taking Note: How Note-taking Improves

ReadingAn Interview with Shane Parrish

Posted by Taylor Pipes on 06 May 2016
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This post is part of an ongoing series, Taking Note, which outlines the history and styles of
note taking. Throughout the coming weeks, well explore how taking notes can improve your
creativity and all the work you set out to accomplish.
Whether you read for information or entertainment, reading well depends on your engagement
with the material. Just ask Shane Parrish, founder of the Farnam Street website
and newsletter. Farnam Street is geared towards helping people read better, and over the past
few years, it has attracted an audience of voracious bibliophiles, CEOs, and knowledge
workers, all hoping to get more out of what they read.
In this interview, Shane talked with us about the importance of separating signal from noise
finding the things that truly matter in a sea of distraction. He also sings the praises of active
note-taking, asking questions, drawing parallels, and connecting the dots to form new ideas
based on what you read. The art of taking notes is nothing new, but the approach that Shane
recommends may help you make those leaps in thought in a whole new way.
How do you find the content you read?
I like to make friends with the eminent dead, people like Benjamin
Franklin, Seneca, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, and David Foster Wallace. Well still be talking
about them in 50 years, 100 years, and 500 years, because they wrote about the fundamentals
of human nature. If Im going to spend time learning something, I want it to be as timeless as
possible.
Of course, you also need to know what to look for. But good content is not that hard to find. I
follow what Im interested in learningfor me, that ranges from philosophy to biology,
chemistry to psychology, economics to art. If I read something and I like it, I find the reference
section in the back of the book is an incredibly helpful place to find something else to read on
the same subject.
Im also incredibly fortunate. I believe that Farnam Street readers are the smartest readers on
the Internetwhen they send me book recommendations, I pay attention. I probably have
more books than Ill ever get to, and Im OK with that. Having these books reminds me of my

ignorance, and also excites my intellectual curiosity. Theres always something new to pursue. I
just keep pushing and digging deeper into the things Im interested in, and that seem timeless
and useful.
Are you consuming a broad range of content? For example, do you read books, articles,
newspapers, and magazines?
Im promiscuousI go where the knowledge is. What matters to me is that the benefit matches
the level of effort required for what Im reading.
If Im reading for information, its different from reading for learning. If Im reading for
entertainment, its going to be different still. And of course, the quest for information and
entertainment sometimes overlap. You can learn while you read for entertainment or for
information, and you can be entertained by your learning. I certainly am.
Learning something deeply and fundamentally affects how you understand the world, and most
of your reading cant and wont deliver that.
The problem I see too frequently is, especially as people age, they begin to read exclusively for
information and entertainment, and stop trying to learn. They stop dropping important new
roots, and dont even tend to the older ones anymore.
To give you an example, I gave up reading most newspapers a few years back when I realized
the noise to signal ratio was too high. The time I was spending reading them had too little
benefit. It was time I could have spent reading books and learning fundamental things. Now, Ill
occasionally grab the weekend edition of a newspaper, but thats more of a habit than a mustread now.
One thing Ive recently started to do is to print and queue articles rather than read them online.
Ill take a few hours every week, and just go through the folder. Its really helped me focus, and
Ive cut down on the number of browser tabs I have open. More importantly, I feel like Im
reading better. I share my top five articles in my weekly digest, called Brain Food.
For deep thinking, I still prefer physical books. Articles are great, and I read those mostly for
gaining information. They are like seeing the tip of the iceberg, but books show you whats
below the water. In the past few years, Ive been purchasing both a physical and digital copy of
the same book. Publishers must love me.
Do you read your books the same way digitally and by hand?
No. I do enjoy my Kindle, but my comprehension level isnt the same as with a physical book. I
cant flip back and forth as easily. I get distracted by the technology. And the iPad app affects
my sleep. I suppose thats one tradeoff for having a 500-book library in my pocket. If all were

equal, Id choose the physical book. The value of the book changes depending on, among
other things, what, how, and when Im reading, and on what I plan to do with the material after
Im finished. Im more likely to read on my Kindle for information and/or entertainment, and
read the deep and juicy stuff on paper.
How do you discover new authors to read?
I pick up books by multiple authors to try and see all sides of an argument. How do I find which
authors to read? A few ways:
1. Ill search Amazon.com for the top-ranked books, and then read reviews of those books.
2. Ill reach out to experts in an industry.
3. Ill consult with a few friends who work in the publishing industry.
These filters help me separate signal from noise. While theres more noise than ever in modern
life, we also have many ways to cut through it if we choose.
Be ruthless about focusing your attention on the good stuff. Read the best biography you can
find. Read the most timeless treatment on a topic. Read the best physics textbook ever written.
I think anyone with that mindset can figure out ways to execute it. Ask around, read around. If
you start in on something and you find that its not the thing, then put it down and look at
something else.
How do you take notes when you are reading?
I keep all my notes in Evernotewhether through copy and pasting, image capture, or typing.
Evernote helps me capture ideas and make connections while Im reading.
I start reading a book with the index, table of contents, and the prefacethis normally gives
me a good sense of the book, its vocabulary, and where the author wants to take me.
In the text, I focus on whats important; what I think is critical to the arguments in the piece Im
reading. I underline anything that strikes me as interesting. I circle words I need to look up for a
better understanding. I mark comments and questions in the margins to try and tease out
assumptions. Essentially, Im trying to engage in a conversation with the author.
After Ive read the book and have absorbed what the author is trying to tell me, Ill look at the
notes again and see whats changed since I started reading the book. If something still strikes
my interest, I take notes in the first few pages of the book on that topic.

Once Ive captured my notes in Evernote I create a mental summary of the books main
arguments and gaps that I think exist. When I can, Ill cross-link points with other books.
Tell us more about the summarizing process you mentioned. Why is it important?
It is occasionally useful to write an outline on a blank sheet of paper, using examples, my own
thoughts, and one or more of the main arguments of the book. I do this if I need to find out
whether I actually understand what Ive read or just know the name of it.
This concept comes from the physicist Richard Feynman. He was able to articulate a deeper
level of understanding that goes beyond categories or descriptions. For example, you can
know the name of a bird, but beyond that, purely knowing the name does nothing to
understanding how the bird flies:
See that bird? Its a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany its called a halzenfugel, and in
Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know
nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird. Now
that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the
summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way.
You can know the name of the bird in any language, but learning about the birdhow it flies
and what distinguishes itself from others, shows a deeper understanding, and as Feynman
says, demonstrates the ability to differentiate between knowing the name of something and
knowing something.
So how do we do that, moving beyond raw information and into knowledge?
We outline all this in an online course we put together on the art of reading called How to Read
a Book.
Ill first preface by stating that there is a difference between knowing something and really
understanding it.
When you first pick up a book, you have to ask yourself if youre reading it for information or to
develop a deeper level understanding. A good heuristic is that anything we can easily digest is
reading for information. Reading for understanding, however, is how we get smarter.
I mentioned going through the front/back covers, the introduction, the table of contents, and
skimming the chapters. Thats basically creating a mental map of the book.
At this stage, you want to define, at least loosely, what type of book youre reading. Its not
always as simple as it sounds. Is the Count of Monte Cristo an adventure, a romance, or a

history? Is Moby Dick an adventure tale, a book on whaling, a memoir, or an allegory? And
why does knowing matter?
If the book is practical, it will tell us why and how something should be done; if it is theoretical,
it will try to tell us what is true. A simple romance tale is mostly meant to entertain. Its useful to
categorize a bit in order to calibrate how closely you should be paying attention to the text. You
can read The Bible for inspiration, for academic reasons, for historical purposes, or simply for
entertainment.Get it clear with yourself why youre reading a particular book.
But once youve determined if a book is worthy of your time, its not just a matter of diving in.
This is the analytical reading stage. And your note taking system will be key. The simple truth
about note-taking is, however you do it, the purpose is to keep your thinking brain turned on
and have a dialogue with the author.
Taking notes is not really the point. The point is to avoid reading passively.
The next step to optimizing your knowledge is to summarize the whole book in a single
sentence (or at most a short paragraph).
Finally, seek to understand the authors problems. Where does the argument lie? Where does
the uncertainty lie? Where are the borders of the authors competence and knowledgewhat
does he or she know and what is speculation? The author wont tell you, its your job to figure
that out.
Where you really get into developing a deep understanding of a topic is by doing comparative
readingdigesting many books on the same subject and comparing and contrasting the ideas.
This kind of comparison is called syntopical reading.
There is a big difference between reading and reading well. And that difference grows in a nonlinear manner over time. People who read well acquire new knowledge and ideas at a much
faster rate.