I am not the OP either but I also take notes. >How can I so meticulously keep notes about everything I learn? Very easy, because I know if I don't take notes

I am not the OP either but I also take notes. >How can I so meticulously keep notes about everything I learn? Very easy, because I know if I don't take notes I won't really learn it. I know I will forget that over time because I am trained in spaced repetition and I know if I don't review something I will loose it forever in the future. If I spend hours reading an important book and don't review it, I will forget and waste those hours. Nothing less productive than that. Most people forget most of what they learn and are not conscious about it. >And how do you make sure you aren't spending more time on organizing/formatting/maintaining your notes and making it look nice instead of actually reading doing productive stuff? I have it automated. I am an expert programmer so I spend very little time doing that. It is extremely productive because I know how to do things most people can't. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" Albert Einstein I have never cared about making it look nice. I started using paper and an automatic feeder Fujitsu scanner. It was ugly at first but worked. After years of improvement,it looks nice, beautiful if you want, but it was never the goal. The goal was automatic review, and powerful search.