How to Analyze Books like a Renaissance Scholar

people can't read at least not properly piss off of course I can I learned it in school no sure you can read the words of a page we not stupid but who taught us how to read deeply who taught us how to get through hard books without wanting to jump off a bridge who taught us how to truly understand the book's ideas rather than just forgetting them all who taught you how to feel satisfied at the end without feeling like all of those hours you put in were wasted your Natural Curiosity caus you to explore

great books and to get the most out of them but nobody showed you how and maybe like me you had to struggle with teaching yourself that which is bloodly difficult let me tell you through years of study trial and error failing lots of failing and lots of writing too I did pick up a thing or two about book analysis how to really go deep and remember the ideas and feel like the themes in the book touch you and really are carried with you in life so that all your effort actually means something in the end

this is my life I love it and I want to share my system of analysis with you in case you find it valuable and that's not to say you should copy it Be Inspired of course but also make it your own because what works for me might not work for you and unlike a few other YouTubers out there I will not say that there is a perfect system or that mine is the right system that others must follow the hell is that so be inspired and of course Tinker it to make it yours good systems

are simple not necessarily easy because you know I'm not promising a magic pill here it will take effort but that doesn't mean they're not simple this is not a 30 step flow chart this is straightforward enough that anyone can follow there's six main steps book selection book inspection note taking analysis archiving and finally synthesis I'm in the analysis stage for the Epic of Gilgamesh right now so I'm going to use him as my assistant to show you the process and you know let's get stuck in first comes book selection and this matters because if you

pick the wrong book then you've screwed yourself before even starting when you walk into a water stones or a Bars & Nobles or any other bookstore you're met with thousands of good books and that sheer level of choice is it just makes you think what the hell do I read when there's all of these options what do I pick what's the right book let's get the obvious out the way you have to read what actually excites you I made the mistake of reading just what was trendy or what were the NPC Twitter gurus were recommending

or maybe Classics that I didn't really really enjoy but I felt like I had to read so I could Flex that on others like tell them about it I mean come on man what is that it's all performative and rather than serving yourself and your interests you surrender that freedom to the internet to people who have a completely different taste from you and completely different goals in life doesn't make sense when you pick books that you're genuinely interested in you're not fighting an up battle because your interest is not lubricating it is Paving the way

for for fun learning it reading becomes fun because you're interested in it simple as I keep using that stupid term lubricated there's other words Paving clearing the way sake but even if you do follow your taste and you're true to yourself there's still a lot out there maybe like me you're interested in a million different things and it can be hard to narrow down the choices to be honest I can't say that I fully solved that myself but what I do like to think is two questions first what do I want to know and second

who do I want to be and I let the answers to these questions guide my choices in Reading well the first question is what do you want to know and ideally what do you want to know the most because that will help you narrow down on the topics that speak to you the most even Beyond other things like what is the most pressing what is the most urgent what is the most interesting for example I am more than happy right now to not read books on maths on geopolitics and murder mysteries because I don't really

care about them as much as things like Classics or anthropology or psychology it's not like I don't like those other topics but there's fields that interest me way more and I'm more pressed to learn them now of course there limited time and even if you have loads of interests like me then you do have to make compromises and focus your time on some things that are maybe a little bit more valuable to you the second question who do you want to be is a bit more practical it kind of sets you a ultimate goal that

all of your reading is centered around in some way for example if you want to become a fantasy writer you have to read fantasy books there's no way around it if you want to become a good father that's kind of your purpose in life well it's good to read books that have family as a a Core theme or practical guide books on uh raising children and good parenting personally I have three big goals first is to improve my writing second is to read great books and share the ideas I find interesting with you through you

know book reviews articles these videos and finally I want to read the best books that history has to offer the ones that really defined our civilization the the big hitters the classics the masterpieces and so those three goals are what drives basically all my reading of course there's room for flexibility you can have fun sometimes you can take the piss and screw it if your purpose is to just have fun read fun books there's nothing wrong with that and it's a deeply personal choice and of course you can have multiple goals you know I Read

Manga from time to time yes it's not in line with my core mission of life but it's not that serious just have fun sometimes the point is to embrace your individuality read what you want and not be dictated by internet hype or what other people are reading this is about you once you have a good image of yourself and what interests you I would then go to bookshops and have a look around I'd go to uh Reddit unfortunately I go on Instagram i' go online in general just to find good books recommendations things that are

in that field of interest and if this sounds vague cuz it is then don't worry because the next step uh inspection is how you can actually narrow down on the book and be sure that it's the right book for you before you invest all your time into it and finally if you're more of the structured type as then you like to have a very clear road map on what you're going to read I recommend you create a custom reading plan or maybe follow one that already exists that you like that's what I do personally I

have a reading list and if you want to create your own or find something I will link to a video I made in the past about it so go check that out after part two of my system is inspection because I am sick of doing all that hard work just to choose a book and then three chapters in I'm bored out my mind I'm confused I'm thinking what the hell am I reading it's annoying it's a waste of time but the good thing is with inspection you're saved from that risk and it only takes like

5 or 10 minutes it's the reason I almost never give up on books halfway through cuz I never need to I know the book I'm reading is going to be good and even if you're certain that you'll like the book inspection is worth doing because it sets the scene for a good analysis you pave the way you don't lubricate you pave the way to inspect a book you have to flick through it and answer a few big questions the first is what type of book is it well I mean no that's kind of obvious right

it should say on the front yes it usually does it's usually clear at first glance but sometimes with the more abstract books you don't really know what kind of book it is it's is it a novel is it non-fiction is it a commentary is it a memoir you kind of have to dig a little for example let's say I'm buying Animal Farm by George Orwell I go in a book shop and let's say I've never heard of this guy I don't know what this book is about I've just seen it hyped online and the cover

looks cool so I'll buy it now you might buy it thinking it's a novel just a novel about some farm animals and you're not wrong but you also are wrong because it's more than just a novel it's also political commentary and you if you buy it thinking it's just a novel you might be in for a surprise maybe it's a good surprise that's also fair but maybe it's uh it's something you didn't expect you don't really want to read There is a risk there so it's good generally to know what you're getting into beforehand at

least the type of literature it is the second question I would answer when inspecting a book is what is it actually about virtually every book has a purpose it has a a reason it was written and it has a goal that it's trying to achieve usually it's obvious usually you can glance at a book and say okay well this is a history book this is a psychology book it's trying to teach me this it's trying to show me this it's trying to entertain me sometimes though with in the case of more edgy books more abstract

books what it's about is concealed and it's hard to see from the title instead of just reading the title and the blur dive in get into the book and read a few pages go to the back go to the front read the conclusion paragraphs at the end and that will give give you a good picture of what it's about and what I'd be looking for is the author's main arguments the bigger themes of the story or the work what is he talking about if you find out it's not worth your attention in the first place

or you're not interested then I mean that's great you saved yourself a lot of time and you can go and pick something better and even if you do find out that it's good for you you want to read more of this well you didn't waste your time either because now you have a kind of foresight of what's coming your analysis in the future is going to be easier it's like when you have lunch and you're trying to pick a video essay to watch and you flick through it a bit just to get the vibe just

to see what the atmosphere is is it worth a time should I pick another one it's the same thing okay so now you've given yourself the best possible start by choosing a book and inspecting it now you make a coffee get relaxed doubt your purpose in life and grab a pen because this stage is note taking the Flesh and Bones behind my system but this time you're not just letting your eyes passively roll over the T okay page two page three page four no you're taking control of the process with a pen writing in your

books is a tiny effort but it gives you so much more insight in return because you turn the whole experience into a conversation if that doesn't make sense imagine you're in two scenarios the first scenario is a 1-hour lecture on the basics of art history and you're just in the audience you can't say anything you're chilling the second scenario is a 1 hour on the exact same topic except this time it's a onetoone conversation and you can talk you can ask questions you can do this and that which situation would you learn more from I

don't need to explain but I will cuz I'm kind generous and humble in the conversation you are forced to think you have to really listen and to digest what they saying to come up with a good response in the lecture it's easy to drift off and ignore what's being said you're not involved in learning unless you really do focus in the conversation you can ask questions you can add your own opinion you can draw conclusions you can dive into rabbit holes not only is that more fun but you really let the book speak to you

rather than treating it like a podcast in the background that you kind of half listen to and then forget the next day list is active you're investing your time into the book so you better make sure it's quality time no half measures that's my pitch on why it's good to take notes but how would you do it and this has to be said because I've seen a lot of on the internet where people are annotating their books with entire art kits and it's just too much it's not that simple sorry it's not that complicated and

you know sometimes less is more I write directly in my books and if that freaks you out I understand first I was the same and I actually made a video on that topic of how you can deal with that fear and that uh obstacle once again I came in clutch just saying I'll link that down below so do have a look or you can just use a separate notebook that's fine too I like to highlight bits that I find interesting not everything because if you highlight everything nothing is highlighted so you really have to be

I know it's hard but you really have to be selective and pick only the things that stand out to you the things that make you sit up and kind of get that emotional response in you you're like oh damn that's something worth it but underlining isn't enough okay you marked a sentence so what what's about it if you come back to this note a week later you might be thinking well why the hell did I find this interesting what what was I thinking at the time so to get over that and to make your notes

more useful and human I like to annotate what I was thinking at the time that simple I physically write down why I annotated that part did it remind me of something did it inspire a question did it link to some other part of the book or some other book entirely uh can I give an overview can I conclude something anything really anything by writing a quick phrase you give life to your annotations and they actually mean something and of course that makes you understand understand the text better but it also helps you later on in

the analysis stage when you come back to you know make something out of your notes let me show you some examples that I did in the past few days in my reading in the Epic of Gilgamesh the hero and kidu was made out of clay by a goddess and at first he was wild and animal likee but eventually he was tempted and then he gained self-consciousness and that reminded me of Adam from The Bible there were some similarities there so I wrote it down simply that it reminded me of of Adam this is only a

sentence for now but if you keep watching you'll see that it becomes something greater and more useful to me a few pages later I used annotations to talk myself through the passage as I write I'm also thinking and it's a nice proof that I can understand the chapter without getting lost if you struggle to explain it to yourself then it's a good sign to go back and fix those holes in your understanding on page 43 one of gilgamesh's actions was a bit shocking and it felt controversial to me so I wrote down the question question

in my head was he right to kill the forest guardian or was that messed up you don't have to answer it immediately but writing down the question stimulates you to think and it's also nice to discuss with yourself afterwards I also just have fun and take the piss sometimes here I wrote how gilgames friendzoned one of the goddesses who wanted to marry him and then he grilled her for two pages straight bringing up all her bad history with former lovers as well it's kind of kind of funny if it helps you remember the text and

have some fun along the way why the hell not we don't have to be all serious all the time it's not that deep if all of this sounds like a bit much to you then you can boil it down to one sentence as you read write what you think to help you think now I have to stress do not copy me not because I'm gatekeeping my Flawless and perfect system but because it's mine and what I like may be weird to you or it may be ineffective for you so you have to you're sure be

inspired but you have to do some experiment experimentation you have to Tinker with it yourself and find out your own method what really works for you the best some people like to use index tags and you know even I do sometimes some people like to use colorcoded highlighters or pens just to categorize each type of note they make like that's all perfect if it works for you but the point is to not blindly follow someone else's system just because they're the one saying it snack don't worry bro chill relax bro you'll get your food look

that I'm just buying his company with food it's shallow but it works you drop your food all over you what is that clean up this mess man the next step is analysis which is slow thorough and sometimes difficult so why put yourself through all that work why not just drop the book and then go to the next five ones and Blitz through them well you clicked on this because you wanted to get more from your literature you wanted to be able to talk about them to remember the ideas to be touched by them to carry

them through the rest of your life and that's a meaningful goal I respect it but nothing meaningful comes without effort and so we have to accept that it's going to be a big investment but you're going to get a lot in return you may not always find it fun in the shallow sense like the type you get with video games or good food or uh midnight cigarettes at the pub but that's okay you know there's time and place for fun things like that but I value in this method fulfillment and purpose above that okay so

philosophy out the way how can you go deep with your analysis well once I finish the book I turn to page one and I go through it again and I'm not trolling and don't worry cuz you're not going to have to read the whole book again what you do in this second run through is you ignore everything and only look at your annotations I flick through the rest but whenever there's my note somewhere or something underlined I pause and I look at that only these book notes Inspire my analysis in obsidian which is my favorite

not taking app of all time and I've you know I've raved about it for months years now actually inside there I make a source note and that stores all of my observations and insights from any one book or article or video podcast whatever you're consuming now it depends on the book but to analyze I usually write down the page number then copy a passage or a quote underneath it and then below that I write the ideas in my own words I give my take on it I elaborate I ask questions I expand in the ideas

I discuss them I connect them I just think I give my analysis your pencil annotations were short and they were rough and this is where you get the chance to elaborate and to make your analysis more concrete and real again which is good for your memory and your understanding and also not every annotation is worth writing about it's quite common actually I will find an annotation and think okay that was useful at the time for me to understand the book but I don't really need to expand on it it was just you know me talking

about the story or something this is my gilges SCE note in action copying the passages feels like meditation and then I use whatever annotations I have as a springboard for writing my analysis meaning you're never stuck there like a rock not knowing what to write I try to keep each point at medium length but you know I write it as much as I want or as little as I want and if you're not the writing type and all of this makes you cringe I mean that's totally fine just shorten it a bit I know I

write quite a lot but it's up to you how much you want to do for me this step takes longer than the actual reading of the book itself way longer and I mean so what right I did say there was going to be a lot of effort and yes it is a big investment but at the end I Feel So Satisfied and happy with how much I've learned if you have ever read a book deeply in any way then first I respect you because that is bloody difficult and second you'll know that it's even tougher

when you have nobody to help you understand what you're reading with Science History or class you know with Nuance themes I never hesitate to pull from other sources to help me understand them things like videos articles even other book sometimes now that's good but it's also incredibly timec consuming to dig around on the internet and even when you do find something it's hard to be sure of its value because there's a lot of unreliable crap floating around on the internet recently I've been loving consensus as my personal research assistant to help me tackle these big

ideas without the usual overwhelm and I'm happy to say that they are the sponsor of this video too too for example Gilgamesh is a complicated work with a lot to unpack and with a quick search on consensus I can collect solid targeted research from peer-reviewed sources only meaning I don't have to worry about filtering out all the junk you find on the internet before I knew about consensus I have to admit I was often not bothered to Branch out and research too far beyond the books and I have my fair reasons for it searching on

a traditional browser is laborious and Google Scholar is not only clunky but it doesn't give you what you want half the time I still have PTSD from using that for writing my manuscripts back in college and I'm glad there's an alternative now consensus gets rid of the noise and neatly presents exactly what you're looking for in a nice clean format I never saw myself as a researcher per se but now I feel like I can be it's no longer that intimidating when I was doing my analysis on gilgames consensus let me discover a new angle

that I had previously missed it suggested the theme of nature versus civilization which made me think like oh yeah I can kind of see that now actually since everything comes with a reliable source I now have a natural next step to get stuck into and explore and I can use that to add to my notes or even to make a whole new source notes based on it rather than having to dig through walls of text to figure out if a paper is useful to you consensus gives you a handy snapshot so you can make that

decision for yourself in just a few seconds it's not just literature too I had great fun exploring topics like nutrition economics and of course learning which I usually find to be confusing and hard to approach unless you have a good source of help especially with all of the half-baked influencer advice out there I'm very impressed with consensus and I really respect the idea of making research more accessible and easy to get through not just for professionals and students but also for people who are simply curious and like to learn as a hobby to try consensus

at your own pace you can click the link in the description it's free to use and there is a Premium plan for unlimited Pro searches but what's even better is that if you use code at checkout before the 30th of April and you get a whole free year of consensus premium a whole year that's brilliant so do check it out I'm sure you love it just as much as I did and again thank you to consensus sponsoring the video now you could stop there already you put more care and love into your books than virtually

everyone else out there and with enough time and effort and practice that's going to reflect in you the very way you think and approach books will be more calculated and intentional because you're training your eye for analysis but what if you could use these Source notes to create an archive a library of individual notes that will forever be there to help you revise or use in future projects that means no more digging through Source notes to find what you need and no more over-the-top complex systems that feel like a nightmare to manage this step I

call archiving and at the center of it is the atomic notes which is a simple yet extremely effective way to organize your analysis of books it's like the shipping container of the note world it's standard reliable and stackable an atomic note represents a single important idea they are fairly short they cover one point only and most importantly of all they are all stored in the exact same folder that's right every single note no matter what the topic is is in the same place it sounds ridiculous at first but I promise you this is actually a

strength because if you can find notes in folders then not only is it hard to find them but it's hard to connect them and we need connections because that's what leads the new insight and if you want to understand your books better then you have to contextualize new things you learn in a network of existing ideas studying physics without knowing any maths is impossible reading classical Western literature without any knowledge of the Bible is putting yourself at a disadvantage learning sociology while failing to connect it to history I mean it just doesn't work you have

nothing to give it context true wisdom comes from understanding many different fields and then seeing how they all come together into one universal truth and it only makes sense then that we should put our notes in the same place so that they can connect I have a nice physical example to show you with pages and notebooks let's say ID is a and b connect to each other but you don't know it yet and each of them is tucked away in a separate notebook that's a piss it's annoying to find if you turn a and b

into Atomic notes you free them from their cage and you let them mingle in the same place it lets you physically see that connection and you can link them to better understand the topic or to discover something that you never saw beforehand and don't worry about it getting messy by the way which is a valid fear with tags indexes and references things manage to stay organized my indexes give me a contents page of every interest I have so I never fear that I'm losing my notes in the crowd before I get into how you can

archive your notes I should let you know that I have a good few videos on the whole technical setup of obsidian so if this system looks interesting to you and you want to do it for yourself I'd recommend you check those out I'll link them below okay so back to how you can make these Atomic notes once I finished my Source notes I go back through them and I decide what deserves to be made into an atomic note and you might be thinking like are you serious again we're going through them again yes we are

okay but what do I mean by deserves to be made into an atomic note well there's three main things I look for three main categories of what I consider good enough to be one the first thing is I make Atomic notes on the ideas that really stand out like the most important ones sometimes things are interesting enough to talk about in the context of the book like in Gilgamesh I wrote about Babylonian Society I wrote about the script they use the history that's all cool these are cool facts while they are worth mentioning in the

source notes to understand the book and to get a picture of what it's like they're not they don't have that W Factor they're not special they're not special enough to be taken from my source notes and archived permanently as an atomic note other times the ideas are so interesting that they transcend The Source note that they deserve deserve to be their own thing as an atomic note for example one of the big ideas in Gilgamesh was that it's futile to chase eternal life so rather than get into a frenzy over it over something you can't

have you just have to accept your mortality and realize that the most important thing is your duty and your achievements in the real world as a living breathing human now that's deep that's something worth writing about that transcends the book entirely so I made this into an atomic note I created it I applied the template I gave it the mortality tag and I then wrote about the theme sometimes I copy and paste from my source notes if I feel like it's good enough and well usually though I will write to more I will write it

differently maybe in a more focused way I will polish out my thoughts and give it some proper care and elaboration now typically I would talk about the idea in general this is no longer necessarily A analysis of Gilgamesh it's an analysis on mortality and yes I will reference gilgames and whatever else but it's not the main focus the book itself the main focus is the idea and Gilgamesh is the foundation I try to make my Atomic notes go beyond the source note and to be their own thing as for the length many are very short

sometimes I write just a few sentences but most of the time they are 2 to 500 Words long and my preferred format is a mini essay which once again I have a video on so I'll link that down below as well the second thing I look for to write an atomic note is any recurring theme and this happens more often than you think in all books you tend to see a few major insights pop up again and again in non-fiction this might be the author's Grand argument and in fiction it might be the main themes

or the main morals of the story that won't always be neatly packaged to you in a nice little summary at the end sometimes you have to find it yourself sometimes it's completely secret and so what I like to use my Atomic notes for is to identify that running theme and to kind of collect into summarize it for example mortality is not mentioned just once in Gilgamesh it's mentioned all throughout the book in many different ways and so in my Atomic notes on mortality I will reference many different passages and many different angles that it's discussed

from I'm referencing many different sections of the book because I know that each passage has something to add and something to you know offer that's different from the last one the third and final thing I write Atomic notes on is my own thoughts not everything has to come from the book and you know what they're your notes you can write what whatever the hell you want you don't even have to write them in a way that other people understand they don't even have to be correct at first this is your bank of data your info

if you have an interesting thought just randomly you can write about it and reference yourself as the source for example while reading Gilgamesh a question popped into my head that was kind of unrelated and it was question of like to what extent is the child success also the parent success if at all so how much is the child's individuality tied into the parents individuality what is that link is there a link at all how should we credit it just a side thought but I figured that's interesting enough to write an atomic note on so I

did it's not like a final formal essay it didn't go anywhere necessarily but it was a nice prompt of discussion I wrote down a few words and that's that and that's archiving over time as you add notes your library of knowledge gets bigger it gets stronger it gets more comprehensive I write maybe one note a day or maybe every two days but over time it compounds and it gets into something really it grows into something really impressive and useful it's like a personal bank of knowledge that is always there to serve you and to help

you whether you're writing researching or just revising or learning you saw how I hyped up connections for learning this final step is synthesis where like a true medieval scholar you cross reference your sources combine everything you know and draw new insight from your books which you didn't see beforehand in synthesis you take your Atomic notes from multiple different books and then find links between them this lets you see a clearer picture on the topic because you can see new angles that you never saw before and also you can spot disagreements and inconsistencies between books because

not everything you read or write is going to be correct and you can only discover that by reading multiple books plus it's not like one book is going to teach you everything some books are flawed some are missing ideas some only cover one part of the field and you need to read other things to gain a full picture when you read many different books and you connect their atomic notes you fill in those gaps if you keep at that process you become an expert and that's no exaggeration either that is literally how you achieve expertise

I hope that's sounding good but what does it look like in practice well I'm going to abandon Gilgamesh for now he's done well and we're going to turn instead to a book called tribe by Sebastian Yer which is on anthropology and psychology as you can see I have a lot of atomic notes inspired from this book because it was right up my alley every time I finish an atomic note I have a look for what notes it might connect to both from the same book but also anything else I've written in the past I link

those related notes in the references section so that if I'm ever catching up on old ideas or I need to do some research or a piece of writing these connections naturally show me to what I need if you forget something that's fine because you'll probably end up rediscovering it through those connections you have made it's that simple for example when I was reading tribe I picked up the idea that safety can come at the expense of purpose now when I wrote this it reminded me of a past note based on a lecture by Jordan petson

which was about meaning and responsibility the idea of meaning or purpose was the middleman between both notes so even though they came from very different places they were related and it was cool to have that Eureka moment which connected them you can see I link to the other note in the reference section and also a few others that I thought were relevant now if I ever revisit either one of these notes I have an obvious bridge to follow that train of thought a question I get asked a lot is well how am I supposed to

remember what to link to like to to link to something you have to remember it's there in the first place so how does that work that's a fair question cuz I struggled with it for months and I've come up with a few good ways that you can find those notes to link to first I search for keywords when I create my notes I try to title them cleverly meaning I include all of the major terms like meaning psychology nutrition all of that with that I can use the search function with the double square brackets to

just look up some keywords and see what pops up and chances are something's going to be relevant the other thing I like to do is click on the tag of the notes and have a scroll through all of the other notes in that tag in just a few seconds I can scan the list and see if there's anything that connects now the third solution I use a bit less often I go on the graph view I like this view because it clusters notes together based on the links and the more related things are the closer

they are together for example you can see that all of my writing notes are close together and they're near my notes on productivity note taking and all the rest because they're kind of related however odd topics like shoes or nutrition well they're wildly different from anything else so they are much further away and it makes it clear using this pattern you can have a look around and see if any connections pop up now I have to stress though it doesn't have to be perfect like you won't have a perfect Network and you won't capture every

single connection you will miss some that's just how it is the point is to do your best and to try and find quality useful connections at least often even just a link or two is incredibly valuable and that's the system I hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to hear if it's similar to what you do if you do something completely different and I always ask you to share your system or how you approach it because if you scroll through comments it's really useful to read what other people do and to you know maybe borrow

some things get inspiration I love to see it and it is helpful for not only me I guess but everyone else so please I'd love to hear it and also if you like these videos I'm sure you'll love the newsletter it's free to subscribe down below and it's not spam yet to either and of course we talk about some of similar topics to here on the channel but there's also room for more more different things different ideas and different formats and experimentation which is just as interesting it's good fun and uh I hope you enjoyed

the system let me know if you have any questions by the way cuz I know it kind get complicated and there's a lot to talk about so feel free to ask questions I'll do my best to answer you and I'll see you at the uh on the mailing list as well thank you for watching