reading log – datanode.net

One of the things I like about reading Jamie Rubin‘s blog, besides his sightings of T.A.R.D.I.S. cars and the random ThinkGeek plug, is his “going paperless” column. And of the many things he tracks and digitizes, one of the ones I found most intriguing was his reading log.

In July, I actually gave this a try. It lasted a day, and I concluded it was far too cumbersome. Why did it fail so quickly? Because I tried doing too much of it manually – I just didn’t grok the concept of letting Evernote do its own ting. I tried recording what I read, when I read it, where I read it, etc., completely ignoring the fact that I was using an application designed to do that for me!

This time around, with me trying to read a chapter from the Durant book, a chapter from an ARC, as well as anything else I might have time for, I’ve taken a much more liberating approach. I’m letting Evernote handle all of the minutia for me. Evernote tracks the date, location, etc.. At a minimum, I create a single with whatever I just read as the title. For example, “Our Oriental Heritage, Chapter 10, Assyria” is a note all into itself. If I have a chance, I’ll add a few lines to the body of the note so I can remember something about the reading. Hopefully, this will come in handy especially for book reviews, where although I prefer to gloss over the specifics to avoid spoilers, it would be nice to remember that so-and-so did X at some point. And here’s a snapshot of how its going: