Notecard system
Reading with a pen, then moving the best passages onto 4x6 index cards by theme
Mark up a book as you read it. Wait a few weeks, then copy whatever still looks worth keeping onto index cards, one idea per card, with a theme written in the corner. Cards go in a box. Later they come back out, sorted into chapters, articles or arguments. Robert Greene taught the method to Ryan Holiday, who has run a looser version of it across thousands of cards. Users say the slowness is the point. Writing by hand forces a second pass over the material. Shuffling the cards turns up connections a keyword search would not. The whole setup costs a pen, a stack of cards and somewhere to put them.
People on record
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Ryan HolidayDoes it
Writer · The Daily Stoic
Learned the method from Robert Greene while working as his research assistant and has run a messier version of it ever since. Passages move onto 4x6 cards a few weeks after he finishes a book, which he says is itself a form of editing: much of what he marked no longer looks worth keeping.
Source: RyanHoliday.net: The Notecard System“But I don’t want this to be easy. Writing them down by hand forces me to take my time and to go over everything again (taking notes on a Kindle is too easy and that’s the problem).”
RyanHoliday.net: The Notecard System (opens in a new tab) · 1 Apr 2014
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