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Logseq is a free and privacy-focused note-taking app that I use to capture and organize information from multiple sources, including articles, books, and PDFs. Here are some of the features that make it excellent for building my personal knowledge base.
Logseq’s Timeline Note-Taking Approach
Logseq is a networked outliner that offers a unique timeline-based approach to note-taking, allowing you to organize your thoughts chronologically with ease. Each day, Logseq creates a new journal entry, where I capture highlights, insights, and reflections from my readings as well as managing tasks, making it perfect forinterstitial journaling.
What makes this approach effective is that each entry becomes a chronological piece of a larger narrative, helping me easily capture and connect various highlights or ideas from different sources and dates. Since each journal entry is part of an interconnected graph, I can revisit ideas and discover connections I may have overlooked.
As a knowledge worker or student, you may need an effective strategy for getting information from external sources, including research papers, books, and PDFs. Iuse Logseq to organize my thoughtsand store all my notes in a single location, making them easily accessible and searchable.
Here’s how to add assets like PDFs into Logseq:
This will create a link to the PDF in double brackets. You can click the link to open the PDF on the left side of the Logseq window to read and highlight it as you take notes on the right side.
If you don’t want to have your book or PDF notes on Logseq’s dailyJournalpage because you may not want to mix them with other notes or tasks from that specific day, consider creating a page for each book or PDF.
This way, you can have all the notes from a specific book on its page. Click the+ Createbutton in the bottom left corner to create a new page. Type in the name of the book or PDF and hitEnter.
Find PDFs or Books in Logseq
I havebuilt my second brainin Logseq, which means that I use it for everything, including taking meeting notes, journaling, and storing resources. As my knowledge base grows, it becomes challenging to find specific notes or resources. Luckily, Logseq has several built-in features that make it easy to find information quickly.
One of the best ways to make a growing library of resources easier to find in Logseq is adding metadata, including the book title, link to the article, document type, and tags. This way, I can quickly find a specific resource by searching for the title or using tags.
Let’s start by creating a book or PDF template to reuse anytime you want to add metadata to your resources, rather than manually adding them each time. Here’s how to create a template in Logseq:
Here’s how to add metadata to your assets in Logseq:
After setting up metadata templates like this, you won’t need to remember where you stored your assets or its title. You can just search for any of the information you entered in the template to quickly access it.
Text Highlights in Logseq
Logseq is one of thebest tools for annotating and highlighting texts. you’re able to highlight specific sections and add brief notes when reading a book or an article in Logseq. Each text highlight in Logseq becomes part of your graph, which makes it highly searchable and easily accessible through backlinks.
Here’s how to take notes and manage text highlights in Logseq:
Alternatively, highlight a section of the text, select a color, right-click the highlighted text, and selectCopy ref. Paste this reference link in your notes. Clicking this link will automatically open that specific book or PDF and return to the highlighted text.
This is a handy feature for quickly revisiting important points in a book or article without having to search manually. So, you don’t need to highlight an entire paragraph or page, as you can simply link to a specific keyword or title you want to refer back to. Lastly, you can quickly access all your highlights by clicking theBulleticon in the top left corner and selectingHighlights.
Import Highlights Using Logseq’s Readwise Plugin
So, how can you organize all your text highlights from other sources into Logseq? you’re able to use Logseq’s Readwise plugin to import all your highlights from Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Pocket, or any other supported app. Readwise is one of thebest RSS reader and read-it-later appsthat you can use to save and revisit text highlights from multiple sources. It’s a great way to have all your important notes and ideas from various sources saved in your personal knowledge base.
Use Flashcards to Review Notes
I use Flashcards in Logseq to review and memorize key points from books, turning my notes into active studying tools. All it takes to create a flashcard is adding#cardor[[card]]to any important highlight, instantly transforming it into a question-and-answer prompt.
The parent block becomes the question, while the indented block becomes the answer, simulating a digital flashcard. This means that you need to structure the flashcard by having a key question or concept as the parent block, with related information indented underneath as the answer. You can access your flashcards anytime via theFlashcardstab in the sidebar.
Logseq is a powerful tool for taking and organizing notes from books and PDFs. Whether you’re a student, researcher, or lifelong learner, Logseq helps you build a personal knowledge base that is interconnected, searchable, and easy to review.
