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A system to help you remember more of what you read

robertheaton.com

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Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#11

Post by ozim »

karimdag wrote: post #8
confounded wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend any of the others? I’m aghast at how little I remember about the books I read! I’m very interested to see other approaches.

I only read on a kindle, so obviously the marginalia system is out of question. Here’s what I do: I highlight the passage, write a note where I summarize it with my own words . That’s all. But I also have a (physical) notebook where I write using the Feynman technique. On top of it all, I read at least 1 hour a day where I’m fully focused (or at least at 80% capacity) and you know what ? Good shit sticks : I trust my…

I agree and also if I read similar concept in other book, even if I did not "remember it", I feel often dots connecting somehow in my brain and "ahh I just read that in other book". So it is more like gathering concepts than explicitly remembering that concept so I can quote it back when woke up past midnight.

If someone wants to quote book from his head go for Anki and drill, most of books I just want to internalize concepts.

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#12

Post by repsak »

confounded wrote: post #5
DelightOne wrote: post #4

Compared to doing nothing anything is better if you want to remember more. Dunno if this one is better than others.

Can you recommend any of the others? I’m aghast at how little I remember about the books I read! I’m very interested to see other approaches.

I've heard some good things about https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

To get a quick overview try table 4 p. 45 here

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1529100612453266

I try to follow

* Distributed learning/practice

* Practice testning

* Interleaved practice

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#13

Post by deltron3030 »

Trying to improve my own knowledge management, and looking into how regular people who specialize in this area (people who read tons of non-fiction books) handle this stuff, extract and conserve knowledge, I've stumbled upon methods like "Zettelkasten". Does anybody here have experience with it?

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#14

Post by larkeith »

While I agree that the author's method likely helps comprehension and retention, I disagree with his premise that it is necessary for these, or even particularly time-efficient. His key factor seems to be "Learning comes from repetition"; though important to he learning process, repetition is neither the sole, nor even the primary factor. When it comes to retention of concepts, rather than raw data, comprehension and connecting to other knowledge is crucial.

In the author's method, these are reinforced with marginal notes (for comprehension) and a post-reading writeup (to connect concepts). I suspect this to be significantly inferior to more in-depth note-taking, as a significant amount of information may be lost in the time between reading chapter one and finishing the book, whereas complete notes should allow for immediate relation and processing. A high quality book will be organized to assist the reader in relating concepts, and waiting until book completion to prioritize this defeats the purpose of reading a book rather than a collection of disparate articles.

Still, the author is absolutely correct in that active reading is a worthwhile habit, and you should try to find an optimal method for your learning tendencies; While for me focusing on repetition and post-read review is brutally inefficient, everyone learns differently, so it may be perfect for you.

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#15

Post by QasimK »

repsak wrote: post #10
Terretta wrote: post #2

Underlining and highlighting have a mechanical failure for recall — they do not exercise the output circuits even once. Instead, if you want to remember the thought you were about to highlight or underline, write it out long hand , and from short term memory not copying rote , in a note book. This exercises the full path: reading, comprehension, decision you’ll need to recall, storage, retrieval, and output from ment…

Just skimmed the article but underlining only seemed to be one small part of the method. Understanding by summarizing into Anki cards and then making sure you remember it trough spaced repetition (both "output") seemed to be the most important part. Distributed learning, practice testing and Interleaved practice all seem to have some scientific backing.

What is distributed learning? Is it spaced repetition?

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#16

Post by PuffinBlue »

I have a somewhat similar system but without writing anything in the book, because I use ebooks, and it's not quite as intensive.

An example is here[0] but basically I keep notes on:

Places

Things

Characters

Plot

Nothing too long and it's all filled in in a few seconds in an Evernote notebook/note as I read along.

The main reason this is effective for me is that I can very quickly look up a character/place/plot in one single place in just a few seconds.

Often I don't need to re-read the whole thing, just the 'recent past' bits to quickly remember where I was in the plot after I put the book down for a week or two.

It ends up looking like a lot but it's more a consequence of doing a little a lot of times rather than a large amount of burdensome work.

I'm not sure if it helps long term retention, but it does help short term and it certainly helps comprehension when I've forgotten some characters significance or minor but consequential plot point.

[0] https://www.josharcher.uk/blog/diaspora-greg-egan-book-revie...

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#17

Post by achow »

Inability to recall what you have read maybe is not that all is lost.

Reading changes your brain; in brain connections are continually created while synapses that are no longer in use degenerates. Or in other words you are a very different person today just by reading all those books in all those years, that you don't remember anything of now.

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#18

Post by tinyrick2 »

achow wrote: post #17

Inability to recall what you have read maybe is not that all is lost. Reading changes your brain; in brain connections are continually created while synapses that are no longer in use degenerates. Or in other words you are a very different person today just by reading all those books in all those years, that you don't remember anything of now.

Just like what Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."

Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read

#19

Post by laurieg »

Here's a slightly silly way to keep your brain switched on while reading:

Set an alarm to go off every few minutes. When the alarm goes off shut the book and summarise what you read in the past few minutes. Writing it down helps keep you honest (if you do it in your head its very easy to fool yourself). After you summarise start reading again.

Forcing yourself to practice recall helps memory. Being interrupted helps memory too. You don't need any fancy software, just a timer.

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