Ask HN: How do you memorize things you read?

As I was writing my answer you posted yours, and I found It very very helpful.

No need to memorize everything in this day and age. Memorization is super useful, but if it's not part of your day to day, looking it up when you need it is a more efficient use of time.

To that end, I'd instead recommend taking notes in a system that allows for full text search.

However, if you still want to memorize it, repetition will be your friend. Repeatedly reading the material will gain you familiarization with the concepts, and eventually the memorization. Spaced repetition (Anki et.al.) is the fastest, but simply reading regularly works too.

I have a "trick". My native language is not english. 99.9% of what i read is in english. Comprehension for me is also slow when just reading(at least once).

Memory, as i found out, works if you connect new knowledge to existing knowledge. Usually, when i read and understand something to the point of the "aha" moment is not sufficient. Just understanding something in that moment is not enough for storing in long term memory.

Here is the trick part: when i read and want to comprehend and memorise, i do the following:

  1. Read a paragraph/piece in english
  2. Get to the aha moment by re-reading until it makes a narrative in your head
  3. Once i have the narrative, i translate it to my native language and write it down(pen and paper > keyboard)

It's not fast, but there are many processes involved here that get to long term memory:

  1. first reading - getting the context of the material
  2. getting to the aha moment - means it's connected to something, and the new knowledge somehow filled the gap
  3. when i get to the narrative part, i can make a story and tell it to myself, in my own head "this is because of that etc"
  4. #3 is not sufficient, so i take a step further and process it by translating it - further cementing the "connecting to old knowledge" process
  5. #4 is also not sufficient, as the translation is not always clear when trying to explain it to someone else. here is where the longhand writing comes into play - writing is expressing your thoughts clearly. when this is done, i already went through a lot of phases of processing, that i can say i fully understand something without any rote memorisation: i can just use whatever old knowledge i have to recreate new knowledge and to assemble it based on the listener's (perceived) capabilities of understanding.

I know this works, because i have all the processes written by hand, in a notebook. Everything i explained here is a narrative that i constructed on the spot to explain my process. Keep in mind that this whole process of comprehension, memory, new knowledge and handwriting was new to me ±1 year ago.

Not sure this helps you directly but indirectly it should be able to guide you into figuring out what works best in your context.

  #edit: i still don't know how to format text in a comment

  #edit 2: figured it out

Yeah but this is backwards. We're remembering how to remember something instead of just actually remembering the thing.

If I really need to remember something I use spaced repetition, Anki being one of the more well known tools for that. Spaced repetition is particularly useful if you need to retain information indefinitely; you can do so as long as you stick with the process. The downsides to it are the upfront cost of ingesting whatever information you're looking to memorize into what is usually a flash card like system.