I am reading a decent amount of books each year. Probably around 30 or so. A mix between science fiction novels and a more or less wide varienty of non-fiction books.

  1. I read on my kindle (Paperwhite) almost all the time. I bought it seven years ago. It just keeps working like a charm. I read some programming books on my iPad or on my computer due to the color and the size.

  2. I use the kindle notes functionality to highlight passages, which seem important to me.

  3. I read pretty much every day, at least for a couple of minutes before falling asleep. A good way to calm down at the end of the day, well depending on the book but it works for me most of the time. :-)

  4. I try to establish a reading evening once a week to reduce the amount of mindless watching of youtube, netflix whatever. It works sometimes. ;-)

  5. I try to focus on 2 books at the same time. One novel and one non-fiction book. It doesn’t always pan out but most of the time.

  6. If I notice that I don’t like a specific book, I abandon it. Life is too short to continue reading stuff you don’t want to read. It doesn’t mean that I will ignore it forever. Maybe I give it a new try in a couple of years.

  7. I started to alternate between reading new books (Can still be old but I haven’t read it, so new to me) and old books (books I already read in the past).

  8. I transfer the captured notes from the kindle to a new note in the apple notes app. For that I open the kindle app on my Mac and go through the notes. I don’t wait until I have read the whole book because it can be a lot. It’s easier to go through a couple of notes every few days instead of going through 100 or more after finishing the book.

  9. I like the following text regarding taking notes from “Building a second brain” from Tiago Forte. „I like to think of layer one as the “soil”—an excerpt from a source or my own thinking (whether as words, drawings, images, or audio) I initially capture into my notes. They are like the ground on which my understanding will be built. Layer two is “oil,” as in “I’ve struck oil!,” conveniently represented by black, bolded text. Layer three is “gold,” which is even more valuable, and shines in highlighter yellow in many apps. Layer four is the “gems,” the most rare and illuminating finds that I’ve distilled in my own words as an executive summary.“

An excepert from one of my notes

I applied the last three (7. alternate new old, 8. capture notes in a new apple note and 9. Building a second brain) during the last year.

If you want to know what I am reading at the moment or what I have read, you can find my goodreads profile here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/20905653-alex-f-rstenau