Yesterday, I finished reading the newly released book: Building A Second Brain by Tiago Forte.

Although it was a fantastic summary of how to organize and use knowledge and notes, the book did not cover audiobooks in great detail. Compared to articles and books, you cannot highlight or copy certain sentences when listening.

Personally, I listen to audiobooks/podcasts/videos a lot (5-6 hours a day). It is much more convenient to absorb others' wisdom when you are doing something else, for instance, walking, dishes, meals, exercise, or playing games. Thus I rarely read as much nowadays since my information consumption is already taken care of.

Instead of standard highlighting, I use the following strategies to take notes when listening:

Write down key points in a dedicated note

If one audiobook is interesting enough, I create a note called [book} highlights. Whenever I need to write down something when listening, for instance, an insight or big idea, I write it down there.

Use the bookmarking features with notes

On Audible, you can bookmark a certain passage and attach a note to it. This is a great way to both refer back to the source later and get a good gist of what the book was about. Especially for complicated but highly valuable books (for instance Incomplete Nature), I make a lot of bookmarks. On Scribd, you can still bookmark, although not being able to attach notes.

Don't transcribe and send it afterward

There are services like Airr or Otter.ai where you can transcribe certain audio snippets to text. However, I find it quite unnecessary, too much work for little gain. After all, not every note is going to be revisited afterward so minimum friction is key. Especially when doing other things in parallel.

Be minimalistic with note-taking on audiobooks and you will get all the benefits.