Live Book Note Session  ## Metadata - Author: [[Curtis McHale]] - Full Title: Live Book Note Session - Category: #articles - Summary: This is a live session of book note-taking by Curtis McHale. In the session, he takes notes on a book called "On Work" by Derek Thompson. Curtis McHale explains his approach to note-taking and shows the process he uses to look up details on a plugin called Book Search. He copies quotes and writes down sub-notes to make future filtering more manageable. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaxrgkGC1RQ&ab_channel=CurtisMcHale welcome today we're going to go throughlive me taking notes uh on a book calledon work by Derek Thompson which is acollection of uh essays out of theAtlantic just to show you my process howit all works and what I actually do whenI look at the booksif you want to support the channelbecome members the best way Curtismchale.ca membership let's get all mycourses included if you just want totake a course like getting started withobsidian or getting started resettlecastthen you can go to Curtis mccail.zaeducation get one of the courses let's dive in all right so what we start withthose for every book I read I actuallyadd a note and I use a plugin calledbook search I will link up above booksearch where I explain how I use it howit can be usedand it populates this metadata for mejust by searching the booksome crucial things are is my datestarted date finishedand red there's like some of the threethings that I use that are importantmetadata and they actually populatestuff like this on work is red it was started on May 20th finished on May 21stand then I have some other tags like inprogress and that's it really and unreadI suppose so that's where you get theseones right here where you can see whatI've actually read and I'm not readum four thingsso that's one of the first things that Ido with my notes making kill mydashboard right nowand now I'm actually reading the bookwhere I take notes I take notes in anotebook I don't take notes directlyinto obsidian it's really easy to takenotes into your digital tool right away and then to getthrough them and add a lot of stuffbecause it's just so easy to write stuffdown I find it far better and I like itfar more to have a filtering functionfirst that'd be my notebook in this casewhere I actually go through and I wouldlook at the notes after and I willfilter them again so if it's hard towrite down it's actually not worthwriting and then when I come to theactual notes in obsidian for me thenit's actually worth writing down andfiltering so there's probably somethings I'll look at here and I will not take notes on so let's get started oneof the first things I do is I actuallywould do a note and I'll show right hereI'd say capital Bor capital B and I'd write the name ofthe book The visible hand and I'd writewho it's by and then page whatever inthe book so in this case I'm uh that'show I noted here so I know it's a bookwhich is the capital B in this case Iwould just hit tab I've opened thevisible hand do I have it anywhere nope so I hit command P to use book searchand go booksearch creating a book note thevisible hand and I Know It Is by AlfredChandler according to my notes Hereso there you go Alfred Chandler thevisible handthat's one of the first things I do andnow I'm coming here and uh visible Handby Alfred Chandler and that is Paigetalks about being the intro really forthisthat's something I do when I see any book uh at least a first mention if theymentioned something a bunch of times Idon't keep it a bunch of times but thefirst mention of a book I put in here Ido that later on so that I can see oneof the very few uses of My Graph view ifI go in and I can look at tags book Ican see is there a book that I don't ownI haven't read that a whole bunch ofother people are listening or linking touh referencing then maybe I should readit as well so next up is looking at mynoteso this is questioning I'll read what Isaid did the decline of religiousreligion and its resulting lack of spiritual progress transfer that needfor progressinto career progress that youthat your job had to mean somethingright whereas before religious uhaffiliation meant something now your jobhas to actually mean something so I'mmostly going to copy that for betabecause I like that this again this ismy own note this is not a quoteuh if I have a quote in handwriting Iactually do uh something like a markdownso just like you do in a markdown quoteI put that symbol at the beginning ifit's actually a quote the the line ofreligionand it'spack ofprogressIve career I do have career so that I'll just do a dash again thisis Page Xand I have a sub note hereyou can no longer just have a job itmust be a callingright people don't often talk about oh work your passion and it'll never bework in your life so your job has to bemore than just the job where you earnmoney it has to be a calling for it tobe worthwhilenext one so next one actually saysknowledge worksknowledge work makes work leaky as it'seasy to think about workum since all we often need is our ownbrains to think about workso that's the idea I'm like being amechanic you can't just you know takethe cars home necessarilyumso that's the idea knowledge work workisleakywith youpagex i v and this even extends to thisto our emailalways so again I did some I like the example Igave you betterumwhat I talked about now about themechanic I had some extra thoughts so Iadded those in so now chapters so Idon't necessarily Mark chapters in everybook I might Mark major sections or I Idefinitely don'talmost never do I Mark uminside a book if there's like a chat asection inside a chapter I generally donot do that so in this case I just dothree uh pound signs for a heading and they say a worldthat would workalways note chapters again sometimesit's sections it depends on whatchapters are something like Seth Godinoff that had like a section where he'scollected a bunch of essays I might justdo the section and just pull out thepoints in an individual essays in thatbook instead of in one of Seth Golden'sbooks or a book like that instead ofactually having the chapters mapped outsonow here's a good question what if techreplaced a good deal of our human work technology yeahI thought it was an interesting questionthat's on page twowhat if technology replaced the need towork because we just didn't need toanymore uhthis would mean we needbasic incomebecause people still and you'd have tomake everything else free as well right to make that you just get what you needif you don't have to workumhow many people out from their work theyneed toeat and their job willever be a callokay I think I must think of a friend Hillarywhen she worked like three four jobs topay for everything right she works atWalmart she worked at um the antiquestore she worked when she worked likecrazy hours all the time and she babysatall day for people and worked since sheworked the night she have stockingshelves like it's hard to think in manyways that her job could be a callingstocking shelves at Walmartespecially when you figure everythingelse she didum just really to get by she got by well she managed to pay your mortgage on herhouse and everything which she boughtmany years ago before there was a hugeincrease in housing prices where I wasliving butstill how many people like I have a hardtime seeing her job ever being a callingbut she works because she has to pay forstuff all right so what would it mean ifwe didn't have to work how would we takecare of the idea that you must workwhich is really a Puritan that's even umthe ideawork is from I know I have this Puritan workethic right there Puritan work ethicwhich ultimately said hey the more youwork the harder you work the more Godlyyou are right so that's not great and sonow I have another one here I just havethe single word luddate and that meansit's a tagLuddite I don't have that in there andthat's pageum fourso that would just be a tag for thefuturenext we have a book so I'm going to see if I have it first the secondMachine age I do not have thatso we willswitch tabsand say bookinsert or create book notesecond machine pageyepgood second Machine ageand that's on pagesixI have another oneor Futures nopeso again we'll go over to our next Taband do it againbookcreate new book notefor featuresby Peter Fraze yep there you go only four featuresfor futuresdid it show upoh four it's just called four featuresfor futuresthat's interesting but I actually havethat alreadyso let's look that up in safari life after capitalism so I did have thatso let's delete this one deletefor futures life after capitalism it'salready had that in that page10.so now if I look to this you canactually see because I'm using strange new worlds plugin right now that showsme the other one so I also had that inthe war on normal people II forget his name now so when I readthat book there was also again righthere there'd be a note in the war onnormal people on itthat's why I keep it right and thatlittle say this little two shows upbecause of the Strange New World'spluginnext note many jobs May Praises havingdignity would be kept as terrible if itwas a video gamejobs we phrase as having gamepage 11.so this is the idea that there's a lotof jobs out there that are just terribleyou wouldn't actually do it if it waslike a fun thing you didn't do it youknow because it's fun we say thisdignity like uh you know stockinggrocery shelves stuff like that Irealize there are like pressure washergames we just pressure wash stuff but in this case let meraise the jobsthank youforce that work or workssakewithyou know we praise it just because workis good work is just intrinsically goodwhich is ultimately what we tellourselves it's not necessarilyintrinsically good it can be good it'snot necessarily good right and pay laborerpage 11raising childrenElder Care teaching cryptocurrencyand webthreecrapI just think this I've talked about thisa few times even with like my kidsteacher that what he does teaching isprobably more social good than what I do as a programmer but my job uh makesmoney for other people really well so Iget paid moreall right so doesn't actually do betterfor society it just makes money forother people really well I actually havea pretty good one like I help support UScities deliver their services so II think you know I feel like I'm on thegood side but still I still think beinga teacher has more social good than myjobokay between uh1950 and 2012. it workedout inEuropeby 40 percentonly by 10 inUnited Statesand this is on page 13.Richard College educatedthis was interesting because it talkedabout hang on Richard Americans worthmore it's like a status symbol to havethis big job where you have to work allthe timeyeah and this Connor not a bad demon she wrote in mymembers post a few weeks ago about how Icontinued to choose time uhyeah I continue to choose time formyselfinstead of more income more work hoursbecause like I came back to record todaybecause I need to report my office uhthis weekend and I need to have it backtogether for my wife on Monday morningbecause she's doing a course and shedoes it on my second stationum she can just plug in thereum but I got a bike ride in the middletoday so likeusually I would actually just be sittingon the deck reading in the sun on Fridayafternoon by 1 30 or going on a bikeride a little stuffed up so you knowdidn't have a big bike ride in meum and I continue to choose Time stufflike that instead of more money insteadof more employees instead of growing thebusiness to this big thing because Idon't want toso next we have another oneBLT couch potatopage 13. and this is a I'm going to Definethisso I put up a new tab and I held commanddo that controls do that on Windows thisis going to be a tag note so you'll seeum I'll link up above tag notes how Iuse them what they areso this also means it gets to move totagsandthis is when you relaxing TVvisionin your last televisionother mediafeel guilty about it aftersolet's seehigh quality Leisure another idea andhigh quality Leisure is fromdeep work what's that fromit is from I forget what that's originally fromhigh quality Leisure I think it's a calNewport one it might be deep work mightbe one of those other books but highquality Leisure is the idea that highquality Leisure would be something likereading something thatis not just mindlessly watchingsomething you're active and engaged Ithink for some people it could becaptured as video games even dependingon what it is so sitting down beingactive uh and playing a video game Ithink is actually better than I'm justmindlessly watching something on socialmedia or something right you knowchicken choosing choosing to set some time aside to watch a video like thiscan be good for you as wellbut umit's not always good choosing no just tomindlessly watch these videos if you'resitting down and you're like finishedtoo harsh you're like boy I really wishI had done something else instead thatmeans you were involved in the guiltyCouch Potato syndrome just let it have a definition herebecause this is again a freaking a newidea that I came across prompted by thisbooknext up the helplessness of Unemploymentuhonly arose after factory work in citiesbecame dominantbecause we didn't have this one this isthe idea thatif you're unemployed you felt morehelpless because there was not stuff todo at home right people don't sew theydon't fix their stuff you don't can'tyou don't go canningum you know fast fashion you know a lot of our things are constructed now it'sjust not possible to fixso you just have your job and there'snothing to offer afterthat's that idea I like that I likeI resonate with ID I feel like there'ssome truth in it somewhere sothe you've noticed I've done page spelledout and then PG as page like I'm not Idon't get a sticker for that I don'teven go back and fix it later becausethere's no point these are like that'ssomething you don't need to worry aboutjust do whatever you wantI don't use the pound symbol uh which iswhat I use in a notebook because itwould try to show those tag and I don'twant thatumso youfix us stuff and I feel like that might be a goodwriting ideaso something I do after this I don't think we'll get to that todayum because I would actually go backthrough this note again and come up withwriting ideas based on some of this hereand actually link other things in hereright so I might write about guiltyCouch Potato syndrome and then talkabout high quality Leisure versus lowquality leisurewould be another thing I would do inhere next we have some booksriseof the robotsI don't have itso I'll just do what we have done every other timelook create new book Robloxokay so it's by Martin Ford yeah I havethat I have two entries in herebut let's come back here and just makesure that I don't have itall right so thenope don't have itso that I can actually make note again likeI was going tocreate new book noteso one thing like there's two differentbooks here one is 352 pages one is 350Pages I'm actually notgonna worry about it right and Rule ofthe robots might even be no it'sdifferent just a newer newer book itlooks likeumbut like I wouldn't actually worry aboutwhen if I buy this book I wouldn'tactually worry to make sure that I have the exact matching ISBN later this isagain stuff you just don't need to worryabout getting way too much in the weavesthere so this is riseof the robots page25 and the next book isWealth of Nations and I've got that onepage 25.all right I'm gonna tag basic incomeherepage 27 so this means I might go back later if I want I'm writing about basicincome and I would look up page 27 tosee what it says now I just know thatit's therethis is ultimately like a big uh indexat the back of the book it's just nextof all the books I have readuh education requires the expectation soI want to note education requires theexpectation that many hours of optionfrustrating practice will yield a rewardat some pointin my note here is what I see in so many people who come talk to me they wantsome Shortcut with their notes or withanything else they don't just sit downand actually do the work like I'm doingright nowjust tag thiseducationthere's thatand I see a spelling mistake there Ihonestly probably would never go back tofix it doesn't matter I'll fix it if I'mlike right here looking at it again butI would just keep typing I'm onlynoticing it now because I'm talking toyou at the same timerequires that you know some people a lot of people want tohave a good system they don't actuallytake the time to build it all right so yes if you ever do coaching with meI'm probably going to tell you do thatdo the workum nextI just did a quick summary of thechapter I don't need that I'm thatconcerned about it threethe religionan essay economic possibilities for ourgrandchildren so let's look that upeconomicfor our grandchildren marksetts.orginterestingso now I know it also needs a Terra open because I don't have it openI'm just going to bump it off to myother screen where it would normally beand actually you often do this onmultiple screens as well I'm just doingit on one screen for recording for youand I wouldcapture that in zoterothat's goodand now I would go herenamic for our grandchildrenpagepage 34.so let's open thisatomicpossibilities for our grandchildren westarted it so I just actually did aoh what was it a um video on how to dothis right here so I'm going to startout with the ammo and I'm going to grab a link so I'mgoing to go zotero zotera like insertand I'm going to saypossibilities for our grandchildrenthere we go so it's in thereperfect I'm gonna copy this and actuallyshould have doneI am all and then this is not DT anymore it'szotero Z T U on the URL I got it fromwas this here so I'm actually justcopying this out of zoterogood and then that tag this is actuallygoing to be uh to summarize and I'mgoing to put this in notes becausethat's where it goesgood so I actually took the time torecord this because I grabbed it inzotero as wellum and actually have it right now I havemy zotero inbox but the truth is I'm notgoing to read it until I have to so I'm just gonnaactually grab it like that and I'm goingto I'm going toadd to collection researchand I'm going to remove it from theinbox collection because I will read itoh we're gonna remove item fromcollectionyep just removeso I will read it at a later date whenit's actually pertinent to research it'snot something I'll just read as Ionly when it's pertinent to researchwhile I worry about this one um but this was here the pertinent ideais this iswhereuh what's his name JohnMaynard Keynesclose the 15 uh work weekfuture perfectsowork ism got that let's see what I actually havefor that tagI have it already in here the beliefthat work can be replaced you canreplace the meaning usedto find and we used to find religion andbeing integrated in our community thisis a time when we're more disconnectedand polarized for them are those aroundusso work ISM perfectand there's two spots where else was itmentionedhistory of work in six wordscoolsosounds good so I in my notes Here I actually justhave a definition again on what it isbut I don't need it because I alreadyhave it so that's a tag note thennext culture that pins at streams ofself-actualization on salaried work issetting itself up for Collective anxietyMass disappointment and burnoutthat isthat pins it'sa self-abizationondata work page three nineon my Note here there's only so manyawesome jobs right there's always going to be jobsthat are terrible but capitalism helpspush people into working because theyjust have to eat so next is a book onceand future worker nope not there yetso our new tabbook searchrecordby all right by orange Cassyep okay that's on page40 I should have this one kids thesedays okay so now we have two optionshereI have kids these days right uh they'reunderwriting slash books and kid thedays numbered I don't actually know whatI want this is Legacy reallythese days this is my written I may onlyhave a written version of myuhget to these daysyeah they're actually a duplicate note I'll delete one right nowit was currently 18 links pointing tothis note so let's look at the other oneif I delete it it's currently two linkspointing to this noteso then I can come in here and I want toconvert them now always do this butlet's just show youon backlinks right there backlinks for kids these dayslet's switch thesewell let's delete this one actually incommunity so I've got two notes therelet's delete it I delete to both of themI don't need thatperfectand the next one is here and I'm reallyonly doing it this way so that okay could these days so now Ishould have no links to this perfectI'll delete itbut now I can also take kids these daysand just change it tokids these daysand updated it and everything rightyep 19 links 18 files perfectso now I can come back here and go kidspleaseso this is something that's good to do it's on page 41 uh just not all the timebutjust regularly like I took a few secondsto clean up my notes so now I havecleaner notes so I made a decision rightI could have left that I could have donelots of different things with it but nowwe actually have it set upnext upcoldleisure old schoolyeahcapitalismcapconsumers and that's fine I know that'snot the right sentence but I know what Imean all right I could go add an aliasthere but again I'm not going to cleanup that part right now there we go keep up with the Jonesesawesome now we're almost done thiswhere's the office for now there'sreally onlya few notes in hereso boxesfor a hard focused work foreignhard work in this case hard or equals ifI used a programmer notation mean equalsexactlystop you're paid for so for me it'sactually the programming softwarethose stuff that'snotnot ohso right I'm notpaid for some discussions I would havebut are directly as my output I haven'tpaid for programming as my output or butso that would be the soft work as thestuff you're not directly paid forthat was the end of that entire chapterthere's only one point in there I really liked so thebiggestproblem withwork first out of the bookout of office a big problem working fromhome perfectpage 54.so the problem with remote work is alack of soft work it's really it so the biggest problemshe identifies in this chapter with notbeing in the office is the lack ofmentorship specifically with new employees as I try to do their jobbut I just summarized the chapter Ididn't really have a specific page forthat that's the whole chapter to get inthe chat first chapter is much longerthan all the rest of themand one thing I did that is I actuallyco-workedum a couple hours a day with uh anintern or with like an employee at oneof my previous jobs I did that a coupledays a week and then um the other seniordid that a couple days a week with thejunior developer so that she had someoneregularly task questions right and I had like a scheduled question time for thefirst month like every day she hadopportunity she knew she could come askquestions of me um again but I was justthere available for her until she shegot on board with the job it wasI think as a manager it is yourif your employees are always performingpoorly it's your job that's your faultand everyone wants to blame it on theemployee but it's it's the manager'sfaultum yeah if you can make your work faster youwould not work unless you just fill thetime with more work it's Parkinson's lawand this is where I Buck the trend soI'm producing this video like livebasically as we go I gotta cut a few things though because I'm a littlestuffed up and I've coughed a few timesbut otherwise I don't like when I Iproduce in a way that takes the leastamount of time so that I can go onMondays I usually record and on Mondaysuh Monday my wife will be in my officebasically my whole morning so I can'trecordumbut I do that and then so I can go likego to the bike shop on Monday afternoonsand go work for fun I'll make I makemoney there but I don't make like astellar amount of money make more moneyfarmer money doing even YouTube stuffbut it's fun to be at the bike shop so I you know I get through my productionfaster because of how I do it so that Ican do other thingsohthis is shown in uh let's see theclients is like uhlaundry just when it became faster specifically forwomen at the time to wash clothes theyjust washed them more often the level ofcleanliness you had to have came up youdidn'twash your clothes just once a month youwash them like way more than thatum yeahand then Parkinson's law is another onebelow that so I should have one on thatParkthere you go it's on page 64.that's it that's my notes for the wholebook so again the next step in this so I say what I've said earlier people wantsome magic trick tomake everything go faster just to how doI have good insights so you saw me takea note this has been it's my recordingtime recording time is 41 minutes so farthe video is probably gonna be a littleless than that because I'm cutting outsome stuff and I got to get tissuesbut still I've been at this for 41minutes and we took notes we talkedabout it I fixed some stuff and next Iwill actually go back through this andbuild out writing ideas for it and likewhere else where do I need to take thisnote and separate it out into its own note so that it's not just um beholdento this book only so that's an atomicnote on its own so this is really myliterature note my second stab at themand that's what people don't do oftenthey don't actuallyput the time aside or choose to usetheir time for these things they want toread a book okay I just want my notes tobe done how to make it super fast or Ican scan them in I'll just scan them andthen oh I have my notes in there I don'thave to worry about they don't worktheir notes so for every non-fictionbook I read almost every book I do this so I say almost because I just read onecalled Starlight tour and I didn't havenotes to takeaways uh so much as far asspecific as far as a general likeI don't know malaise anger at howCanadian people have treated FirstNations for a long time and it promptedan essay that actually comes out it wasthe 26th today so I'll come out on the27th of June members post but it's abouthow Canadians think they're exceptionaland we're not exceptional we're racistwe got lots of problems and we just need to get over it like part of the reasonpart of the way to becoming exceptionalis to recognize these problems andactually to address them properlyso that's it if you like this video ifyou have any questions on how I takenotes on what else I do if you sawplugins uh I don't think I should havethink I should have book search I shouldhave Strange New World I think I pointedthat it wouldn't came up uh and thoseare the big ones that I used in thisso other than thatI use templator as well actuallytemplators in there that's what insertedmy yaml templates for meum yeah that's it really those are the onesI use so I have videos on all those I'lltry to link all of those belowother than that have an awesome day ifyou like the video thumbs up Bellsubscribe YouTube nonsense or you take amembership as best way actually uh Chrismckell.ca members to become membershipor membershipum personal.ca education to take acourse specifically or from skillsharealready you can go to the links below uhin the show description where I link toskillshare that's it have an awesome day, Live Book Note Session, Curtis McHale, 01h303fdnm4re2drmzyaegt3ad.