Review the media you consume

Whenever I read a book, watch a film/series or finish a videogame, I have built a habit to write a small review for it.

I found that writing a review has multiple advantages:

• It improves my ability to express why I like or dislike something. This made me realize that I really struggle to clearly put into words my love for some of my all-time favorite pieces of work. For something I dislike, it's often much easier.
• It forces me to slow down my media consumption. I like to take 1 or 2 days before I write my review. It gives me time to think about it. Binge-consumption is not compatible with this habit, which I would say is a good thing.
• It helps me remember why I liked/disliked a piece of work. Our brains are not infallible machines, and we (thankfully) tend to forget things. Quickly reading your own review will instantly revive memories of it.

I am personally a big fan of Obsidian almost entirely thanks to its cross-linking capabilities. I write all my reviews using it. When you write a review for a piece of work that reminds you of something else you read/played/watched, you can just link it. Just like that you have a link between both notes and the connection you made in your brain is expressed in your note.

It's a dead-simple but extremely powerful feature that works for anything. It naturally creates a personal wiki/database tailored to your own brain with very little effort on your end, besides thinking about the creation for a link. As the developer of Templater, a plugin for Obsidian, I've taken this further by automating the generation of useful metadata for each note: the cast of a film, the director, the soundtrack composer etc. Again with the power of links this lets me instantly query all the films I have watched featuring a particular actor.

Each review I write is entirely personal and isn't necessarily meant to be shared. Keeping it that way has real advantages: you don't need to polish your review, you can be messy and write whatever thoughts you have with your own mental organization. You are basically free to say whatever you want, there's no pressure to perform for an audience.

That's a quick overview of my system. Try it for yourself! Your first reviews will probably feel a bit clumsy, but like any skill you'll get better at it. And over time, you'll end up with something more valuable than a list of ratings: a map of your own taste