Why I annotate in the margin, not a separate doc

For a while I kept a separate notes doc for every book — quotes, disagreements, things to look up later. It looked productive. It also meant every note I wrote was one step removed from the sentence that provoked it, and a surprising number of them stopped making sense a week later without that context.

Writing in the margin instead fixed most of that. The note sits exactly where the disagreement happened, which means re-reading it later comes with the argument still attached. A separate doc, by contrast, quietly turns into a to-do list of things I meant to think about more and mostly never do.

The trade-off is real — margin notes don’t search well, and they don’t travel if the book does. I’ve made peace with that. A note that’s actually reread beats a note that’s merely retrievable.