The Fast Book Outliner (or FBO) is a form that helps me quickly outline the structure of books for learning or review purposes. I can mark where important information is without damaging the book and then see all the “good stuff” in a compact layout. If I want to go back and dig deeper, I can easily find the page and continue to refine my understanding of the book.
Why Use It?
The Problem: When I’m reading a technical manual, I’m looking for the “a-ha! that’s how it works!” moments. Highlighters and bookmarks can be useful for marking those passages, but it’s cumbersome to place them and requires considerable effort to re-transcribe them into another document w/ the page numbers. The FBO was designed to lower that threshold of effort, helping create a “book map” as you read.
Example: you are scanning a book looking for quotable ideas. As you find them, you make a brief note on the FBO sheet by the corresponding page number. You tuck the FBO sheet into the book, and a month later when you come back, you can look it up quickly on the FBO sheet and find the corresponding page number. You become curious about the context of the quotable idea, and read the pages around the original quote, and make additional notes as a new idea comes to mind.
This is great for quickly outlining textbook-style content, preparing to write a book review, or learning a new subject from a technical book. The FBO layout helps you see all the concepts you’ve noted in one place, with ample room to add additional thoughts.
As a final step, you can take your FBO sheet and re-transcribe them into some other form. This is necessary anyway if you’re writing a report or condensing what you’ve learned into a more compact form. The Fast Book Outliner’s goal is NOT to eliminate rewriting; it’s designed to make the process more productive. You still need to provide the critical thinking.
Using the Fast Book Outliner
The Fast Book Outliner is a set of PDF forms that have 25, 50, and 100 page numbers per sheet of paper. For dense material, you will want the room that the 25-per-sheet form offers. If you are just trying to get a broad outline of a lot of material quickly, the 100-per-sheet form will suffice. You can download these forms at the very end of this page.
Here’s how I use it:
How many pages are in the book? Each form handles 100 pages, so if you have a 350 page book, just print out 4 copies (400 pages) worth of the FBO form. The 25-per-sheet form uses 4 pieces of paper (2 if printing double-sided), while the 100-per-sheet form uses just 1 side of a piece of paper.
Mark page ranges. If you have a 200 page book, you need to printout 2 copies of the FBO. Then, you’ll have to mark them as “pages 1-100″ and “pages 101-200″ so you can tell them apart. Just write in a “1″ at the page 1 mark on the second set of FBO forms; there’s a dash in front of it to remind you to do this. The whole process takes a few seconds.
Read and Annotate. As I read, I’m looking for key ideas that either catch my eye, or seem important. Every time I come across one that I think is important, I note it on the FBO sheet. For example, on page 20 I read a phrase that sums up an idea beautifully; I look up page 20 on my FBO sheet and write down a bit of the phrase so I can find it again later.
Review. After I’m done reading a chapter perhaps the book, I look back at all the notes I’ve taken and make sure I can understand them. I might choose to rewrite them on a clean sheet (if I’m preparing a book report or review) or just annotate them further. The FBO sheets can then become part of your “working notes” for further writing or report making,
What’s Good about the Fast Book Outliner
As you are taking notes, you are building up an understanding of the material based on what YOU are interested in. You end up with an index of the book that captures your mind’s relation to the material, not someone elses.
As the notes build up, you can see them all together; the ability to see the key ideas arranged all in front of you is helpful for review. Your mind will be able to more easily see how concepts relate to each other.
Because the page numbers are already transcribed for you, it’s easy to go back and find the original source material on the page. You can then read the material more closely to refine your understanding, or look at material on the preceding or subsequent pages that is related.
You can read very fast, picking up your mental picture of the book in multiple passes. The FBO sheets become your way back into the material. It’s still up to you to make SENSE of what you are reading, but the FBO sheet can help you remember the order and relationship of key ideas–and easily find where you can re-read them.
Download the Fast Book Outliner Printable Forms
The current downloadable versions are available in US LETTER (8.5×11) black&white ISO A4 sizes for 600DPI laser printers. They will probably work on your inkjet printer too. I will be making color versions if there is demand. Let me know by sending me an email.
Tip: To download the PDFs to your computer, right-click (control-click on Macs) the links and choose “Save Link As…”
Note: Some Macs have trouble displaying the colors in the PDF using the native PDF Viewer, but the forms should print correctly. If you install Adobe Acrobat Reader, the issue goes away.
Note: If you are using Chrome, the built-in PDF Viewer draws the files incorrectly. Please save the PDF to your desktop and open in Acrobat Reader.
25 per page (4 page PDF)
Good for outlining dense material.
Download US Letter PDF
Download A4 PDF
50 per page (2 page PDF)
Good for outlining technical books.
Download US Letter PDF
Download A4 PDF
50 per page (2 page PDF) – Alternate Layout
Formatted with the notes at the bottom, to make it easier to transcribe notes when keeping the form to the side of the book you are reading.
Download US Letter PDF
Download A4 PDF
100 per page (1 page PDF)
Good for making an broad outline as you read.
Download US Letter PDF
Download A4 PDF
Enjoy!!! :)
