Time traveling through your notes

I’ve only been taking solid daily notes for about four years now; that may sound like a lot, but compared to many folks it’s not much at all. One of those that has been doing this far longer than I have is Ryan Holiday, some of whose books you’ve likely read.

He recently shared how his note-taking habit can feel like time-traveling, and I’m a bit jealous of how far back he’s able to go. For example, here is Holiday talking about “The Great Gatsby”:

One of my favorite books to re-read is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ​The Great Gatsby​. I love ​Gatsby​ not just because it’s an incredible book, one of the great works of the English language. I love it because it was one of the first books I ever loved. I was assigned to read and write an essay on ​Gatsby​ in my sophomore English class and I still have that copy. So when I re-read ​Gatsby​, I’m not just talking to Nick Carroway and Jay Gatsby and Meyer Wolfsheim and Scott Fitzgerald himself, I am also talking to 16-year-old me. I can see the food I spilled while I read it at the kitchen table of my parent’s house. I can see my teenage handwriting in the margins.

While I have some notes that go further back, they’re very limited and scattered. Even so, having four years worth of notes gives me quite a lot to go back to, particularly when revisiting a book from a few years back ( which is something…