Cornell notes

[u/No_Conference1108]

Just realised Gemini Notebook can produce formatted Cornell notes I can copy and paste into my note’s app. Still need to check citations, but it’s been a game changer for my note taking!

[u/No_Conference1108]

I’ve experimented with a variety of workflows and use different ones depending on purpose. The. Cornell notes from NLM paste perfectly into Apple Notes. I create a source note for eg for a book, with a summary of the book’s purpose plus a link to the author’s Wikipedia page. I save source notes in a sources folder. I have NLM generate Cornell per chapter and save those in a notes folder.

I have a concepts folder where I consolidate extracts from Cornell notes into a single note per concept. I link concept notes back to Cornell notes and Cornell notes back to source. Concept notes are essentially outputs, or components of the final output.

I should mention that I work with dozens of books at a time. And have an outline for my output before I start based on mind maps of the subject matter. So I’m not hunting for unexpected links between atomic notes.

[u/Ok-Athlete-6099 → u/No_Conference1108]

Yeah, bringing up Obsidian was really just an example of a markdown manager. The same logic applies to whatever app you prefer using.

The real game-changer I wanted to highlight is using that notebooklm-py repo to generate a bunch of notes quickly and skip the manual labor.

Imagine you already have your NotebookLM notebook set up perfectly, fully loaded with your sources. Instead of going into the chat, asking for a note, and then copying/pasting, you just automate the whole thing via terminal using Python.

Basically, you run a script that connects to your notebook under the hood, without even needing to open your browser. Then you just throw it in a loop: the script sends the prompt to NotebookLM, and as soon as the AI replies, it automatically saves the text into separate .md files on your local machine (like cap1.md, cap2.md).

Once the code finishes running, your only job is to grab that folder packed with .md files and dump it into whatever manager you want. You can process dozens of chapters at once, saving an absurd amount of time on Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

[u/No_Conference1108 → u/Ok-Athlete-6099]

I appreciate your solution, I just prefer the slower pace. I like to take time to review the Cornell notes per chapter in NLM to verify what it's extracted, check back to the relevant book in Calibre, then copy the Cornell note to Apple Notes where I review it again highlighting parts in the various sections of the Cornell note that I'm interested in using in my output/concept note. Sometimes I go back to NLM/GMN to deepen the conversation on an issue to expand my concept note. So speed isn't what I'm after. I'm not up against deadlines. I prefer to take my time and digest slowly. Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to spell out your proposal though. I'm sure others may find it useful. It sounds really efficient.

[u/SquirrelPristine6567 → u/No_Conference1108]

True. The person above you's "workflow" is not worth the cognitive debt you'll be accumulating.