Physical books are a bit harder to take annotations on as you’re limited to marginalia. Although, some people may see this as a bonus to force you to distill into single sentence ideas. Another issue with taking notes in physical books is that the transference to a digital PKM contains more friction which could lead to deprecation in systems of importing.
Always read physical books with a pen
Because literature notes should be rephrasing, it’s important to read with a pen so that you can take rephrasing notes as marginalia. When making marginalia, I try to rephrase a paragraph into a single sentence or phrase idea. Not only does this provide concept handle on revisits but allows for ease of idea extraction during nightly inbox maintainence.
”Last imported” tabs
As I read I will keep two scraps of paper on me for each book. One labelled “start”, another labelled “end”. I use these bookmarks to set the boundaries of my last notes import and my last reading position. With both of these, each night in my nightly inbox maintainence, I am able to quickly see which pages of the book I’m reading have not been imported to the digital PKM.
Question the author
When reading an idea presented by the author, question that idea and take notes on the questions you need answered to be fully satisfied of an asserted opinion or presentation of fact. This forces of you to challenge your own understanding of the text and comprehension. Additionally, provides you with entry points into gaps of understanding for future development in a PKM system.
pause to consider text
Every few paragraphs or so you should pause to consider the ideas introduced. What do they mean? How can it connect with other ideas you already know or what the author has already introduced? If you have trouble answering these sort of questions, it provides good indicatioIn you gave truly engaged with the text and have instead been practising passive reading.