“Either you’re a prisoner of your material or you’re the master of your material.”
Robert Greene
If you’re reading this, I’m sure you either read a lot or would like to read more. I firmly believe that reading and learning from someone else’s experience is one of the best ways to get ahead. Sadly, most people don’t feel that way. According to recent surveys, the average American reads four books a year. Reading doesn’t have to be a painful activity though. When you find the topics you love, it’s a joy and I’ve yet to find a better way to learn than reading books.
The problem with reading is that it’s hard to retain information to use later. For this purpose, I use an adapted version of the notecard system. Numerous writers and researchers have used this system throughout history, so I’m by no means taking credit for it. This is the tool I use most when I write and if I ever achieve any material success, I owe it partially to the notecard system. Since it revolutionized my work, and the work of more talented people than me, I decided to write everything I know about it. In this article, I want to review its different parts so that you can make your personalized version and never forget anything you read again.
What’s a Notecard System
The notecard system is a tool for remembering facts. Its main purpose is to store the main ideas and takeaways from books. I use the system for quotes, which I turn into life advice articles, but you can use it to capture anything you want, such as jokes, movie scenes, or stories. The system has a couple of distinct features that make it incredibly versatile. Although you could use a digital tool to preserve your notes, when I think of the notecard system, I think of an analog tool. There’s a good reason for that. The amount of flexibility you get with an analog system is unmatched. You can pair notecards together however you please. Although I organize cards by a common theme, I’m constantly moving them around and this is something that a digital tool like Notion or Evernote can’t replicate.
This is what you need to make your notecard system:
- Index cards: these usually come in packs of a hundred and you can get them in different sizes. I like using the smallest ones (3×5 inches) because I don’t need more real estate than that to write short quotes. You may require bigger cards depending on your needs, so bear that in mind. Index cards are inexpensive, so you can always experiment with different brands and sizes until you find the ones you like best.
- Index card dividers: dividers help you organize your notecards in alphabetical order. Before that, you need to classify your notes into common themes. I’m going to be talking about this at length later, but the idea is to have everything sorted out so that you can find the notes you need quickly.
- Pens: I tried everything, including Sharpies and Parker pens. My favorites pens to use with my notecard system are Sharpie S-Gel pens. They’re easy to read which is convenient when you’re reviewing dozens of notes at a time.
- Storage: finally, you’ll need some sort of box or container to store all the notecards you’ve written. When you first start, you’ll only have a couple of notecards, but depending on how much you read or the scope of the project you’re working on, those might turn into hundreds. My recommendation is to find the biggest box you can find. When I was starting, I made my own out of cardboard and tape, but I’m considering upgrading to something more professional soon.
Why You Need a Notecard System
I started using the notecard system because I was forgetting key ideas from books soon after reading them. Your job as a reader is to extract the information that resonates to use it in some way. Otherwise, you’re passively consuming content. You want to engage with the information and have some sort of dialogue with the author. This is important because you want to interact with those ideas, make them your own, and store them somewhere safe where you can retrieve them when necessary. That’s what the notecard system is for.
Once you have your notecard system, part of the fun is moving things around. There’s a physicality to this system and that is something digital tools can’t match. Laying notecards that are somewhat related on a table and moving them around helps you see the information you’ve captured in a new way. It also helps you make connections. This is the system’s best feature.
Who Uses the Notecard System
Several writers have used the notecard system throughout history. Some people refer to it as “Zettelkasten” (the term means “slipbox” in German) and it became so effective, that it inspired the creation of Wikis. The system was developed in the 1950s by a researcher called Niklas Luhmann who used it to write 50 books and 550 articles. His research consisted of over 90,000 notecards and Luhmann credited it as the driving force behind his prolific writing. If you want to learn more, there’s a book about Zettelkasten titled How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. Then I started hearing about contemporary writers using the notecard system, mainly Ryan Holiday, who learned it from Robert Greene. Holiday also taught it to his researcher, Billy Oppenheimer, who used it to write a popular newsletter.
Interestingly, many luminaries from the film industry use some variation of the notecard system. It’s so hard to keep track of all the moving parts in a movie that I don’t think this is a coincidence. In his book Cinema Speculation, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino mentions that he kept a notecard system growing up which he used to learn about movies. Tarantino also mentions that film director Peter Bogdanovich wrote reviews in notecards. I recently found out Bogdanovich posted those opinions online and you can find them on a website called Letterboxd.
Film editor Tony Zhou and director Taylor Ramos used the tool to make video essays. On a post-mortem where they dissected the process of making video essays, the pair referred to their system. Their process involved writing the main point of an essay on different cards. They would then try different combinations until they figured out the most solid argument for their video. Similarly, Academy award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance uses notecards to write his films. Film editor Brent White also uses index cards to keep track of movie scenes.
Someone who used index cards as well was former US president Ronald Reagan, who kept a collection of 3×5 notecards with one-liners. Whenever he had to write a speech, he’d combine ideas from those index cards. As you can see, the system is so versatile you can use it for a variety of disciplines.
How to Determine What to Read
Most of the notecards I have come from books, but a handful of them come from tweets, podcasts, or YouTube videos. The quality of the content you consume will determine the quality of your notecards. So how do you determine what you pay attention to and what you ignore? In the case of books, I use what author Morgan Housel calls the “wide funnel, tight filter” strategy. This means I start as many books as possible, but only finish the ones I love. You learn to discern the important books from the unimportant ones by asking yourself a simple question: “Will I still care about this in a year?”. Ideally, the information you read will never expire, so you always want to focus on evergreen content. This is why I read books but not newspapers or magazines.
How to Create Your Own Notecard System (in 4 Easy Steps)
You don’t need many items to start a notecard system and it can transform the kind of work you produce. It’s asymmetric in that regard: the price of admission is small when you consider the potential rewards. Once you have all the items you need, this is how you create your notecard system.
Step 1: Read and Highlight
When you read a lot, you undoubtedly come across ideas that resonate and that you don’t want to forget. That’s what the notecard system is for. The first step is to highlight everything you consider important and that you think you might use later. You’re not doing anything else in this step, just singling out the most important parts. I like reading on Kindle, but this also works for physical books. The good thing about Kindle is that you can find all your highlighted passages online, so transcribing them is often easier than with physical books. It’s worth mentioning that not every book will produce notecards.
Step 2: Wait
This might be the most important part of the process. After reading and highlighting, you don’t want to start transcribing immediately because you haven’t had enough time to digest the information you read. Time works as a filter in the sense that it helps you determine what’s worth keeping and what isn’t. There have been many instances when I highlighted something, but by the time I came back to it, the passage in question did nothing for me. This isn’t a tragedy but a gift. By waiting a few days, you’re saving yourself a lot of time. Many things that seem important will become less so over time. For that purpose, you want to put away the book for a few days.
Step 3: Transcribe
This can be the most physically painful part of the process. It’s important that you only transcribe what resonates. If you don’t want to take the time to transcribe it, that the idea isn’t worth transcribing at all. Only include one idea per notecard. If you only take anything away from the creation of a notecard system, make it that one. The system is versatile and forgiving if you make mistakes. That said, never write more than one idea per notecard. This matters because you want to move ideas around to make connections. Include more than one idea per notecard and you won’t be able to do that. If you can’t keep track of ideas the whole system falls apart. Underneath each idea write the author as well as the source where you took it from. Avoid using ideas if you can’t credit the person who wrote it.
Step 4: Label
Finally, you want to organize your system in such a way that you can find ideas when you need them. With this in mind, I like labeling ideas depending on the general theme they belong to. While you can have more than one theme per notecard, you should classify notecards alphabetically using the most prominent theme. I have entire sections of my notecard system devoted to topics such as happiness, freedom, wealth, death, or purpose, to name a few. Don’t get fancy with this step. After all, the goal is to be able to find ideas to use them later. Some ideas will belong to more than one category, so feel free to write more than one if it applies.
How I Use the Notecard System
I had no idea how I was going to use the notecard system when I started building it. I knew that making a system with ideas I’ve collected from my favorite books was invaluable. Over time, I started using the quotes I found to write articles. The notecard system is incredibly versatile and it’s up to you to figure out how to use it. That said, here’s how I use it as an example. Whenever I struggle with something I try to give myself advice using quotes from some of the world’s best thinkers. Some of those people include Morgan Housel, Mark Manson, Naval Ravikant, Marcus Aurelius, and Charlie Munger.
This led to the idea of writing a life advice column to help others who also feel lost. Instead of turning to sites like Quora or Reddit (where someone without credentials gives you their opinion based on their feelings), I’m using ideas from some of the world’s best thinkers. What better way to deal with my problems than by relying on time-tested tools such as philosophy or psychology? I’ve noticed that most of the people who are struggling with something are looking for solutions in the wrong places. In most cases, the solution you want can be found in a philosophy or psychology book. Of course, what you end up with might look completely different than my articles and that’s fine. The best part about the notecard system is that you can adapt it to your needs.
Books
Most of the notecards from my system come from books. I read most books on Kindle, so as I’m reading, I’m highlighting the parts that sound fascinating to me. The best thing about using a Kindle is that as soon as someone recommends a book to me, I can easily download it. If I’m unsure about the book in question, I can always download a sample to read the first couple of pages of it. As I start reading and highlighting, I’m not worried about how I’m going to be using those quotes and passages later. I’m just singling out the sections that seem remarkable. It could be anything: a story I want to retell, a quote I want to remember, or a poem that sounds beautiful.
The books I find fascinating, I summarize as I read. This helps me understand the book on a deeper level. So by the time I go back to transcribe my favorite quotes, I already know which my favorite parts were. The best part about these ideas you capture is that your brain inevitably starts making connections. The author never intended its audience to make those connections, but that’s how you make the material your own.
Reading on Kindle is great because the device syncs with the online app. So I can read a book, highlight everything that resonates, and then review my notes on the PC. As I go over my notes, it’s easier to pick the ones that will make it to the system. As I’m jumping from note to note, I’m asking myself how relevant that information I highlighted a couple of days ago really is. This goes back to the “wide funner, tight filter” strategy Morgan Housel uses. Some notes make the cut, but most of them don’t. Since transcribing notes takes physical and mental effort, this acts as a filter.
Podcasts
Let me start this section by saying that I don’t have the best way to grab quotes from podcasts. I’ve used the same podcast app for years (it’s called PocketCasts) and the developers have added several features since I started using it, including the ability to share specific parts of it. I think saving clips from podcasts is incredibly cumbersome and time-consuming. So this is what I do instead: I only listen to podcasts when I’m exercising and since I always have a computer nearby, whenever I hear a quote that stands out, I type it on Google. Usually, that leads to a page on Goodreads or a tweet on X. Sometimes, I don’t get anything, but even if I don’t, I have something to remember the quote in question.
For people who listen to podcast on the run, I don’t have a solution for you. Maybe there’s an app that makes it easier to save specific sections of an episode, but since I invested so much time on the app I’m using at the moment, I’m not eager to start all over again. I know some people write an idea, as well as a timestamp from an episode. That said, you have to go back to that episode and listen to it again in order to extract the eaxt quote which is too time-consuming.
Articles
I come across articles all the time, but I never read them right then and there. It took me years to figure this out and it’s still a work in progress. At first, I was using a save-for-later app called Instapaper. The app is amazing because it lets you save articles and you can access them later, even if you’re offline. So I used to save a bunch of articles and whenever I found myself with free time, I’d read a bunch of articles and highlight the parts that stood out. You can then access those highlights on any device where you have the app, but highlighting indiscriminately is a premium feature. Interestingly enough, the limited number of highlights forced me to really pay attention to how I use the feature.
The problem with Instapaper is that you have to use a phone, tablet, or computer to access it. The only screen I can spend hours on at this point in my life is the Kindle. I love the Kindle because it does one thing exceptionally well: reading. So at some point, I installed a browser extension called Send to Kindle for Google Chrome and this turns an article into an epub file and sends it automatically. Whenever I find myself reading an article I love, I send it to my Kindle. When I’m in between books, I check out a couple of articles and since I’m doing that on the Kindle, the process is the same as reading books.
Magazines
Every once in a while, I read a book or article that references a magazine and while I can find the magazine in question, I don’t have a great way to read them. Reading magazines on most devices is difficult because there are many distractions. I tried reading magazines on an old Amazon Fire tablet, but the experience was subpar. I’d love to read magazines on the Kindle, but they don’t handle PDF files well or their screens are so small that you find yourself zooming in and out constantly. Maybe I should try some of the newer Kindles (such as the Colorsoft or the Scribe), but I don’t know how much value I can get out of reading magazines, even if I enjoy the process.
Since I brought up the fact that most modern devices are distracting, I should also point out the fact that most magazines have ads in them. There are many magazines I’d like to check out at some point, but since I haven’t figured this out yet, few of my notes come from them.
Videos
I use YouTube a lot, so whenever I watch something that resonates, I move those ideas to my notecard system. This works similarly to how I transcribe articles, but since it’s difficult to work with audio, I usually use the transcript feature on YouTube. This is a godsend because you get a transcript of everything that was said on a given video. This is built right onto the app and you don’t need external resources to extract it or anything.
FAQ
Can I do this digitally?
You can try. I certainly have. Although it’s often easy to find what you’re looking for with digital tools, you can’t organize ideas however you want and that’s a big part of what makes the notecard system useful. As I said before, a big part of using an analog system is moving index cards around however you please. Unfortunately, there’s no way to do that using an app. Some people might solve this eventually, but in the meantime, I’m sticking to physical index cards.
What’s the system’s biggest downside?
Losing the notecard system would be a personal tragedy because transcribing notes is painful and time-consuming. Everyone using a notecard system should figure out how to back it up somehow: taking pictures, moving their notes to social media, saving everything on the cloud, and so on. Also, writing everything longhand can be physically painful at first or whenever you read something profound. I know a lot of people don’t like doing this and prefer digital tools, but that pain is necessary. After all, if you wouldn’t take a minute to write it down, why write it down in the first place?
Isn’t there an easier way?
Everything worthwhile requires some sort of sacrifice. In the case of the notecard system, you have to transcribe quotes by hand and storing them in large boxes is the price to pay to save some of the most important ideas you come across. As you capture more and more notes, the process can be cumbersome and even expensive, but I can assure you it’ll be worth it.
Will this work for me if I don’t do creative work?
Absolutely. Although most of the people who use the notecard system belong to creative fields, you can adapt it so that it suits your needs. You don’t have to be a filmmaker, writer, editor, or former US president to take advantage of the system.
How often do you review your cards?
I do it at least once a week when I need to write an article for the newsletter. Nevertheless, when I’m struggling with something specific, I tend to go over specific sections of the system. Since I took down notes on topics that interest me, I feel like I’m seeking advice from the world’s best thinkers. And the best part is that I don’t have to pay anything and I don’t have to leave the house to do so.
How much time do you spend reading every day?
I read for half an hour every day while I have breakfast. This is a great way to start my day. Also, I’ve noticed that if I don’t read first thing in the morning, something might happen later on an I don’t get to read at all. On most days, I read an hour before bed too and that’s one of my favorite times of the day. Losing myself in a non-fiction book for an hour feels great to the point that I forget about the passage of time.
How many index cards does your system have?
I have no idea, but I think it must have around 700 or so. It’s worth pointing out that I’ve been using the system for around a year or so. At first, I was adding quotes every day because I went back to some of the books I had read and that took a long time. Now I add a handful of quotes per week and that feels right. I rather add a few life-changing quotes every week, that a bunch of mediocre quotes every day. This is one of those cases of quality over quantity.
What do you recommend to beginners?
Buy a handful of index cards and a pen you like and store them far away from you that you have to get up whenever you want to write something down. If you’re willing to stand up and walk a few steps because you read an idea so powerful that you’re willing to physically move to write it down, then that idea is worth a lot. I do that all the time and it works. You’d think that adding another obstacle makes everything harder, but it’s the contrary. When you don’t mind getting up and moving to retrieve those tools, then you have something valuable on your hands.
Conclusion
If there’s something I wish I knew before starting on this journey is this: reading a lot of books isn’t enough. You have to engage with the content of the books you read because otherwise, you’ll soon forget it. How can you produce something new if you don’t even remember key ideas from books you spend dozens of hours reading? Your job as a reader isn’t just to passively consume content. You want to make that content your own so that you can produce something meaningful and unique. Everyone who reads a lot wishes they could remember the most important facts about their favorite books. With the notecard system, you can. As in many things in life, we wish we had started sooner, but as the Chinese proverb says, “the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the second best time is now.”
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