## New highlights added July 23, 2023 at 2:31 PM - A very small pocket of Twitter is obsessed with note taking. There's a reason. It's incredibly powerful. My notes are perhaps my most valuable career asset. Some folks wonder whether it's still relevant in the age of GPT. I tend to think it is. Here's why, and how to do it. 1) Read for 30-60 minutes a day. I prioritize books, but you can also use tools like @readwise's Reader to batch and process articles that you encounter throughout your day. 1a) I've been using ChatGPT to learn about topics and adding them to my notes. While this might seem silly (why not just ask ChatGPT again?), I think it becomes more valuable when you implement Step 5. 2) Highlight relevant passages. Don't be too picky at this phase. If it's interesting, highlight. 3) When you're done with a book, migrate your highlights into note-taking software. If you read on Kindle, tools like @reflectnotes can automatically sync. 4) Edit your highlights. Remove notes that are no longer interesting or relevant. Consider creating a summary of your most valuable learnings (Reflect has an AI assistant that can help write these summaries. You need to be good at writing prompts to have it work well in my experience - I'm sure it will get better over time.) 5) Make heavy use of bi-directional linking. Tools like Reflect let you connect notes together by related topics. The rule is if it's a noun, create a link. This creates a latticework of connected ideas over time. Eventually (around 1000 notes or so) you have a critical mass of topics and content. You have a virtually inexhaustible supply of things to write about. You can become prolific. They say creativity is simply combining two disparate ideas in new ways. The process of note-taking and bidirectional linking creates these unique types of linkages. It's likely no one has read the exact same books as you, and have made the exact same highlights as you. You have an ever-increasing library of "ideas" no one has ever thought of before. Even if you use AI as your writing copilot, your notes become your unique source of information and ideas that can augment what would otherwise be a content anyone else could generate. This will only become more so as you can roll your own Chat GPT with your own supplied data. It will make your notes even more powerful, not less. And you're more fun at parties. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/intentionally/status/1655572893504348165))