Issue #98 | Subscribe

Dudhsagar Falls. By Surendra Rajawat.

One of the most overlooked aspects of reading books is taking helpful notes.

No matter how many books you read in a month or a year, you'll probably only take away around 10% of what the book has to offer without proper note-taking.

When reading books on my Kindle, I rely on the highlighting feature to mark essential ideas and take notes.

But with physical books, this gets tricky.

I used to highlight interesting passages using a highlighter pen, which I can revisit later.

But, this process had a major drawback. I had to rescan the entire book to spot the highlighted passages.

Lately, I've started using inexpensive page markers to solve this problem:

Whenever I find something interesting and worth highlighting, I highlight the lines or passages and then put a marker on the page.

And while putting a page marker, I write 1–2 words on what's highlighted. It can be the name of the concept highlighted, or a process, anything to quickly spot a highlight without having to open the book to that page:

I'm still new to this practice, but it already shows promising results.

Sifting through marked ideas in a physical book is way easier with this approach than highlighting and forgetting.

If you take notes physically, what's your process?

I'd love to know. Reply to this email.

Now, onto the rest of this newsletter issue and this week's recommendations:

•••

Your Next Read

The Energy Bus

A collection of 10 wonderful life rules illustrated with a heartwarming story that makes it all the easy to grasp the concepts. A short but fantastic read for the weekend.

Personal Growth

Apps & Services

Bear 2

Beautiful markdown-based notes app

Bear has been one of the top note-taking apps for Apple devices for years. And after five years of development, they're back with their biggest update. With tables, backlinks and more, this app has again become a fantastic choice for note-taking. Available on iOS, iPadOS and macOS and is free to start.
PDF Pals

Chat with PDFs on your Mac

Using AI tools to chat with PDFs is one of the most productive ways to use AI at work. PDF Pals brings that functionality into macOS with a blazing fast and easy-to-use app. Available as a macOS app for a $25 one-time fee and then your OpenAI API usage cost.
Gestimer

Quickest way to set reminders and countdowns

This macOS menu bar app lets you quickly set reminders by dragging a menu bar icon to choose a reminder time. Once set, a live countdown in the menu bar keeps you aware of the remaining time. Available on macOS for a one-time fee of $6.99.

Handy Shortcut

⌥

Right-Click

Force quit a frozen app right from the dock in macOS.
•••

Interesting Reads

How I'm Using ChatGPT in My Everyday Tasks

13 min read

Longform

If you're new to ChatGPT or have dabbled a bit with it, this blog post will be a good starting point. In this article, I'll show you all the ways I've been using ChatGPT to speed up my workflows and give ideas to bring AI into your work.
5 Best Personal Traits for Life

4 min read

Mark Manson teaches five excellent qualities for anyone to have to live a more fulfilling life. Here's my favourite: "Risk Tolerance: Embrace the Art of Failing and Embarrassing Yourself."
The Risks of AI are Real but Manageable

15 min read

Ever since the recent AI tools rose to fame, I've always had questions about how they can negatively affect the world around us. Bill Gates answered some of those questions in his recent blog post.
Rich and Anonymous

4 min read

An insightful read on societal debt and how it can rack up and negatively impact your freedom, privacy and peace of mind if you let it grow unchecked.

Videos

A story about how grit pays off in the long term if you can stay focused on your goals.

Quick Feedback

What do you think about this week's newsletter?

Loving the Hulry newsletter? Please forward this issue to a friend who might enjoy it too.