A system to help you remember more of what you read
robertheaton.com
A system to help you remember more of what you read
1–10 of 77 posts
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#2Underlining 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 mental storage back into physical world.
Plus, the notebook then provides a hook for refreshing the information geography in your storage. Reskim the notes and you refresh the larger narrative and how it hangs together. Revisit the notebook on a periodically decreasing interval, you’ll still recall the narrative decades later.
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#3I’ve been doing something very similar to this for about ten years. I did experiment with using Anki for it, but ended up with a more manual approach involving wiki software and manually rescheduling when I’d read a chapter again. Anyway, can highly recommend.
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#4Compared to doing nothing anything is better if you want to remember more. Dunno if this one is better than others.
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#5Compared 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.
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#6[deleted]
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#7Compared 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.
Read too many books, can’t remember.
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#8Compared 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 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 brain to capture what it deems valuable. If I forget something I don’t sweat it, it’s more likely that I don’t need it.
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#9Incremental Reading[1] is a related tactic that coverts reading material into facts preserved via space repetition software.
Re: A system to help you remember more of what you read
#10Underlining 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.