Write Book Notes In RemNote With Me (30 min)

The core takeaway is a practical workflow for turning a nonfiction book into a usable, searchable knowledge base—using RemNote to both store notes and convert them into flashcards—while avoiding two common pitfalls: mismatched note titles and “collector’s fallacy” note-taking. The approach matters because notes only become valuable when they can be retrieved later, and when their organization reflects the actual content they contain.

The process starts with how notes are titled. When a book’s chapter and subsection headings are used as note titles, the titles should match the material inside the note. The workflow flags a specific failure mode: grabbing a quote from one topic while keeping the subsection title from another. For example, if a subsection title suggests “clinical trials on trial” but the captured quote is about “decision making,” the title becomes misleading. The fix is to rename the note so the title reflects what’s actually being stored. If the physical book’s navigation depends on the original subsection numbering, the method keeps that structure by using the chapter/subsection number (e.g., “3”) while adjusting the wording so the note’s context stays accurate.

The second principle is retrieval-first note-taking. Instead of writing simply to accumulate information, the workflow explicitly aims to avoid the collector’s fallacy—collecting notes without a clear reason to retrieve them. Every note is treated as something the author expects to use again, not as a permanent archive of everything read. That retrieval mindset is positioned as the difference between a knowledge base that supports learning and one that becomes clutter.

From a tooling standpoint, the workflow frames knowledge bases as a combination of dumping notes from multiple sources and connecting them through tags or links. Many programs can do that, but RemNote is singled out for combining linking/tagging with built-in flashcard creation “pretty seamlessly.” The motivation is to get a more robust system without splitting responsibilities across multiple tools—specifically for students building a serious knowledge base who want flashcards but don’t want to rely on Anki alongside another note app.

The session is also presented as an experiment: notes are written in real time while studying Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths’ Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions. The book is described as an accessible introduction for readers who aren’t already steeped in computer science, with ideas tied to everyday decision-making. The practical goal is to apply the workflow while taking notes from this text, testing whether the retrieval-first, context-correct method produces a knowledge base that is both navigable and study-ready through RemNote’s flashcard layer.