How I Use Obsidian to Connect Ideas and Remember More of What I’ve Read

Using Markdown, note-taking, and regularly reviewing quotes and notes, I remember more of what I read

Inevitably, when you start to read a lot of books and articles, you start to forget some of the things you’ve read before.

Maybe you remember there was a great quote about something and you can’t remember it when you need to. Or maybe you know you wrote about this subject and can’t remember where you published it or what exactly you said.

If you were smart, you kept all your articles and other published words somewhere so you could maybe scan them and find what you were looking for. But what a time-suck.

I’ve written before about how my memory is a sieve — things I’ve read go in, and then they fall right back out again.

I have a flexible system in place to combat this problem. It’s based on a loose combination of three different but similar concepts:

• the Zettelkasten system popularized by Niklas Luhmann,
• the Evergreen Notes concept by Andy Matuschak,
• and the idea of commonplace books, which have been in use for centuries. (I learned the most about starting my own from an older Ryan Holiday post if you want to learn more)

First, I connect all the things.

I wrote before about how I use Readwise.io as an important cog in my ability to remember things I’ve read.

I love using Readwise all on its own, and I review my daily notes with an enthusiasm most people go to a movie. BUT, by itself, Readwise doesn’t let me connect the things I’ve read to other things I’ve read or even to novel thoughts of my own. And connecting it to my own writing? Forget about it.

Enter Obsidian.

Using Obsidian, I Process the Things I read

I process my quotes in Readwise as each highlight comes up. But in Obsidian, I go a step further. Sometimes I’ll process just a highlight, but often I’ll process an entire article or book as well.

So what’s it mean to process what I read?

When I process something, I break down the concepts and make sure I understand them by restating them as concisely as I can. So I might read a whole article and, depending on the article, summarize it in a sentence or a list of bullet points, or even a few paragraphs.

I keep my notes and highlights from what I’ve read and save them as reference notes. I take those summaries of the things I’ve read — I call them content notes— and then I consider my own thoughts about them.

• Do I agree with their point of view?
• Do I disagree? Why?
• What else does it make me think of?
• Is it related to anything else I’ve read recently?

Here’s where things get interesting, because then I can actually search Obsidian for other notes or sources I’ve already got in my vault.

Once I’ve started thinking about what I’ve read, I have my own thoughts about it. Sometimes that’s just a sentence or two and sometimes it’s several paragraphs. I pull all that into its own note, a permanent note.

Prepending

For some of the things I read (or watch/listen to) I only write notes to summarize them. For other items, I like to further process my notes OR link them other ideas I’ve had. As a result, I have two, sometimes three, different notes for each thing I’ve read, and I prepend each with a corresponding abbreviation:

• REF — a reference note — a copy of the text or just important quotes from it. A reference note is always untouched and kept as a, you guessed it, reference.
• BIB — a biblical reference note — either a verse, chapter, or other reference to specific bible verses; Sunday sermon notes and links
• CN — a content note — a summary of the text, which links back to the reference note if there is one. I keep all my Readwise highlight notes in a separate folder in my vault until I process them, and then I add the CN prefix as I process those highlights.
• PN — a permanent note — these are notes that are my own thoughts. They can be read independent of any content or reference note, but I still link mine back to any other source material.

The Point of Processing

The point of processing is twofold:

• so I can better remember things I read (because you remember concepts and ideas better when you put them in your own words)
• so I can regularly review items and remember them more easily and connect them to other ideas

Many people read books and articles, and maybe even highlight what they read and save quotes to read through later. But the act of processing what you’ve read is an important distinction and I’m positive it’s why I am remembering more of what I read.

Author Ryan Holiday talked about this idea in the above linked article he wrote on why everyone should use commonplace books. You read and process what you’ve read so that you can pass on that knowledge to other people. (or at least you should!)

He wrote:

Use them! Look, my commonplace book is easily justified. I write and speak about things for a living. I need this resource. But so do you. You write papers, memos, emails, notes to friends, birthday cards, give advice, have conversations at dinner, console loved ones, tell someone special how you feel about them. All these are opportunities to use the wisdom you have come across and recorded–to improve what you’re doing with knowledge passed down through history.

How this Compares to Zettelkasten, Evergreen Notes, or Commonplace Books

The way I process notes, reread them, and link them together is very much part of the Zettelkasten process described by Niklas Luhmann. I find Evergreen Notes to be very similar to Zettelkasten, with more room for creativity. And the way I adore my quotes, think about them, and reread them is very much part of the way some people use commonplace books.

I Take What Works for Me and Leave the Rest

With note-taking and personal knowledge management systems, you’ll drive yourself nuts if you try to only do things the way others do. I did this when I first started trying to use a Zettelkasten system of my own, and a commonplace book.

In putting this process together, I experimented over a couple years to find the one that works for my needs and my goals.

• One of my primary needs is to be able to remember what I’ve read. But in remembering these things, I hope to better understand them and use them in my own writing, and in fact my own day-to-day living.
• Another need is to write more, fiction and nonfiction; this process definitely helps with my nonfiction but I was surprised to find it really helped with my fiction as well.
• Lastly, I’ve been experimenting with writing memories (the ones I have) and inputing things I’ve written previously and linking them together. Since my memory is so bad, I find this reassuring, a comforting way to link together memories and thoughts about my life I might not have been able to connect otherwise.

I’m always curious what other people use to help with learning and remembering the things they learn. Even if you don’t have the memory problems I do, using different techniques like these will help you remember and think more deeply about what you read.

Do you use Obsidian or the Zettelkasten, Evergreen Notes, or Commonplace Book to help organize your learnings from things you’ve read? Did it work for you? Does it still?