# Marginalia is not knowledge management Many people write in the margins of their books or create highlights. This makes sense when studying, but it does not constitute knowledge management. If those notes stay in the book, you never do anything with them and never connect them with the rest of your knowledge. That is almost wasted time. Highlights and margin notes feel productive, but they leave knowledge trapped in the source material. They cannot connect to anything outside that book. They create no leverage. There is a real difference between highlighting and taking book notes. Taking notes while reading is a skill worth acquiring. It means writing separate notes, on paper, on a computer, or on an e-ink device, that capture your thinking about what you are reading. These notes are not annotations on someone else's text. They are your own formulations of the ideas, ready to be integrated into your knowledge system. The most important thing is to have those notes become part of a centralized knowledge system, your [[Single Source of Truth (SSOT)|single source of truth]]. You do not want to have to go back to a book to find your discoveries and thoughts. You want those ideas in your system, ready to be used and leveraged. ## References - ## Related - [[Isolated notes are dead notes]] - [[Note-taking is a tool, not a goal]] - [[Why you need a single source of truth for your PKM]] - [[Atomic notes]] - [[Why you should take notes while reading non-fiction books (Article)]] - [[Smart notes]] - [[Forgetting curve]]