# Why book highlights are not enough Some people highlight passages using their Kindle, and synchronize those using tools like [Readwise](https://readwise.io/) or [Instapaper](https://www.instapaper.com/), and that's fine. But I really prefer taking notes on paper. Paper gives me the ultimate freedom to go much further and create actually useful notes. Highlights are too synthetic. They only capture the source material as is, without any added value or personal touch. With paper, I can add a lot more to my notes *while I read* (and this is key!). My goal when taking book notes is not only to capture verbatim sentences and quotes. Those are useful but only represent a small part of what I really care about. What matters most to me is writing down my thoughts, my understanding, my interpretation, my ideas, etc. My notes go *above and beyond* what the book offers. While software developers work on a problem, they create a *mental context* with ideas and facts, that they need to be able to solve the puzzle in front of them. Whenever they're interrupted, that context gets lost and has to be rebuilt from scratch. This explains why interruptions are so detrimental to their productivity. While we read books, it's exactly the same. Sentence after sentence, we accumulate information in our short-term memory. We retain a part of what we just read, and thus we build ourselves a mental context. That context is essential because it helps us interpret everything we read in a certain way. When the same information is taken out of that context, it is difficult to interpret it the same way. That's another reason why I don't rely too much on book highlights. Highlights are often read much later. They remain useful to capture exact quotes and examples, but paper notes are much more useful and remain relevant long after the mental context has been lost.