Quotes are not notes

If you want to embed the wisdom of something you’ve read, don’t simply repeat it, re-contextualise it, make it your own thought.

A quote is rarely more than an approximation of your own thinking, simply collecting quotes related to a topic is futility, not utility, translate them into your own words to make them useful.

Casting a wide net can feel useful but, to stretch the analogy, focused work is more akin to the fishing rod, or perhaps spear fishing1.

  1. Heck if I know whether the many ways of entrapping fish are in fact a meaningful parallel for thinking and consuming — I’ve never been fishing and I don’t eat animals — but eh I think the analogy works :)↩︎