PTPL 058: Plugin-Free, Intentional Note Taking in Obsidian From Library Ebooks

PLUS How carrots and pipes are the productivity inspiration you need

Image by Author

This week — 

• How to find what you’re looking for in what’s already around you

• How (and why) taking manual notes from library ebooks is a valid option to automated methods

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a once-a-week taster of the unusual, the helpful, and the delightfully mundane, as well as the next instalment of my quest to future proof and simplify my digital-analog workflow.

Inspired Productivity

The inspiration you’re looking for is already here

In this 60-second doc, Xave Lozano explains how he makes musical instruments out of everyday objects. A crutch, fence, broom, even a carrot!

I’m always looking for pipes. If there is a pipe, you can play it. …I’m a musician; I watch for the sound. Everything can be an instrument, because everything makes sound. — Xave Lozano

What’s the lesson?

You find what you’re looking for. It may not look the way you initially expected, but once you’re tuned in to The Thing, your interest, you’ll find inspiration everywhere. Be it a work project, personal interest puzzle, or your productivity in general, fix your mind on the essence of it and solutions will start to appear before your eyes.

Try them out! See how they play! Then adjust the tuning, and make some music. Because the music of our lives is why we’re trying to be productive in the first place, right?

Adventures in Plain Text (and a little paper)

While on holiday in Victoria this past week, I’ve dived into the world of borrowing ebooks from online libraries. I’ve known about this magical kingdom for years, but always put off joining because I couldn’t find my library card, and physically going to the library to get another never made it to the top of my list.

Well, times have changed, I’m happy to say! Not only has it been so long since borrowing books that they seem to have forgotten who I am, it was remarkably easy to join up (again) online.

Now for the big plain text question:

How am I going to highlight parts of these borrowed ebooks that I want to remember, and get those highlights into Markdown files?

I’m using Borrowbox, and so far haven’t found a way to highlight or even copy text in the usual manner. I’m not saying it can’t be done (and yes, I do know about Libby and the potential for opening library ebooks on a Kindle), but I’m up for the challenge to see what I’d do in case it couldn’t.

My internal eyes rolled, as I realised what I’d just been thinking. “Oh dear, how am I going to take notes on a good book within a proprietary app if there is no automated way of transporting new brain fruits to my precious plain text notes?”

Good grief. Have I learned nothing??

Now I’m back to my senses, I can say I DON’T CARE if there’s a built-in way to do this, or not. Céline Guerreiro, my French language learning mentor, has a method she uses with Kindle books that doesn’t require any automations or plugins. It goes like this:

• Start reading

• Find something you want to make a note about (in your own words, of course)

• Open your notes app (in her case, Obsidian; in my case, open Drafts then send the text to Obsidian—Medium link)

• Write the note

So simple, right? So… analogue-flavoured. I love it.

And there are other options if you don’t want to disrupt the flow of reading, like adding a bookmark, or taking a screenshot of the page and using OCR to extract text. It’s good to have these options, but I do think there’s a lot to be said for being intentional about manually note making in the moment. As humans have done for centuries.

There’s nowt wrong with automating the flow of highlights and notes from ebooks and online articles. Readwise is a great option, and Omnivore is a free and open source service I use almost daily to capture articles to make notes from later. 

On t’other hand, there’s also plenty right about being content with a purely manual workflow.

Since when did we need to get through so much material so quickly, that we couldn’t manage without a machine to do the heavy lifting? A manual note making method will probably mean you’ll have less notes, but that those you do have will be deeper and probably more useful than a thousand fleeting thoughts captured without effort.

One more example of the dishwasher/washing up by hand principle. 

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