Follow the eight steps in order

Literature note — source: Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes

1. Write down the ideas that suddenly come to mind.
2. Whenever you read something, take notes on it. Write down what you want to remember, or phrases you might think about or use in your writing later. Keep them very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be especially careful with quotes. Do not skip the step of grasping the meaning by copying them out word for word.
3. Go through the notes from steps 1 and 2 and relate them to each other in meaningful ways. Then write permanent notes as if writing a letter to someone else.
4. Add links to the permanent notes.
5. Develop topics, questions, and research projects bottom-up from within the system. Challenge your own claims through reading and strengthen your thinking. The more interested you become in something, the more you read and think about it and the more notes you collect.
6. Test your ideas, and after enough time has passed, read and take notes again to improve your ideas and arguments and refine their structure.
7. Turn the notes into a draft. Transplant them into a coherent piece of writing as if translating, and build your argument.
8. Edit and proofread the manuscript. Then move on to the next one.

All of this is for my own intellectual growth. Often the ideas you did not predict turn out to be the best ones. Always take notes.

Permanent notes extracted from here:

• Meaning sinks in only when a note is rewritten in my own words, not copied
• Topics are not decided from the top but emerge bottom-up from the notes that pile up
• The ideas you did not predict become the best ideas
• A draft is not written from a blank page but assembled by translating notes
• Abstraction arises naturally while searching for a solution