few weeks ago about my use of ElevenReader, and more recently when I shared my notes from the book “Cues”, I’ve really been working to refine how I read and take notes.

My core reading process has always been pretty solid, but I was soft on the work that should be done before and after reading a book. I’m now spending about 10–15 on a few things before I start a new book, and then a bit more time after to get my notes in good shape.

Here’s how it looks today:

Get the book

As I mentioned in that ElevenReader article, my first job is to download the book and convert it to epub so that I can use it anywhere, forever. Whether or not I stick with ElevenReader in the long run, I want to make sure the books are in a format that I truly own. This has been kind of a pain to get set up, but I’m so glad I’ve gone through the effort.

Add the Table of Contents to Obsidian

Before I start reading the book, I take a few minutes to lay out the table of contents in Obsidian (my note-taking tool of choice). This gives me a rough idea of where the book will be going, and also saves me a bit of time when processing my highlights post-read.

Add the author/title to Anki

I put the author and title in my Anki flashcards so I can work to memorize that pair. I still struggle with being put on the spot with “what are you reading these days?”, so this helps a…