Organizing Your Notes

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Organizing and synthesizing ideas is crucial in writing. For my book projects, I create special note cards with titles. It's fascinating to go through them and discover ideas from years ago that are now relevant. Even though the payoff may be uncertain, doing the work is worth it. As for organizing, I had a note card about a story in Sparta, so I referred to my copy of Herodotus with a page reference. It was surreal to realize that I had marked up that copy and written the note card years ago, and it was now useful for my eleventh book. The payoff is eventually there, even if you don't know where you'll need the information. So, where can you find a Herodotus card?

In this episode of Deep Questions we try something a little different: our first guest!

Bestselling author Ryan Holiday joins me to help answer reader questions, as well as more than a few queries from me. We cover a variety of topics, including his life as a writer living on a ranch, how he fosters discipline, the impact of our diminishing reading culture, and why everyone keeps trying to get me to move to Austin.

Be sure to check out Ryan's new book: LIVES OF THE STOICS (https://dailystoic.com/preorder).

To submit your own questions for the show, sign up for my mailing list at calnewport.com.

You can submit audio questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/CalNewport

Thanks to listener Jay Kerstens for the intro music.