Note Taking #1

I had begun my investment journey once I was done repaying my education loan around the age of 26. Similar to other working professionals who do not get time to understand the various investment instruments and are lost by the plethora of information available on the internet, I started with the easiest of the lot- Indirect Mutual funds recommended by a MF distributer through a senior colleague of mine. This was followed by stock option trading , crypto currencies and commodities all resulting in utter failure and my inability to understand the reasons for it. Dabbing through these new concepts, I came across a piece by an American investor Li Lu who had written about value investing.

"The Practice Of Value Investing", by Li Lu - LONGRIVER

He had mentioned about his learnings from Buffet and Munger and the whole idea of value investing where you work towards adding incremental value to society rather than play a zero-sum game which is more often than not a gamble, really struck me. However, to understand it in depth and not repeat the mistakes I had done while trying my hand at trading, I realized I would have to go back to the drawing board and start learning it similar to how I used to understand a concept at school. The learning during our initial academic years are very high because of our ability to constantly surround oneself with a continuous learning mechanism. As we progress in our professional and personal development journeys, this approach gets replaced by color coded timelines and the sheer pressure of continuous outperformance. I had always been obsessed with the idea of productivity and planning. During this instance, this entire exercise of understanding Value Investing would require me to create that mechanism of continuous learning where you are surrounded by cues and nudges that help you understand concepts better. I thought with all the tools that I was exploring for improving productivity, I could start testing out my approach to learn a new concept of value investing.

I worked my way across through multiple blogs, podcasts forums, and key video sessions of some great investors but after a point of time I could hardly recall any concepts which I was learning. This was when I stumbled upon a brilliant blogpost by Jana Vembunarayanan which explained about the importance of taking smart notes and the mental model of latticework and the power of interconnected ideas.

How to take smart notes

Thus also began a journey of note taking and exploration of techniques which would help me in retaining the key concepts of value investing that I was learning through video essays, podcasts and blogposts. I will explore my learnings and key takeways from top read articles in this series of posts.

As a starter, here is a summary of some of my productivity tools- (I own a Note 10 Android handset and a HP Elitebook with Windows 10 along with a Google Home device)

• Google tasks for both windows and android- Google has created a simple Task App for its Android OS. The app also has a web version and a desktop app version. The Gmail also has a google task plug-in to create a task while reading a mail- like getting the notification of a webinar and creating a task with reminder. The desktop version is called Taskboard. I have created 3 types of list of tasks- personal growth, home and work.

• Shopping List- While working on a new concept, it is also important that I own the household shopping list. I use the Google shopping list to mark anything for grocery and other essentials shopping. There is no separate app for this but you can open it through the web browser. The reason for using this is that it can be easily synced and controlled through the Google Home device and can be sent to your mobile device by a simple voice command to the google assistant on Google Home or your phone.

• Note Taking for personal growth and learning- Google Keep app for instant mote taking due to its ease of use of labels/hashtags which allows me to link ideas and the amazing sync that it has with your mobile, desktop, Gmail. It is similar to Google Tasks. It can also be used as a default note taking app for your Google Home device.

• Note Taking for official purpose- The Microsoft OneNote and the Outlook are amazing tools if used properly for note taking, minutes capturing and creating To-Do

• Pocket- This app and chrome plug-in is superb to create a collection of web pages with the hashtags and labels features.

• Google Podcasts- This is an amazingly simple app with all the key Podcasts in one place. I will create a follow up post article on some of the best podcasts that I listen to- Stay tuned 🙂

• Youfloat- This app lets you listen to Youtube videos in a minimized format on the phone. There are some very good lectures available on YouTube video and not the Youtube Music channel which becomes difficult to listen to if you are going for a walk/jog with the headphones plugged in. I do most of my listening while I am on my evening or morning walks and this app has become a real boon.

• Project Planning- The brilliant Notion App is a great tool (available in both desktop and mobile) for planning a project and taking notes on that. It is superior to Keep in terms of the elaborate features. I use it for my long term learning tasks and keep for my immediate note keeping.

Here is a snapshot of Notion

My Google Keep Snapshot

Hope you can also implement some of these tools to improve your overall effectiveness.