I wrote previously about how useful side bars are for writing books within Roam Research.

Another useful habit is keeping the Daily Log (I’ll write a post later dedicated to this topic). An added benefit of using the Daily Log is that this feeling of “I need to remember something” goes away so I can focus more on the thinking.

When I’m reading an article/book/email, watching a documentary, something on YouTube, I’ll have it handy to note down anything interesting that I come across.

Sometimes it’ll be something directly relevant to one of the books (or newsletters) that I’m working on. Then I can bring up the relevant book on the side bar.

It can be in the form of an idea, argument (or counter argument), quote, supporting facts & figures, etc.

For example, this is a quote from Robert Ringer that I found interesting.

It’s directly relevant to my Thinking Questions book where I talk about why it’s a good idea to have dedicated thinking time.

I can decide later whether I’ll actually use this quote or not but for now, I’ll copy the block reference:

And then paste it into the side bar where the book content is loaded.

You’ll see that there’s a number 1 next to the block to indicate that it’s been linked elsewhere once. If I click on the quote in the book page, then it’ll automatically take me to the original source/reference so that I can easily attribute.

If you’re interested in using Roam Research for Book Writing, you can pre-order my eBook which will go into it in more details.