4 ms·
Out of curiosity, how much information do you retain from all the books that you've read? Especially when reading technical books, do you take notes and review
by csnewb 9y ago
Out of curiosity, how much information do you retain from all the books that you've read? Especially when reading technical books, do you take notes and review them later?
I personally forget the majority of what I read and only remember a few main ideas. With technical books I take notes in google docs and try to review them later to cement the ideas in my mind.
- mindcrime 9y agoOut of curiosity, how much information do you retain from all the books that you've read? That's a really good question, and one I ask myself a lot. I honestly don't know, and I've read reference to some studies somewhere or other that suggest that most people retain fairly little of what they read. So my strategy with a lot of books is to read the book, not take notes or anything really, and at the end, make a simple "this is worth revisiting" or "this isn't worth revisiting" decision. If it is, I'll read it again and either do some light pencil underlining or use post-it page flags to highlight important stuff, OR I'll do a full-fledged "create a wiki page for this book on my wiki and take detailed notes" pass. Sometimes I'll do the "light pencil underlining and post-it notes" thing on the first pass. It's an interesting trade-off... I don't want to spend too much time taking notes and cut into my time for reading other books. But I don't want to waste the time I spent reading a book and not retain anything from the experience either!