The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you how I read and take notes on non-fiction books.  This method helps me read faster, retain more information, understand the topic better, and gives me notes to come back to later.  How do you read nonfiction?  Do you read one page at a time starting at the beginning — the way you read fiction?  If so, you are probably doing it wrong.  I wish I could find the article that I read many years ago that changed my thinking on this.  Generally speaking, the point of fiction is to entertain and transport — to tell a story.  Also generally speaking, the point of non-fiction is to convince you of something, present a perspective, or educate you.  Now, in some cases, you WILL be reading non-fiction for enjoyment — like memoirs or history — in which case, use your best judgement and read how you want.  But AGAIN generally speaking, the purpo...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use both Evernote and Notability together for notetaking and record keeping. I use my two traditional note-taking products: Evernote and Notability.  I consider Evernote my main note repository since it is fully Cross-platform That means that Evernote has an app (in my case) for the iPhone, iPad, software for the PC, and a web-based format as well.  So, I can get to my notes from any of these devices, from someone else's phone, or from anywhere I happen to be.  My notes are stored in the cloud and are replicated across all of these platforms.  This is important to me.  I have over 3,000 notes and I refer to them regularly.  When I am deciding which app to use for a note, Evernote is my default choice if the content of the note will be text-based.  Any note where typing is the mode of input goes immediately into Evernote.  I onl...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my method of organizing my notes and highlights from the assigned reading for graduate school using Google Sheets. I'm in a grad school program and there is a lot of assigned reading.  Since I now rent my textbooks, marking them all up with highlights and notes isn't really an option.  I suppose I COULD rewrite each passage that I would have highlighted in a notebook or something, but despite the fact that it probably would help my memory retention, it would take FOREVER and seems like busy work.  So, I've taken to renting my textbook digitally when at all possible.  That way I can highlight passages in the digital textbook and then export them, so that I'll have those highlights forever -- even after I return the textbook. So, let me start by telling you how I organize these notes and then I'll go into how I export them.  First, Organizing ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll share the apps and systems that I use for paperless note-taking.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   I'm not sure what initially drove me to be semi-paperless in my personal life. It was probably a combination of being overwhelmed by all of the paper streaming into my home, wanting to have access to my files where ever I was, and the giant technological advances that made it not just doable, but also pretty appealing. Whatever it was, once I got my iPad, I stopped relying on paper. Evernote My primary note taking app is Evernote. It is cross platform, which is a recurring theme and a priority to me. It means that I can access it from my iPhone, iPad, any web browser, or Windows software on my computer. It started out with rudimentary functionality, particularly the mobile...