My Kindle + Notion System for Knowledge Acquisition
By: Andrew Kuttain
Tags: Kindle, Productivity, Technology, Learning, Books

What’s really cool about this is that this functions as a sort of excel-like table, so I can filter information based on specific criteria (topic type, status, etc.).

This helps me organize all my notes over time: if I want to pull up my notes on psychology, I can filter topics by “psychology”. If I want to see any of my notes I’ve put away, I can switch to Archive View (filtered by status) and go through anything I’m not currently working on. Source allows me to reference what the resource was (Kindle? Paperback? Article? Podcast?).

Now here’s the fun part: the note-template.

Note-Taking Template

My note-taking system is informed heavily by the Cornell System, which is a template for taking notes when learning a new subject. It’s really cool, but I found splitting my page in two and writing notes to myself on the side wasn’t really useful. Also, I rarely used the summary section at the end. So instead I moved the summary section to the top. That way anytime I opened my notes, I could quickly read what the notes would be. Also, I really enjoy the Table of Contents feature which links each section so you can just click on the title and jump to that section. For notes on recurring resources (like a weekly class), this makes it much easier to jump between sections.

Now the fun part: turning your Kindle highlights into notes. You could just dump your highlights into a note using bullet points, but there are two features you can use that will make this really powerful.

Notion Features: Toggles & Backlinks

Toggles are essentially bullet points, except more functional. They create drop-down menus, so you can hide extra info under a toggle and expand it when you want. This is really helpful for organizing lots of information without overwhelming your screen and allows you to expand and shrink your notes easily.

Remember when I talked about organizing your notes chronologically or thematically? Toggles play an important role here. If you’re taking chronological notes, you can set up toggles by chapter and put your highlights into each one (chapter 1 highlights go into chapter 1, chapter 2 highlights into chapter 2, etc.). You can create “subtoggles”, so you can have a bunch of information under a toggle and have that toggle exist under another one. Hierarchy!

Here’s an example of notes organized by themes.

This way you can organize your notes into a simple drop-down menu of sorts so you can find the exact notes you need without having text all over the page.

The 2nd feature, and the one that made this whole system extra powerful, is backlinks. Backlinks are a huge defining feature for programs like Roam Research (which still has a stronger backlinks feature in my opinion), but Notions is still reliable. The way a backlink works is pretty simple: you can create a clickable link that sends you right to whatever page you decide to link to.

If you’re writing notes for a cooking class and you want to try some, you can create a backlink to your “recipes to try” page, and they’ll be connected. When you read through your notes, you can click on the link, and it’ll take you right to your recipes to try page.

Backlinks are a two-way street, so once you connect to another place you’re able to move back and forth easily.

I use backlinks in 4 ways:

Connecting notes from sources to other resources (EG: notes from a psychology book to notes from a political memoir if they seem relevant to each other) Connecting notes from resources to my “ideas boards” where I work through ideas more creatively (EG: notes from philosophy books to a philosophy board where I can throw different ideas onto a page) Connecting notes from resources to my “commonplace board” where I create a single card on a specific idea (I’ll be honest I might get rid of this one since I use the 2nd more) Connecting notes from resources to my content creation workflow, so I can use something I learn when creating content.

This system seems a bit complex but it’s so cool once you get it working. Being able to organize notes with toggles makes the entire process much smoother and easier on the eyes, the table of contents feature is helpful for working through a lot of information, the filter feature is beneficial for finding exactly what you need, and backlinks allow for connecting between ideas.

If you’re not a big Notion fan, then you can try this in other ways: leaving self-written notes so you know where to look (EG: “similar to the idea in Own The Day, chapter 2) using hyperlinks between google docs pages, using index cards (hell this whole approach is heavily informed by the Zettlekasten system, which started with index cards) or using another program like Roam Research. What you want to do is up to you. But I highly recommend you create a system for yourself that works best for you, and use that.