Note-taking Lessons From America’s Greatest Biographer

Principle one: ‘Turn every goddamned page’

Principle two: ‘The facts alone aren’t enough’

Principle three: ‘Truth takes time’

Yet unbelievably, Caro is not a slow writer by nature. He admits how when he wrote copy in the newsroom, it was a pace judged “astonishing” by his colleagues. No, Robert Caro is actually a slow writer by choice. Before starting... See more

The historian and biographer extends this backwards in time. Now youth find models of honor not only among the living but among dead. To study the great men of a community’s past is to study what greatness means in that community. That I think is half the purpose of these biographies of Roosevelt and Rockefeller, Feynman and Oppenheimer, Licklider ... See more

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you’re reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocol... See more

- The biggest thing holding people back from improving their writing is having a sound note-taking system (a sound note-taking system makes writing about your ideas much easier)