Reading is only the beginning

Reading can create the feeling of progress without requiring any change in thought.

The more useful work begins after the book is closed. Which idea survived? What does it connect to? Where does it contradict something I already believe? Can I express it without borrowing the author’s language?

Notes become valuable when they stop being a storage system and start becoming a thinking system.

A highlight says, “This mattered while I was reading.” A developed idea says, “This changed how I see.”

The distance between those two is where learning happens.