How to Organize Bible Study Notes You'll Actually Reread

Most of us have the notes. Several notebooks, a folder of printed studies, margins filled in over years. What almost nobody has is a way of finding anything in them.

Notes that are never reread are not really notes. They are a record that studying happened. A little structure turns them into something that answers questions years later.

Decide What Goes in the Margin and What Goes in the Notebook

The single most useful distinction, and most people have never drawn it.

The margin is for what will always be true of that passage: a cross reference, a word meaning, the structure of the argument. It belongs to the text and you want it there every time you open to that page.

The notebook is for what is true of you this week. What you noticed, what you are wrestling with, what you decided to do. That is dated, personal and changes. Put it in the margin and you will crowd out the permanent notes with a season you have moved past.

Keep Margin Notes Short Enough to Read Later

A margin is small and that is a feature.

Write in short phrases rather than sentences. Use a consistent set of marks so you can scan rather than read: a box for a repeated word, an arrow to a cross reference, a question mark for something unresolved. Keep the marks to five or six, use them the same way every time, and write what they mean on the inside cover so you still know in three years.

Give the Notebook a Findable Structure

One notebook at a time, used front to back, with two changes.

Date every entry and write the passage reference at the top of the page. Then leave the first two pages blank as an index. When you finish a study, add one line to the index: the passage, the date, and the page. Two seconds each time, and the notebook becomes searchable.

Number the Notebooks

When one fills, number it and write the date range on the spine and the first page.

Then keep one running index of the notebooks themselves, on a single sheet or in a note on your phone. Book three, March to September, Romans, James, the Psalms study. Finding a note from two years ago becomes a matter of a minute rather than an afternoon.

Review, or None of This Matters

Filing is only worth the effort if something is retrieved.

Once a quarter, read back through the last three months of entries. It takes twenty minutes and it is consistently the most surprising twenty minutes of the season. You will find prayers answered that you had forgotten asking, questions that resolved themselves without your noticing, and the same issue surfacing three times, which is usually worth paying attention to.

Keep Loose Paper Out of It

Printed studies, sermon handouts and conference notes multiply and they do not belong in the notebook.

One box or one folder, in date order, no sorting by topic. Sorting by topic sounds better and never survives contact with real life. Date order requires no decisions and you can always find things by roughly when.

Start with the index page in the front of your current notebook. Everything else can follow later.