How to Remember What You Read(fs.blog) |
How to Remember What You Read(fs.blog) |
I don't think it's fair to eliminate technology from reading. Use it for your advantage.
I've started trying to be more selective with the online content I choose to spend my time on, and then conserve takeaways from the articles I read (like this one).
Of course sometimes you just want entertainment, in which case this isn't worthwile.
Also, taking notes, marking up a text etc are in my opinion a waste of time. If the author did his job right you should be marking up 100% of the words, and when taking notes you should be copying the book almost verbatim.
If you absolutely need to have a high recall, I recommend to start with a recital based approach. Read a section, then try to recite the topic freely. This works well for complicated or information-dense stuff. Less well for fluffy prose. If you want to go a step further, use loci-method with the latter approach.
Also, being interested in more effective learning techniques is highly correlated with diagnosed/undiagnosed ADHD. Just sayin'
This way I can go through my annotations sequentially, save highlights / their main ideas, and reformulate my notes into plaintext a bit more clearly.
Where did you hear that?
Edit: Looks like your link to the sibling comment is for extracting annotations from pdf. Are most of the books you're reading on remarkable in pdf format instead of epub?
It's similar to the sentiment that the only way to understand a poem is to be able to recite it from memory, or the fact that some pianists play nothing else but Bach and yet reach mastery. Everything's already in there, or most of it anyway.
Requires a different mentality, one that treats reading or perception and deep study as the thing to care about, not 'absorbing information' or 'knowledge'.
Umberto Eco once pointed out that the size of the unknown, the books one has not read are magnitudes larger than the books one has read, so to treat knowledge as some sort of priced possession to climb in the pecking order is meaningless, what matters is being adequate in understanding the few things one actually has the time to study.
If anyone else is wondering, it's in his book encyclopedia of imaginary lands
> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
I've just turned 40 recently and I've started to realise that no, I won't get to read all the books that I already have in my library, but in the last few years (and especially during the pandemic) I think I've started to "accelerate" the purchasing of books related to fields of knowledge I'm interested in and of which I don't know that many things.
For example just yesterday I bought "The European Right: A Historical Profile" co-authored by Eugen Weber [1] because I've already read Weber's "Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914" which I found highly interesting and because I found it interesting that in the 1960s (i.e. relatively shortly after WW2) the people were still seeing the proto-European fascists as being right-wing, nowadays they would just be called populists, in other words I was interested in reading in the 2020s a book written in the 1960s about an European political movement that took place in the early 1900s. There's a big chance I will not get to read that book in the next 2-3 years, but by just purchasing it and having in my head all the internal conversation I tried to summarise above has give me an extra "intellectual" (for lack of a better word) something.
I once read a short essay by Patrick Süskind (author of "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer"). I am paraphrasing, but in it, he discusses his embarrassment that he cannot remember even major plot details or character names of great works of world literature, although he has read them multiple times and they deeply inspired his own work. He then makes an interesting speculation: if a book really and deeply influences you, then maybe actively remembering facts and insights of the book becomes harder and harder, because the book's ideas have been so deeply ingrained into your brain and thinking that you cannot remember them as facts independent of your thinking. But this doesn't mean that you have "forgotten" them.
When I read I recall little but compile the experience as if holographically, enlarging my store of metaphors that surface unbidden as needed.
http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html
Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.
The fact that I dug up this quote proves I remember some things I've read :)
FWIW I take 1-3 sentences of notes on articles I read, and few paragraphs of notes on books I read, and put them in my personal wiki. I find this not only helps retention but it helps understanding, by forcing hyperlinks to related work. Hyperlinks model the way your mind works.
I elaborate on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24536687
Funnily enough it cites the same PG essay. It also echoes the article here, which I strongly agree with:
Finishing the book is optional. You should start a lot of books and only finish a few of them
It's the micro-misunderstandings that lead up to the macro-misunderstanding which manifests as "forgetting".
Other commenters also mention applying what's in the book. That is 100% true, when you're reading about how to do something. If you're reading a fact-based book (non-fiction) but not about doing something I usually take a break from the text and think about how it would apply to the subject I'm studying. But it's just obvious that you can't get a concept if you don't understand the words that describe it.
The target is conceptual understanding. It's got nothing to do with memorization. TO get the meaning of a song, for instance, it's not necessary to memorize the lyrics.
One real-world example, I was taking care of my father in the hospital and I noticed one of the techs telling him that he needs to order his dinner from the "dysphagia" menu. I asked her if he could have some other soft foods from home and she said, "all I know is that he needs to order from the menu." I asked her what dysphagia means, honestly I didn't know. She didn't know. I looked it up and told her it means "difficulty in swallowing". She realized that she never actually understood the concept of WHY one needs to order from the menu. As if the food is somehow magic. So that helped her understand the concept of the rule, and why it applies and I am sure she hasn't forgotten it.
I don't take notes, mark up pages or speed read or use any crutch, trick or technique to study. I just get the definitions of words that I don't understand and I do just fine.
Good for a book's first reader. What I really hate is browsing a used bookstore and finding something interesting or ordering a used book online, only to find it covered in markings (especially as some readers seem to highlight the most banal things). Very distracting.
I usually can't bring myself to mark up my own books for fear that I will distract my future self (or some other future reader if I sell or donate it), but will take notes separately. Although I've found that most books usually have hardly anything at all worth noting, and I'm not sure taking notes for its own sake, without any idea of its future usefulness, is necessarily worth it. Perhaps the hope is that a bunch of random knowledge just sitting in your memory will somehow automatically make itself useful when the time comes, which to be fair happens now and then, but usually if its not useful for very long, into the land of the forgotten it goes.
Unfortunately writer's writing advice for other writers but pretending like it's for everyone is too common.
>> 1. Quality matters more than quantity. If you read one book a month but fully appreciate and absorb it, you’ll be better off than someone who skims half the library without paying attention.
Maybe, or if you read the wrong thing, get a bunch of dumb ideas in your head that you would have been better off not having and nothing to counter act that can mess you up.
Furthermore, quality is hard to gauge ahead of time.
>> Speed-reading is bullshit. Getting the rough gist and absorbing the lessons are two different things. Confuse them at your peril.
That's hyperbole. When I read about speed reading it suggests that you vary your reading speed according to the subject matter. e.g. if you are reading Atlas Shrugged(if that's your cup of tea), I highly recommend speed reading through certain parts(you'll know when you get to them).
>> Book summary services miss the point. A lot of companies charge ridiculous prices for access to vague summaries bearing only the faintest resemblance to anything in the book. Summaries can be a useful jumping-off point to explore your curiosity, but you cannot learn from them the way you can from the original text.*
Depends on why you are reading the book. (e.g. Unfortunately much of school was nonsense, this can help with that).
>> Fancy apps and tools are not needed. A notebook, index cards, and a pen will do just fine.
Fancy apps and tools can be a purpose of their own. If a fancy note taking tool helps motivate you to take notes, and note taking is useful for you, you should get a fancy note taking tool. This is a personal decision.
>> We shouldn’t read stuff we find boring. Life is far too short.
Sometimes that nugget you need is in a boring book. I thought this wasn't reading for entertainment.
>> Finishing the book is optional. You should start a lot of books and only finish a few of them.
Yes finishing the book is optional.
> Finishing the book is optional.
I find this amusing because I remember (I don't know why I remember), reading an article posted on HN essentially suggesting the opposite. Something along the lines of: not trying to absorb the whole book if it's stopping you from making progress, better to finish something than read nothing, it was argued better and felt convincing at the time... It sort-of clicked because I do have a bunch of unfinished books that I find quite interesting, probably like most people. I usually get to a point where I stop because I feel like I'm just mechanically reading and not absorbing, and then get distracted...
I still haven't managed to force myself to just carry on, it just doesn't feel right. However when I do make some progress, I feel enriched and think about it in the following days - and isn't that the point? so I guess I am in agreement with this article. I'd rather make incremental progress on these books that matter to me, and actually assimilate the ideas, than get all the way to the end and only have a vague sense of what it was about. Maybe one day I will have the luxury of re-reading them front to back.
Or, perhaps they are both good strategies, but for different things. Slow for depth, fast for breadth - if you want to expose yourself to a wider variety for discovery, go fast. If you found a good quality book and know you like it, go slow.
>Quality matters more than quantity. If you read one book a month but fully appreciate and absorb it, you’ll be better off than someone who skims half the library without paying attention.
Let's measure outcomes instead. Choose between these two scenarios:
1) I spend one month reading a book closely and I follow some memory enhancing technique to retain the material - book club style. I can verbally retell the main points of the book afterwards and discuss it intelligently with others who have done the same.
Or
2) I had a quick look at the book and it's outline, I placed it conceptually in it's genre and in relation to other books covering the same kind of material. I had a normal reading of the chapters that seemed most valuable. I found one actionable insight and immediately worked it into my own set of habits/techniques/schedule. All in all I do this in 1-2h. I do this for 5 books a month.
After a year, I suspect strategy 2 has a better yield.
If you're unsure about the book, then strategy number 2 is better. Skim and find the interesting bits, if any.
If you know it's a dense book and you value the subject and think highly of the author. Then strategy number 1 is better.
Personally I tend to go with a just-read-whatever-is-interesting-at-whatever-speed-or-level-of-attention-feels-right-and-what-sticks-sticks strategy.
Basically, when you take notes, summarize them in your own words. Look at a tool like Obsidian which uses markdown to save notes in plaintext. Look at people using this on YouTube if you want to dive deeper into the ecosystem.
* https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+notes+ahrens+site:news...
Personal plug: I made a Chrome extension to show you a random quote from your Readwise in your new tab. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readwise-new-tab/i...
When you read in clusters around the same topic the same concepts will get reinforced over and over again.
Not sure if Anki counts as fancy, but it certainly is orders of magnitude more efficient than taking notes or active reading. See also: Make It Stick [1]. If you're trying to memorize content spaced repetition is unmatched. I've durably memorized entire 300-page programming design books (e.g. Effective Java) in under a month of 30 min/day reading+Anki usage.
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18770267-make-it-stick
Blindly entering data into Anki without a base comprehension is not a terribly effective way to understand it. You could turn an entire encyclopedia into Anki cards and memorize it, but never properly connect the dots between the things you've learned.
Yes but this:
> Getting the rough gist and absorbing the lessons are two different things.
I only partially agree with. I organize my knowledge using zk, and go through a) writing notes as I read then b) digesting them into ideas. Most books I read cover to cover prior to doing that, I remember only the gist of ; while books I occasionally speed read doing that, I remember in more details.
My point is: it's not just about "going on a trip" with the author, but appropriating yourself their ideas.
The next sentence was: “No idea could be further from the truth.” (I know, this is how we read today.)
And there is very little we can do to improve or degrade the retention of anything we actually "consume". Especially once you factor in consuming it again, which is almost always necessary for high retention.
"Book summary services miss the point." "By the way, the book summaries we write for Farnam Street members are definitely not in the same class as the standard fare."
Forgetting is good. This what makes our brain grow.
You read to train it, not to be a walking reference book.
For me taking notes is a big part of it. For scientific papers reading the cites and then re-reading the paper helps cement things. For fiction I just seem to remember them and that makes re-reading kind of irritating/boring so not as keen on re-reading those.
But as the article touches on, for me it is the "why" sometimes that is key. Mathematics rarely sticks in my head unless I have a specific application for which the math is useful.
If you're just reading casually, the content you retain from a book will be proportional to your interest not the speed with which you read it. Some parts of the book you will forget and others you will remember for the rest of your life even if you only read it quickly once.
Although this article is full on tips on how to take notes, this is the tip that stuck out the most for me. I've tried many different strategies to take notes and how to remember them. I figured out that the thing that worked best for me was actually to keep note taking as simple as possible. The more "steps" [1] I use during note taking, the more structure and rules I try to add to my notes [2], the worse everything gets. The more steps I have to take to make a note, the less likely it is that I'll make that note. The technique for notetaking that works best for me is, maybe paradoxically, also the simplest to perform: I take notes with pen and paper and review the notes now and then, nothing more, nothing less. This way of taking notes works (for me) and is easy to stick to.
[1] - https://fs.blog/2013/11/taking-notes-while-reading/
[2] - https://www.amazon.nl/dp/1542866502?tag=farnamstreet-20
1. Map it to your life or people or situations somewhere..
2. Explain it to yourself..
But I usually don't read books about my core areas, I like to learn about them practically and by facing things. Someone else's experience about it would bias my mind.
I bought a reMarkable 2 earlier this year and have loved it. I have a notebook per subject and I can append to each without carrying multiple paper notebooks or getting upset by the lack of organization in a single commonplace notebook.
If you like paper but hate disorganization, and have the disposable income, give it or another eInk tablet a try.
When you read to gratify and challenge your own curiosity, you stitch insights into an ever-widening framework which is naturally self-reinforcing as you continue your journey forward. To that end, I’d add another guideline (which the author dances close to): ask questions, seek answers.
That said, it would still be nice to have better recall of facts for sure.
This is what turned the tide for me but it took much more discipline than I was willing to admit at first. When I stopped lying to myself about how much context clues were helping me understand the words I didn’t know, it started to take me 10 minutes to get through a page of a difficult book. However, it started to pay off when I achieved a deeper understanding of the books I was reading.
I am often wondering how different the world looks through the eyes of someone else, and it's very hard for me to imagine how people can "go through the motions" without understanding in situations like you described.
Personally, I could never remember a fact or a word without understanding the concept behind it or its significance.
Memorization is the lowest form of intelligence, although it does have uses. I think it would be very beneficial for standardized testing to move away from testing ones ability to remember dates and lists of things and more toward problem solving and ability for the student to come up with solutions to problems of the field being studied.
Thinking in these terms, I went from being just horrified at the idea of writing in books (I'm the kid of two college professors lol) to a huge advocate of it. There are some books I won't write in; the less related it is to my job & the more I'm just reading it for fun, or the more surface-level the content is, the less likely I am to write in it. (Also some UX books have really glossy pages and I literally can't.) (The one line I draw is, I will only write in pencil, never pen.) But most books I write tons and tons and tons of comments in the margins, and it really, really, really helps boost retention.
Also, writing in the margins is like actively participating in dialogue with the author and makes the experience a lot more engaging! Which makes me able to stay focused for a lot longer. Like if I'm not writing anything I'll start to get distracted / zone out after maybe 10 minutes, but if I'm interacting, I can stay focused for an hour or more. (Depends on the book and what's on my mind at the time and other environmental factors of course.)
My preference, rather than write in the book, is to write notes on little notepads and leave the note in the book as bookmarks. Probably not good for the books themselves if I add too many but it is convenient and I don’t have to worry about someone downstream finding my marginalia banal.
I have one, but every time I turn it on, it wants to run Windows update…
Obviously, "applying" book knowledge is one of the least efficient or practicable way of improving retention. Also, it would be more around understanding the topics more thoroughly, especially if the author didn't do a good enough job of explaining the concepts already (it's easier to blame the reader, though).
I think some of this is around what it means to understand a topic. Is it just about an ability to regurgitate facts or maybe you want a book to really sink in because you don’t know when you will apply it.
Taking notes or doing kindle highlights and then reviewing them can really help. Review after you read and then again after a week. This works better for remembering specific things.
One of the best ways to have a book really stick with you is to read it again. This seems to be super linear and some books really benefit from it. That is re-reading a book will more than double your understanding. Sometimes when doing this you will wonder if it’s even the same book. Though this really is more true for better books.
Koshkin, if in fact you think that what OP means is "Actually, consuming information is the same thing as acquiring knowledge", why do you think that?
And you would want to be operated on by surgeons who are trained that way. Especially in Human medicine, "practice" is just too damn expensive. And routine surgical tasks just don't teach you all the shit that go wrong. Also, surgical procedures, especially when you consider all their variations or complications, have a long tail problem. Some things are just really rare.
There is a reason why surgeries are performed by doctors, and not by nurses. Doctors have so much knowledge and information in their head - most of it not acquired through practice, contrary to romantic belief, but rather through long hours over years of studying. We often need to "debug" a living organism. But we can't say "hm, let's run this again".