BFW: Is Your Note-Taking Helping You to Become a Thought Leader?

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Dear Reader,

Hello Brain Food Wednesday readers!
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Welcome to another edition of Brain Food Wednesdays, your weekly intellectual feast. In this edition, issue 225, we talk about using your notes to become a thought leader.
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Introduction

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Reading a book and not applying the ideas is like spending all day in the kitchen preparing a five-course meal and not eating it. As an avid reader, it’s important to use the knowledge you gain to develop thought leadership. What do you want to be known for? Read more books, so you’ll develop expertise in that area.
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Most professionals, when they take notes, they take linear or hierarchical notes. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. However, it makes it difficult to connect your notes across multiple books. If you aspire to become a thought leader, which is a goal for many professionals, it’s critical to engage in network note-taking. This gives you the flexibility to connect concepts and ideas across the books you read.
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Is Your Note-Taking Helping You to Become a Thought Leader?

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One of the best ways to develop thought leadership is by taking notes when you read books to learn. Thoughts are the building blocks of thought leadership. Effective note-taking helps you capture your ideas and insights, so you can build on them in future work. When taking notes, have a system in place. There are many strategies that work well for different people. Some people prefer to take handwritten notes, while others may prefer electronic files. There are also various ways to organize the information that is being taken down.
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Some people prefer to group similar notes together, while others might prefer to write everything down at once and then go through it later. Find a system that works for you and stick with it. If you want to connect your notes from the books you read, you need to understand linear and network note-taking.
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Linear Note Taking

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Linear note-taking involves writing information in a straight line next to one another on a notepad or paper. This method can be helpful if you want to take down a lot of detailed information quickly. Network note-taking‌ allows you to connect different notes together into a network so that you can more easily see the relationships between them.
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One of the most common methods for taking notes is through a linear system, and that’s what you were taught in school. In a linear system, each new idea or piece of information is added on top of the one before it. This can be helpful when you want to remember a lot of information at once, but it can also be difficult to keep track of everything.
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Taking linear notes allows you to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted by extraneous information. This method also allows you to reference past notes easily, which can be helpful when recalling specific details or ideas. Linear note-taking can help you stay organized and make better use of your time. It’s difficult to follow multiple ideas simultaneously.
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Network Note Taking

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Network note-taking has become increasingly popular in recent years. It can be useful for capturing any type of information, including ideas for articles or papers, brainstorming sessions, meeting notes, or anything else that can be written. Network note-taking is also a great way to keep track of your thoughts and ideas as they develop over time, which is important as you build your thought leadership.
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There are several applications and tools you can use to create and manage network notes. As you have more book notes, the volume of information can become unbearable, so it’s critical to use technology. To become a thought leader, I recommend you explore apps such as Roam Research and Obsidian.
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When you use these network note-taking apps, you connect your book notes, so you’re able to come up with unique ideas you’d never have discovered without using technology. Imagine the articles you could write and the presentations you could give.
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If you found this newsletter informative, and you want to support me, please:
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When you take the workshop, you’ll read more books because you’re reading to learn what you need to know.

“I’ve had the distinct pleasure of participating in Avil Beckford’s leadership reading workshops…Avil’s unique approach not only accelerated my capacity to absorb insights from leadership books but also enabled me to do so at an unprecedented pace…” – Debra Porter, Marketing Strategist

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Warm regards,
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Avil Beckford

Brain Food Wednesdays

Editor, Brain Food Wednesdays

Founder, The Invisible Mentor & Art of Learning Leadership Academy

​theinvisiblementor.com artoflearningleadershipacademy.com​

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