Eleanors Readwise Settings

My settings are here at this gist, but the main thing is that I really like having the highlight ID number as a unique identifier, because if I accidentally mess up and change the header incorrectly so it doesn't update across all the files I reference, I'll still be able to find it again with a simple search

What is this highlight ID benefit?

I personally prefer to use section headings and blockquotes because it feels semantically cleaner

I never want to be one of those people who who write extensively about note-writing but rarely have a serious context of use.

I like to change the metadata first. It's hard for computers to figure out the difference between an "author" and a "publication," but important to me

Next and most importantly, I review the highlights. As I read through the quotes, I make sure they still make sense, and go back to the original source and investigate them if they don't. If something still seems pointless after I reviewed it in context, I just delete it.

Once I've cleaned up any awkward formatting, weird links, or broken tags, I check to make sure the annotations are as useful as they can be.

Sometimes I highlight a quote in an article because it mentions some research I need to follow up on later, or because there's something I want to share with someone, and I wasn't in a position to do so while reading it the first time. My highlights are littered with notes to self and action items - it's not all pure knowledge.

For example, if I've left myself a note like #pkm/xref this reminds me of something the Carthage expert I like said, but I can't remember her name I will search my notes to figure out the name of the Carthage expert I like, cross-reference the highlight with things she said, and add links and update notes as appropriate. If I said something like This reminds me of the article about the guy a crane is in love with when I was taking notes on something without access to my notes, I will go find the article and link to my notes about it so that my backlinks and graph are updated.

Engaging
As much as I give the "paraphrase everything!" people a hard time, I do think it's important to rephrase, summarize, process, reinterpret put quotes into a more useful format. The problem with "summarizing" is that most people wind up in the habit of swapping out words and phrases for synonyms, enough to avoid pinging a plagiarism meter. This isn't enough to really make the quote useful, even if it does often help you confirm you understand it.
I prefer to consider the quote evidence for a claim, which necessitates using it to make a claim. Sometimes evidence can be used for multiple claims, which is great - but often means the quote should be broken out into smaller pieces.

Let's take a look at the first highlight from this article:
### id286148681

> Zandee did not know the nomads’ language, so his friend Gulzar translated as Zandee asked how much they made from selling the cheese. “Nothing,” Gulzar said. “They just do it so that the milk will not go stale. At most, they will barter it with a shopkeeper who may give them a pound of sugar or a dozen matchsticks.”
The ID number is just to give me something unique to search for, since you can't target a blank header and there's no point in coming up with my own random string of numbers for a block/header reference when Readwise already has one in its database.
This quote has a lot of context and vivid language, but my primary takeaway – the reason I highlighted it, even though I didn't make a note at the time (because it's obvious to me and I don't like to do unnecessary work) — is that nomads make cheese to preserve milk, or perhaps nomads make cheese to avoid wasting milk which is wordier but also more accurate.

Note that some of the headers are still metaphorically blank, with just the ID number; that's because some of these quotes are interesting context, but not necessarily things that I feel need to become anything more than what they are; context, or reference materials for where certain places are located. Not every highlight needs to become a "card" — and having things in my notes that are highlighted but don't need to be turned into further notes does not mean that I have failed by "over-highlighting."

Useful notes are messy, and time is valuable. A sense of completionism is nice for some things but mostly just gets in the way when it comes to learning. I read about 10% of the articles that show up in my feed. I take highlight about 50% of those, and affirmatively take notes on about 10% of those.

Some folks like to move the entire text of the highlight out into a new note, which is named after the heading, and then embed the new note back into the literature note. The advantage of this is that when you search for a string of text, like for example "Cheese," you get a note with a useful title ("Kashmiri people make goat and sheep cheese") instead of, say, the name of a book like "Middle Eastern Culture by Joana Dhoe" which doesn't do me as much good when I'm skimming file names in the search results trying to figure out what I have previously learned about cheese.
Despite the advantages of this method, though, I prefer to leave the quotes with the source, mostly because it makes it easier for me to send a file of quotes to a friend who asks for my takeaways from a specific book, for example my major takeaways from Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need To Know... made the rounds in my offline social group and it was a lot easier to explain to non-technical people how to open and read a plain text file than how to navigate a bunch of nodes in a not-exactly-mainstream integrated thinking environment.

Anyway, the method I use to turn these claims into notes is pretty straightforward:

Make a new file and give it the name of your claim (minus the ID): nomads make cheese to avoid wasting milk

Embed the relevant section into your new file: ![[The Kashmiri Cheese Brand Operating at 7,000 Feet by Safina Nabi#id286148681 nomads make cheese to avoid wasting milk]]. A neat trick you can do with the IDs is copy it, then just type [[##id286148681 - the reference will pop right up. This is one reason I like to use the IDs, since they're unique, it keeps me from having to type through all the "nomads..." options that might possibly show up, if I have a lot of notes that start similarly (more common in a long file, like book notes for a specific topic like bananas).

Move over any annotations (I indicate this with the - [n] data-task bullet, but this isn't necessary) and add links to relevant connections if I want to. Seeing "nomads make cheese to avoid wasting milk" is more useful if I'm searching for information about nomads than "The Kashmiri Cheese Brand Operating at 7,000 Feet by Safina Nabi" would be, and with this method, my index file for nomads would have a bunch of claims neatly listed for me already, instead of a bunch of references I need to go re-learn from.

Since this can involve a lot of repetitive actions on a long file, I use this javascript code along with the QuickAdd plugin

follow the directions for how he uses his Kanban Script, but with the Zettelizer script instead. You can also follow the directions for this installation guide, which is a bit shorter.

Kanban? What’s this about, different script than the OG zettelizer?

Once I'm done running the script, I remove the #pkm/process tag and move the file from my Pending folder to my References folder.

ie update status to 🟨 or 🟩

Manifestations: Referencing Notes For A Purpose
That's the last step in terms of making notes, but the real trick is in using the notes.
If I'm planning a vacation, I search my vault for information I've gathered about local places. Every spring, I check the previous years' reflections on mishaps and successes before planting my garden. If I'm working on a story involving a fantastical creature, I reference the notes I made about the quirks of biologically similar animals that exist in the real world.
This whole workflow is designed around my very specific goals. I write fantasy and science fiction. I write newsletters sharing highlights from my research, and related essays about topics like the nature of identity in the ancient world. I also occasionally write scifi/fantasy adjacent nonfiction pieces, for example all the things that trees can be: from homes & magic roads to natural air conditioners.

up:: 📥 Sources