10 ms·

Reading habits that changed my life

295 points by manjotpahwa 6y ago

guevara 6y ago
I'll second "take notes" and "paraphrase". My retention has drastically improved when I paraphrase a piece of text and then write it down.
- rajlego 6y ago
  I unfortunately don’t have a link on it but this is mainly because active recall is far better than just passive review for memory effect. Memories are like muscles: the more you struggle (without actually failing) the stronger the memory gets. Reading isn’t a struggle so the memories stay weak, paraphrasing and notes are thus much better or strengthening recall. SRS can take you a level higher than that and guarantee much longer term recall via repeated active recall
Ozzie_osman 6y ago
I tried to write summaries of all the books I read and it made me retain and understand the key concepts a lot better. I just couldn't keep it up. My current trick is to use a product called Readwise. I highlight stuff I want to remember in Kindle, and it syncs with my Kindle and everyday emails me a random set of my highlights. It's a paid product but I pay for it and recommend it to everyone I know who reads. Was game changing for me.
- philips 6y ago
  I love readwise. Having the Pocket integration is super helpful as well. They also have a full json dump that I periodically put into my notes git repo for grepping.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  There is something fundamental about my right to read whatever I please, in total privacy. Readwise violates that principle. [1] I've been thinking about writing a simple script to transform my highlights into Anki [2] cards to achieve the same thing but without sharing my reading habits and highlights with a private company. [1] https://readwise.io/privacy https://readwise.io/privacy [2] https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://apps.ankiweb.net/
  - guildmaster 6y ago
    This sounds like a great idea. Where are you on that?
    - ciarannolan 6y ago
      Still at the "thinking about it" stage :) Maybe I'll get started tonight...
      - hoodwink 6y ago
        This article has my Kindle highlights + Anki setup at the end: https://blog.readwise.io/remember-more-of-what-you-read-with-readwise/ https://blog.readwise.io/remember-more-of-what-you-read-with...
        ciarannolan 6y ago
        I ended up throwing this together: https://pastebin.com/2fCKPsGr https://pastebin.com/2fCKPsGr It creates an Anki deck with one card per highlight. The "hint" side of each card shows the book title and the 5 most important words/phrases from the clipping (as determined by Rake [1]). It could also be pretty easily modified to do cloze deletion (fill in the blank) using the "most important" words as the "blanks" on the hint card. My thinking was that this would help sort of jog your memory of the highlight without just showing the whole thing immediately. I made a deck of several hundred cards and it seems to work great. Would love if someone tried it out too. [1] https://pypi.org/project/rake-nltk/ https://pypi.org/project/rake-nltk/
guest2143 6y ago
The best tool to read with is a pencil.
CawCawCaw 6y ago
These ideas apply mainly to nonfiction and maybe literary fiction, if one is so inclined. For other kinds of fiction, keeping notes is distracting and detracts from enjoyment of the text.
- Brajeshwar 6y ago
  Yes, for fiction, you're supposed to be part of the flow, and the story. Do not need to worry about notes or trying to 'absorb' anything in particular.
NOGDP 6y ago
> I read about 3 books in a month and 60 pages per hour. Not quite the same as Bill Gates who reads about 150 pages in an hour with 90% retention but I’m slowly getting closer. Reading books and trying to remember the maximum information seems rather pointless unless you're specifically studying for an exam or something. Your brain already optimises and retains the most relevant/interesting information for you. We don't have limitless memory and we need to forget things in order to learn new ones. Reading 3 books per month and retaining 90% seems both highly unlikely and pointless in the long term.
- code_duck 6y ago
  It would be interesting to check the difference in retention over a day, a week, a month, and 6 months. I thought I was awesome like that until I realized that there are huge amounts of things that I don't really remember after a time because I never think about them. The memories can be elicited by reminders or some kind of trigger, but otherwise, they are outside of my conscious thought process. It's sort of like archival storage versus what I keep in RAM.
  - rajlego 6y ago
    I think what you’re looking for is forgetting curves: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve You might also find spaced repetition cool: https://ncase.me/remember/ https://ncase.me/remember/
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > we need to forget things in order to learn new ones. I am not aware of any evidence this is true. Can you point me to any evidence to that effect?
  - NOGDP 6y ago
    We have finite brains. We process and learn much more information over our lives than we retain at any point in time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
Brajeshwar 6y ago
I won't say I've mastered it but I have started forming a pattern when reading books. As the article's author mentioned, I usually have few books 'on-read' at a time (both physical and kindle). Once upon a time, when I used to travel, I tend to finish a single book of decent size/page. Now that I read more at home, I use tiny post-its and stick them across pages and let a small portion of it stick out of the book's page. I find it useful for me to quickly go through afterwards or when done as some sort of revision. For a more intense/focused reading, I combine the above with notes. Recently (a year since), I moved to a text-based life (kinda org-mode) and I have a folder just for books where I write key points and write out what I read. I don't mind skipping, and/or speed reading at times when the content is similar or not-so-interesting. Many a book shares similar sentiments, phrases, and key points which you can just do a fly-by kinda reading. Btw, with the current COVID-19 circumstances, I might have completed my target to read 50 odd books this year. I have increased myself to 100, which I believe won't make it. I might actually be re-reading a lot more of the old ones.
rlv-dan 6y ago
> Pick up multiple books from the same area to go deeper in an area. That way to genuinely learn about a topic. My problem with this is that when I encounter something that I think I already know I tend to skim it, making it hard to pick up additional knowledge that I might have missed.
keiferski 6y ago
> To keep reading this story, create a free account. I can't read the article, because I don't have a Medium account. In any case, I'm guessing that SRS/Anki isn't mentioned. Personally, I've had incredible success with retention by adding my notes from a book to Anki and keeping current with the cards. I'll also add the Wikipedia page and other general information about it. I would almost argue that reading for information (as opposed to aesthetic enjoyment) is a hugely inefficient waste of time if you don't use a SRS system to retain what you've learned. I've probably read hundreds or thousands of books in my lifetime, but I can really only remember the minute details of the ones I've added to Anki. This brings to mind an old Schopenhauer quote: As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
- thijsvandien 6y ago
  > I can't read the article, because I don't have a Medium account. I’m getting so sick of this trend of requiring (or at least heavily pushing) an account just to read some content. My latest frustration was the Microsoft community forums taking that turn. No, I don’t want to “engage”—I just need to find the solution to some damn problem. Now I can add Medium to that list.
  - lain_ 6y ago
    Haha this comes up all the time here. Just to be sure, you can click on the https/lock icon, select cookies and block them and you'll never have this problem.
    - gulperxcx 6y ago
      nice.
    - yasinaydin 6y ago
      Same here. I even block JavaScript, too. Not just on Medium, but any website with a paywall or a similar free content blocking mechanism (wired.com, many newspapers etc).
DecayingOrganic 6y ago
I've tried to "ankify" some books to increase my retention of the facts and concepts, in the hopes that I'd be able to talk about a book with friends and family in much more detail. However, soon my misconception about how memory works made itself very clear. Even though I made hundreds of cards regarding a book, when we started talking about it, I quickly realized that all of that information that I so meticulously added to Anki and studied was not available to me. It was because I needed my retrieval cues, the questions I've used to create Anki cards, and I couldn't access the information I had in my brain without them.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Try making cards that mimic the situations you plan on using the information in. Sort of like a choose-your-own adventure game. For example: “You’re at a conference and you start talking to someone about [The Great Depression.] What are some key points to remember?” Then have an outline or key points on the reverse card. This works better than simply filling in the blank Cloze cards. Basically, every piece of information or memory has a trigger. The trick is to make this trigger relevant to the scenarios in which you want to use the information, rather than just other words in the Anki card.
  - rajlego 6y ago
    I don’t think cards like that work over 10 years because they violate minimum information principle (rule 4 here: http://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm http://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm). I agree though that you have to find the right cue to initialize recall or else the card is pointless. I think incrementalism in incremental reading is better for this since it’s easy to modify and improve your cards over time.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      The link isn’t loading for me. I also don’t really see how that matters if your cue is inherent to the situation in which you will use the information. To use a real life example, returning to a place you haven’t been in twenty years still conjures up hidden memories. You can also make multiple cards/cues for the same information.
vira28 6y ago
I am one of those old schools that love physical books. I take notes while reading books. Later, I publish them on my site. This made me not only read more, but also share it with more people. https://viggy28.dev/book https://viggy28.dev/book
- metrokoi 6y ago
  I've always been hesitant to write book reviews or synopses because I believe I have nothing new to add, but this is a novel idea that also benefits the reader by increasing retention. I believe I will start doing this; thank you for the inspiration!
  - Steve44 6y ago
    I was taught a long time ago that it's the act of jotting down notes which helps you to remember things. Yes you can always refer back to them, but there is something about the action of physically doing it strengthens the memory retention. I'm fairly sure that the feeling was typing notes didn't have as strong an affect on retention, the notes needed to be physically written.
  - vira28 6y ago
    You're welcome.
- dorchadas 6y ago
  I don't take notes while reading (mostly because I lack the habit, but I also read a lot while I walk/bike at the gym, as it helps me focus more), but I've found that physical books allow me to remember a lot more than ebooks. Even if I'm reading the same book in different formats (switching between physica/ebook based on what I'm doing, for instance), I've found that I'll remember more of the physical book's content. Maybe I should find a way to stick with my notes again, especially for more academic books.
mshekow 6y ago
Another post of these "I read N times faster than the rest and still remember >= 90% of it" high-achievers ;) (no hard feelings). There's ample evidence that such kinds of speeds are not generally possible with every kind of book. See e.g. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-redo/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-re... I did take speed reading courses myself. Sure, it helps you speed-read, skimming over sections that seem unfamiliar, and detect when you need to slow down, because the subject matter becomes too unfamiliar/new. I've also had the impression that retention improves a bit after the couple of training days - at least that's what the workshop instructor makes you believe (it's their job to sell success and good feelings so that you recommend the course to your peers). In the end, I highly doubt that anyone who claims to have such high speeds is sincere. The simple fact is that marking text with a highlighter, making notes (with a pen) and thinking about the content (do you?) takes time. If you accounted for that and took the average, you'd get lower numbers. And that is fine.
- rajlego 6y ago
  It’s even more nonsense when you look at recall over longer periods of time. If you look at forgetting curves (like Ebbinghaus) no matter how well you read a book there’s no way after a month you’ll remember more than say 10%. I don’t think that’s so bad if you take care to take the most valuable abstract concepts and rules from books.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I do think people who read a lot can read faster simply because sentences and subjects look similar to things they've read before. I mean if you read three Steve Jobs biographies in a row you can skim read some segments that look familiar, just scan for things that are new / told differently. I can't read books fast because I don't read enough. Not books anyway, comments on the internet on the other hand, far too many. But I skim / skip / don't retain most of them.
- manjotpahwa 6y ago
  Oh absolutely agree with reading speeds being different for different books (I actually had that line earlier, I shortened the post to just mention the principles though). This post was not meant at all as a silly braggy post about speed reading, not that speed reading is anything to brag about in the first place. Why I say these things changed my life is because, it doesn't matter whether I read 100 books or half a book. What matters is if I learnt just one single principle from it which I actually use. Some of the things mentioned in the post such as taking notes and writing a summary at the end truly helped with that.
deleted 6y ago
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rajlego 6y ago
I highly encourage any of you wanting to retain more from wha though read to use SuperMemo’s incremental reading [1] feature. What it does summarized in a sentence: allows processing of thousands of passive materialS in parallel to convert them effectively to active recall item. It’s a pretty bold claim but it’s not so fancy and complicated as it seems. First half of the power of incremental reading is systems for processing materially efficiently (more things in less time). If I import an article into SuperMemo, SuperMemo has good tools for breaking it down (incrementally) and processing it manageably. While there’s a bit of a learning curve to being efficient, given an hour with a textbook chapter I could convert and retain the core content better than a note taker or an anki card maker. One of the things I like the most about it is that it makes processing manageable. It doesn’t make it easy but I never have to worry about needing to do too much at once. It’s all incremental and stress less (after you get over the figure out how to use it phrase). The second thing it does well is allow you to learn effectively (the right things with your time). It has a priority system and a queueing algorithm that allows you to focus on highest yield material. It also has a system for allowing you to learn things in an order. That might seem trivial but if I’m reading a Wikipedia page and want to go back when I’ve learned something else, that’s a huge pain to manage traditionally. SuperMemo makes that fairly easy so you’re always able to make sure to learn background info as scaffolding before harder things. I highly recommend people try it even though starting with it is pretty hard. If you’re interested you can either email me (email is in my profile) or join the SuperMemo discord servers also linked there. [1] https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/help/read https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/help/read
- misiti3780 6y ago
  I want to try it, but I do no use windows. As far as I can tell, that means I cannot use supermemo currently - correct?
  - rajlego 6y ago
    Incorrect :) I use SuperMemo via parallels on my hackintosh. I know a lot of other people also using parallels on Mac. On Linux, a kind soul got SuperMemo working via wine: https://www.supermemopedia.com/wiki/SuperMemo_for_Windows_under_Wine https://www.supermemopedia.com/wiki/SuperMemo_for_Windows_un... (though were I still on Linux I’d probably stick to VMware because of a few features that don’t work)
hectorlorenzo 6y ago
“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” - Woody Allen
CharlesMerriam2 6y ago
"Love is the Killer App" is great book on reading. It discusses how to take notes in books, review them quickly, retain information, choose books and so on. Like all great business books, it has a wrong and misleading title. It has nothing to do with apps.
bonoboTP 6y ago
I don't read for speed nor for retention. I spend the time to digest the content, not to retain it. Just like you don't "read" math books, but engage with them. Now this is not necessarily the optimal strategy for sure, but for one reason or another my personality is better fit for this style. I read very few books but then "debate" it in my head, try to connect things to other things, life experiences, news, other books. Is it true what the author says? Have I read somewhere else that an implicit assumption the author is making has been discredited recently? What could be the motivation? Could I argue equally convincingly for the opposite view? What are the implications for other things I care about or was wondering about perhaps long ago? For a long time I was very ashamed of how few books I read, compared to what is expected from an educated person, but I'm okay with it now. Same with movies. I watch a movie and I think about it for days. Just watching them for relaxation doesn't work for me, following who is who and what's going on drains me more than relaxes. Especially when there's no "payoff" and the plot can only be described with "and then they" sentences.
- kiba 6y ago
  I don't read for speed nor for retention. Your process certainly help with retention. It engage learning strategies such as active recall and generation. Myself, I don't try to answer questions that much, but rather I like to organize information into a bunch of interconnected facts like people, events, claims, and look them up. For example, I discovered that a professor confused which Ruska brothers invented electron microscopy. He also made claims that I struggle to find citation for with a cursory google search. Then I goes a step further. I input the information into a spaced repetition system. In this way, a book or an article or a youtube video gradually disappear into knowledge and become part of my long term memory about things. Intensive or incremental reading is extremely slow for sure(I probably spent 8x times as long on my notes than reading), but knowledge creation is superior.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Unfortunately I do have problems with explicit retention. Probably some of the strategies in the comments would improve it a lot. I have implicit retention of many things, but I often forgot the sources, I cannot list my favorite books on the spot, but if we discuss a topic I'd have flashes of relevant memories come back. It's like I'd grapple with a book, dream about it, get confused, shaken, startled, questioning, then I integrate it back into normal life. Especially deeper books, like I had with The Selfish Gene which dispelled so many myths I had and confirmed things I thought to be correct. You have to go through the Baader Meinhof effect of seeing that thing everywhere. With each book I view the world from an entirely new point of view, that each seem all encompassing (how ads manipulate you, how social status and prestige works, how the finance world works and cheats, how employers manipulate, how sexual behavior works, how quantum physics works or evolution or mental games we play etc), to get the smug feeling that this current book explains it all. After going through this with 5 books, you realize that no one story explains it all, but then what to do, read about narratives, move to nihilism, then realize the boundaries of rationality and faith, believing that "good" may be in one sense illusory but worth striving for. Then you read up on more traditional views on this etc. Trying to "retain" is a bit like measuring the quality of your friendships based on how many life facts you've memorized about them. It's surely correlated, but also misses the point. The time you spent together and the experiences you had together are valuable in themselves.
leokennis 6y ago
The reading habit that changed my life: enjoy reading. Why does everything have to be a chore?
- mapcars 6y ago
  People who lost an ability to enjoy start to make a competition out of everything. So at least they can get a little satisfaction from that they read faster then someone else and this is measurable. How much you enjoying though can't be measured so many don't count it as real.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Enjoyment only comes once you are good enough at something. At first it's a chore. Getting off the couch and going for a jog is a chore at first, a habit later and an enjoyment even later. Reading can be excruciating if you are hooked on smartphone apps and have a constant buzz in your head of all the exciting things you could be playing and watching and getting outraged about on apps and social media. But it gets better later on, and becomes natural to just shut out the noise. Initial discomfort is okay, we cannot just always follow the path of least resistance. Especially in these times when literally billions and billions of marketing dollars are spent on keeping you off-track, assisted by the brightest scientific minds, squeezing every last percentage out of making you a miserable mess.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  Because of the mistaken belief that doing something 'productive' is better than doing something you enjoy. Somewhere along the line lots of people decided that if they aren't running everyone else is running past them. The runners then posted endless blog posts about how they are faster runners and run for longer and it became it's old vicious circle. I opted out, Yesterday I spent two hours sat watching a working harbour (with the odd walk to get a coffee) - the boats coming and going, the change on the surface of the water as clouds floated past, the gulls swooping around and it was amazing - after that I spent a couple of hours riding around aimlessly on a motorcycle visiting villages I'd only seen as a name on a map before and running across interesting old buildings/memorials (socially distancing) and then headed home as the sun set. It was the closest I've felt to at peace in the last six months, nowhere to go, nothing that needed to be done. You don't have to be on a treadmill all your life, running without a destination is just running.
vs2 6y ago
A blog with a paywall!!!!
- CharlesMerriam2 6y ago
  Yes. Medium. There's a comment above on this: private tab or delete the cookies.
kmarc 6y ago
Off-topic: For all who complain about the paywall: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox Yes you are right, and no, it's not nice to the author / medium / whatever.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
I wish I understood how reading worked, for me. I just re-read an anthology (Dragon-themed short stories) I'd last read as a young adult (decades ago). All seemed new again. Saves me a bunch on books, since I've kept every one I ever read. But halfway through there was a story I remembered. Not just a little; every detail of every character and scene. Emotionally and intellectually. No idea why one story stood out, while the rest left my brain completely. Wish I could do that on command.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  Did you remember any of the stories after the one you remembered in detail? Because if you do then maybe it took your associative memory a while to match the pattern.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    No, nothing else was familiar. The story was "St Dragon and the George"
- openfuture 6y ago
  I'm the opposite, I give away every book I finish reading (with very rare exceptions). Normally the way I do this is that I actively look for people who would appreciate the book and then pass it on (I know the book and I know the person => I can try to evaluate if they'd like it).
otikik 6y ago
> Ayurvedic healing Oh, ok. Have a good day.
cambaceres 6y ago
> Speed read parts that might not be useful to remember. My brain cache is limited, there are things I like to keep and things I just discard. Learn to recognize those parts of the book that you need to remember and those that can be discarded. Why read those part at all if they are not meant to be remembered?
- ben_ 6y ago
  Context for the next bits that are worth remembering, or maybe the tone of the paragraph/section changes and suddenly an interesting or exciting part pops out and you read that normally.
Marcus316 6y ago
The mechanical how people read at higher speeds might be an interesting topic. What I often do when I am "reading" for knowledge can probably be simplified down to "I read fairly quickly", but there's no nuance in that statement to talk about what I'm doing when I'm reading and how I move so quickly. I am often doing some combination of: - scanning (moving quickly across sight-words, finding relevant points of entry into the subject matter) - absorbing (slower process of gathering words surrounding the entry point to gain better local context) - backtracking (taking local context and fixing it into a broader context) - full-on processing (often this looks like deep reading, but it is more like deep thinking; I take in fewer words from the page, but connect them to concepts I already understand) This is not a linear process, at least for myself. This is different from when I read for pleasure. My pleasure reading can only really be described as "scanning" I think. Authors who craft their paragraphs so carefully would probably be horrified by how I enjoy their works of art, but I appreciate their works in my own way, and I find that this reading for pleasure is probably the fastest reading I do. I could easily consume a book of fiction in a day or two, and I always enjoy re-reading. Another reading skills facet: my reading out loud is pretty clumsy (or it at least feels that way). I read often to my children, and it feels pretty slow and clunky. I enjoy doing it, but it's not the same type of "reading". Different skill, different goals. It's something I'm working on.
- jwdunne 6y ago
  Re. the part about reading for pleasure: I do this too and used to think it was a bad habit. But, actually, after years of re-reading particular favourites multiple times, I uncover something knew that clicks more of the story into place. It’s a delightful experience that increases the re-readability of your favourite works :)
ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
Only way to remember what you read is to read the same book multiple times. It’s like how people get encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars. The real trick is figuring out what’s worth reading twice. There’s no value in reading fast or shallowly. Bill gates does not remember 90 percent of what he reads, urban legend.
adrianmonk 6y ago
> Write notes every single time. Don’t copy paste notes from your kindle or phone, write manually, typing every single word. Also try to paraphrase, this way you are forced to actively think about the material you’re reading. This basically got me through college. With some of the less interesting stuff, my eyes would glide across the page without my brain being engaged at all. So I'd restart, and 10 minutes later I'd find I had read the same page 5 times and retained nothing. Probably this happened because I impatiently wanted to get to the end ASAP, so I would try to rush the process, ironically slowing it down. But knowing that I was going to be writing notes was enough to make my brain engage. I'm impatient, but I'm also too proud to write down something that I know isn't right, even in my own notes. Also, I guess it feels good to produce some kind of concrete work output.
- mleonhard 6y ago
  Taking notes helped me to stay attentive during lectures that were not engaging. In several courses my classmates photocopied my notes and used them to study for midterms and finals. I think taking notes during lectures is more efficient than sleeping through lectures and spending many hours studying.
misiti3780 6y ago
I do not see it mentioned in the comments anywhere, but the method that has worked for me, especially for hard subjects, is to start by reading a few books and get a "macro" view of the topic. Example: Right now, I'm trying to learn a lot about quantum mechanics, so I read two books and learned about the standard model, Schrödinger equation, the three generations of matter, relativity etc. I try to determine how they all fit together. I don't draw memory maps, but I basically try to calculate one in my head (probably should just draw them). Then I stick all of those concepts + new vocabulary into anki and review them daily. After a month or two, I pick up another few books and get deeper ("micro" view). When I get bored, I stop and move on to a new subject. I have done this with microbiology, physics, some time periods of history, computer science, etc. You just need to read a lot. I do not think speed reading matters but skipping over parts of books that are not relevant will certainly save you time.
- rajlego 6y ago
  Have you seen quantum country [1]? A relevant cross between quantum mechanics and SRS [1] https://quantum.country/ https://quantum.country/
  - misiti3780 6y ago
    yes, i went through the first two articles a few while back. i like the idea a lot, but i wish they would offer cards for offline (the author has a great article on srs: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)

295 points by manjotpahwa 6y ago

I'll second "take notes" and "paraphrase". My retention has drastically improved when I paraphrase a piece of text and then write it down.

rajlego 6y ago
I unfortunately don’t have a link on it but this is mainly because active recall is far better than just passive review for memory effect. Memories are like muscles: the more you struggle (without actually failing) the stronger the memory gets. Reading isn’t a struggle so the memories stay weak, paraphrasing and notes are thus much better or strengthening recall. SRS can take you a level higher than that and guarantee much longer term recall via repeated active recall

Ozzie_osman 6y ago

I tried to write summaries of all the books I read and it made me retain and understand the key concepts a lot better. I just couldn't keep it up. My current trick is to use a product called Readwise. I highlight stuff I want to remember in Kindle, and it syncs with my Kindle and everyday emails me a random set of my highlights. It's a paid product but I pay for it and recommend it to everyone I know who reads. Was game changing for me.

philips 6y ago
I love readwise. Having the Pocket integration is super helpful as well. They also have a full json dump that I periodically put into my notes git repo for grepping.
ciarannolan 6y ago
There is something fundamental about my right to read whatever I please, in total privacy. Readwise violates that principle. [1] I've been thinking about writing a simple script to transform my highlights into Anki [2] cards to achieve the same thing but without sharing my reading habits and highlights with a private company. [1] https://readwise.io/privacy https://readwise.io/privacy [2] https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://apps.ankiweb.net/
- guildmaster 6y ago
  This sounds like a great idea. Where are you on that?
  - ciarannolan 6y ago
    Still at the "thinking about it" stage :) Maybe I'll get started tonight...
    - hoodwink 6y ago
      This article has my Kindle highlights + Anki setup at the end: https://blog.readwise.io/remember-more-of-what-you-read-with-readwise/ https://blog.readwise.io/remember-more-of-what-you-read-with...
      - ciarannolan 6y ago
        I ended up throwing this together: https://pastebin.com/2fCKPsGr https://pastebin.com/2fCKPsGr It creates an Anki deck with one card per highlight. The "hint" side of each card shows the book title and the 5 most important words/phrases from the clipping (as determined by Rake [1]). It could also be pretty easily modified to do cloze deletion (fill in the blank) using the "most important" words as the "blanks" on the hint card. My thinking was that this would help sort of jog your memory of the highlight without just showing the whole thing immediately. I made a deck of several hundred cards and it seems to work great. Would love if someone tried it out too. [1] https://pypi.org/project/rake-nltk/ https://pypi.org/project/rake-nltk/

guest2143 6y ago

The best tool to read with is a pencil.

CawCawCaw 6y ago

These ideas apply mainly to nonfiction and maybe literary fiction, if one is so inclined. For other kinds of fiction, keeping notes is distracting and detracts from enjoyment of the text.

Brajeshwar 6y ago
Yes, for fiction, you're supposed to be part of the flow, and the story. Do not need to worry about notes or trying to 'absorb' anything in particular.

NOGDP 6y ago

> I read about 3 books in a month and 60 pages per hour. Not quite the same as Bill Gates who reads about 150 pages in an hour with 90% retention but I’m slowly getting closer. Reading books and trying to remember the maximum information seems rather pointless unless you're specifically studying for an exam or something. Your brain already optimises and retains the most relevant/interesting information for you. We don't have limitless memory and we need to forget things in order to learn new ones. Reading 3 books per month and retaining 90% seems both highly unlikely and pointless in the long term.

code_duck 6y ago
It would be interesting to check the difference in retention over a day, a week, a month, and 6 months. I thought I was awesome like that until I realized that there are huge amounts of things that I don't really remember after a time because I never think about them. The memories can be elicited by reminders or some kind of trigger, but otherwise, they are outside of my conscious thought process. It's sort of like archival storage versus what I keep in RAM.
- rajlego 6y ago
  I think what you’re looking for is forgetting curves: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve You might also find spaced repetition cool: https://ncase.me/remember/ https://ncase.me/remember/
barry-cotter 6y ago
> we need to forget things in order to learn new ones. I am not aware of any evidence this is true. Can you point me to any evidence to that effect?
- NOGDP 6y ago
  We have finite brains. We process and learn much more information over our lives than we retain at any point in time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

Brajeshwar 6y ago

I won't say I've mastered it but I have started forming a pattern when reading books. As the article's author mentioned, I usually have few books 'on-read' at a time (both physical and kindle). Once upon a time, when I used to travel, I tend to finish a single book of decent size/page. Now that I read more at home, I use tiny post-its and stick them across pages and let a small portion of it stick out of the book's page. I find it useful for me to quickly go through afterwards or when done as some sort of revision. For a more intense/focused reading, I combine the above with notes. Recently (a year since), I moved to a text-based life (kinda org-mode) and I have a folder just for books where I write key points and write out what I read. I don't mind skipping, and/or speed reading at times when the content is similar or not-so-interesting. Many a book shares similar sentiments, phrases, and key points which you can just do a fly-by kinda reading. Btw, with the current COVID-19 circumstances, I might have completed my target to read 50 odd books this year. I have increased myself to 100, which I believe won't make it. I might actually be re-reading a lot more of the old ones.

rlv-dan 6y ago

> Pick up multiple books from the same area to go deeper in an area. That way to genuinely learn about a topic. My problem with this is that when I encounter something that I think I already know I tend to skim it, making it hard to pick up additional knowledge that I might have missed.

keiferski 6y ago

> To keep reading this story, create a free account. I can't read the article, because I don't have a Medium account. In any case, I'm guessing that SRS/Anki isn't mentioned. Personally, I've had incredible success with retention by adding my notes from a book to Anki and keeping current with the cards. I'll also add the Wikipedia page and other general information about it. I would almost argue that reading for information (as opposed to aesthetic enjoyment) is a hugely inefficient waste of time if you don't use a SRS system to retain what you've learned. I've probably read hundreds or thousands of books in my lifetime, but I can really only remember the minute details of the ones I've added to Anki. This brings to mind an old Schopenhauer quote: As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

thijsvandien 6y ago
> I can't read the article, because I don't have a Medium account. I’m getting so sick of this trend of requiring (or at least heavily pushing) an account just to read some content. My latest frustration was the Microsoft community forums taking that turn. No, I don’t want to “engage”—I just need to find the solution to some damn problem. Now I can add Medium to that list.
- lain_ 6y ago
  Haha this comes up all the time here. Just to be sure, you can click on the https/lock icon, select cookies and block them and you'll never have this problem.
  - gulperxcx 6y ago
    nice.
  - yasinaydin 6y ago
    Same here. I even block JavaScript, too. Not just on Medium, but any website with a paywall or a similar free content blocking mechanism (wired.com, many newspapers etc).

DecayingOrganic 6y ago

I've tried to "ankify" some books to increase my retention of the facts and concepts, in the hopes that I'd be able to talk about a book with friends and family in much more detail. However, soon my misconception about how memory works made itself very clear. Even though I made hundreds of cards regarding a book, when we started talking about it, I quickly realized that all of that information that I so meticulously added to Anki and studied was not available to me. It was because I needed my retrieval cues, the questions I've used to create Anki cards, and I couldn't access the information I had in my brain without them.

keiferski 6y ago
Try making cards that mimic the situations you plan on using the information in. Sort of like a choose-your-own adventure game. For example: “You’re at a conference and you start talking to someone about [The Great Depression.] What are some key points to remember?” Then have an outline or key points on the reverse card. This works better than simply filling in the blank Cloze cards. Basically, every piece of information or memory has a trigger. The trick is to make this trigger relevant to the scenarios in which you want to use the information, rather than just other words in the Anki card.
- rajlego 6y ago
  I don’t think cards like that work over 10 years because they violate minimum information principle (rule 4 here: http://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm http://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm). I agree though that you have to find the right cue to initialize recall or else the card is pointless. I think incrementalism in incremental reading is better for this since it’s easy to modify and improve your cards over time.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    The link isn’t loading for me. I also don’t really see how that matters if your cue is inherent to the situation in which you will use the information. To use a real life example, returning to a place you haven’t been in twenty years still conjures up hidden memories. You can also make multiple cards/cues for the same information.

vira28 6y ago

I am one of those old schools that love physical books. I take notes while reading books. Later, I publish them on my site. This made me not only read more, but also share it with more people. https://viggy28.dev/book https://viggy28.dev/book

metrokoi 6y ago
I've always been hesitant to write book reviews or synopses because I believe I have nothing new to add, but this is a novel idea that also benefits the reader by increasing retention. I believe I will start doing this; thank you for the inspiration!
- Steve44 6y ago
  I was taught a long time ago that it's the act of jotting down notes which helps you to remember things. Yes you can always refer back to them, but there is something about the action of physically doing it strengthens the memory retention. I'm fairly sure that the feeling was typing notes didn't have as strong an affect on retention, the notes needed to be physically written.
- vira28 6y ago
  You're welcome.
dorchadas 6y ago
I don't take notes while reading (mostly because I lack the habit, but I also read a lot while I walk/bike at the gym, as it helps me focus more), but I've found that physical books allow me to remember a lot more than ebooks. Even if I'm reading the same book in different formats (switching between physica/ebook based on what I'm doing, for instance), I've found that I'll remember more of the physical book's content. Maybe I should find a way to stick with my notes again, especially for more academic books.

mshekow 6y ago

Another post of these "I read N times faster than the rest and still remember >= 90% of it" high-achievers ;) (no hard feelings). There's ample evidence that such kinds of speeds are not generally possible with every kind of book. See e.g. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-redo/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-re... I did take speed reading courses myself. Sure, it helps you speed-read, skimming over sections that seem unfamiliar, and detect when you need to slow down, because the subject matter becomes too unfamiliar/new. I've also had the impression that retention improves a bit after the couple of training days - at least that's what the workshop instructor makes you believe (it's their job to sell success and good feelings so that you recommend the course to your peers). In the end, I highly doubt that anyone who claims to have such high speeds is sincere. The simple fact is that marking text with a highlighter, making notes (with a pen) and thinking about the content (do you?) takes time. If you accounted for that and took the average, you'd get lower numbers. And that is fine.

rajlego 6y ago
It’s even more nonsense when you look at recall over longer periods of time. If you look at forgetting curves (like Ebbinghaus) no matter how well you read a book there’s no way after a month you’ll remember more than say 10%. I don’t think that’s so bad if you take care to take the most valuable abstract concepts and rules from books.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
I do think people who read a lot can read faster simply because sentences and subjects look similar to things they've read before. I mean if you read three Steve Jobs biographies in a row you can skim read some segments that look familiar, just scan for things that are new / told differently. I can't read books fast because I don't read enough. Not books anyway, comments on the internet on the other hand, far too many. But I skim / skip / don't retain most of them.
manjotpahwa 6y ago
Oh absolutely agree with reading speeds being different for different books (I actually had that line earlier, I shortened the post to just mention the principles though). This post was not meant at all as a silly braggy post about speed reading, not that speed reading is anything to brag about in the first place. Why I say these things changed my life is because, it doesn't matter whether I read 100 books or half a book. What matters is if I learnt just one single principle from it which I actually use. Some of the things mentioned in the post such as taking notes and writing a summary at the end truly helped with that.

deleted 6y ago

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rajlego 6y ago

I highly encourage any of you wanting to retain more from wha though read to use SuperMemo’s incremental reading [1] feature. What it does summarized in a sentence: allows processing of thousands of passive materialS in parallel to convert them effectively to active recall item. It’s a pretty bold claim but it’s not so fancy and complicated as it seems. First half of the power of incremental reading is systems for processing materially efficiently (more things in less time). If I import an article into SuperMemo, SuperMemo has good tools for breaking it down (incrementally) and processing it manageably. While there’s a bit of a learning curve to being efficient, given an hour with a textbook chapter I could convert and retain the core content better than a note taker or an anki card maker. One of the things I like the most about it is that it makes processing manageable. It doesn’t make it easy but I never have to worry about needing to do too much at once. It’s all incremental and stress less (after you get over the figure out how to use it phrase). The second thing it does well is allow you to learn effectively (the right things with your time). It has a priority system and a queueing algorithm that allows you to focus on highest yield material. It also has a system for allowing you to learn things in an order. That might seem trivial but if I’m reading a Wikipedia page and want to go back when I’ve learned something else, that’s a huge pain to manage traditionally. SuperMemo makes that fairly easy so you’re always able to make sure to learn background info as scaffolding before harder things. I highly recommend people try it even though starting with it is pretty hard. If you’re interested you can either email me (email is in my profile) or join the SuperMemo discord servers also linked there. [1] https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/help/read https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/help/read

misiti3780 6y ago
I want to try it, but I do no use windows. As far as I can tell, that means I cannot use supermemo currently - correct?
- rajlego 6y ago
  Incorrect :) I use SuperMemo via parallels on my hackintosh. I know a lot of other people also using parallels on Mac. On Linux, a kind soul got SuperMemo working via wine: https://www.supermemopedia.com/wiki/SuperMemo_for_Windows_under_Wine https://www.supermemopedia.com/wiki/SuperMemo_for_Windows_un... (though were I still on Linux I’d probably stick to VMware because of a few features that don’t work)

hectorlorenzo 6y ago

“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” - Woody Allen

CharlesMerriam2 6y ago

"Love is the Killer App" is great book on reading. It discusses how to take notes in books, review them quickly, retain information, choose books and so on. Like all great business books, it has a wrong and misleading title. It has nothing to do with apps.

bonoboTP 6y ago

I don't read for speed nor for retention. I spend the time to digest the content, not to retain it. Just like you don't "read" math books, but engage with them. Now this is not necessarily the optimal strategy for sure, but for one reason or another my personality is better fit for this style. I read very few books but then "debate" it in my head, try to connect things to other things, life experiences, news, other books. Is it true what the author says? Have I read somewhere else that an implicit assumption the author is making has been discredited recently? What could be the motivation? Could I argue equally convincingly for the opposite view? What are the implications for other things I care about or was wondering about perhaps long ago? For a long time I was very ashamed of how few books I read, compared to what is expected from an educated person, but I'm okay with it now. Same with movies. I watch a movie and I think about it for days. Just watching them for relaxation doesn't work for me, following who is who and what's going on drains me more than relaxes. Especially when there's no "payoff" and the plot can only be described with "and then they" sentences.

kiba 6y ago
I don't read for speed nor for retention. Your process certainly help with retention. It engage learning strategies such as active recall and generation. Myself, I don't try to answer questions that much, but rather I like to organize information into a bunch of interconnected facts like people, events, claims, and look them up. For example, I discovered that a professor confused which Ruska brothers invented electron microscopy. He also made claims that I struggle to find citation for with a cursory google search. Then I goes a step further. I input the information into a spaced repetition system. In this way, a book or an article or a youtube video gradually disappear into knowledge and become part of my long term memory about things. Intensive or incremental reading is extremely slow for sure(I probably spent 8x times as long on my notes than reading), but knowledge creation is superior.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Unfortunately I do have problems with explicit retention. Probably some of the strategies in the comments would improve it a lot. I have implicit retention of many things, but I often forgot the sources, I cannot list my favorite books on the spot, but if we discuss a topic I'd have flashes of relevant memories come back. It's like I'd grapple with a book, dream about it, get confused, shaken, startled, questioning, then I integrate it back into normal life. Especially deeper books, like I had with The Selfish Gene which dispelled so many myths I had and confirmed things I thought to be correct. You have to go through the Baader Meinhof effect of seeing that thing everywhere. With each book I view the world from an entirely new point of view, that each seem all encompassing (how ads manipulate you, how social status and prestige works, how the finance world works and cheats, how employers manipulate, how sexual behavior works, how quantum physics works or evolution or mental games we play etc), to get the smug feeling that this current book explains it all. After going through this with 5 books, you realize that no one story explains it all, but then what to do, read about narratives, move to nihilism, then realize the boundaries of rationality and faith, believing that "good" may be in one sense illusory but worth striving for. Then you read up on more traditional views on this etc. Trying to "retain" is a bit like measuring the quality of your friendships based on how many life facts you've memorized about them. It's surely correlated, but also misses the point. The time you spent together and the experiences you had together are valuable in themselves.

leokennis 6y ago

The reading habit that changed my life: enjoy reading. Why does everything have to be a chore?

mapcars 6y ago
People who lost an ability to enjoy start to make a competition out of everything. So at least they can get a little satisfaction from that they read faster then someone else and this is measurable. How much you enjoying though can't be measured so many don't count it as real.
bonoboTP 6y ago
Enjoyment only comes once you are good enough at something. At first it's a chore. Getting off the couch and going for a jog is a chore at first, a habit later and an enjoyment even later. Reading can be excruciating if you are hooked on smartphone apps and have a constant buzz in your head of all the exciting things you could be playing and watching and getting outraged about on apps and social media. But it gets better later on, and becomes natural to just shut out the noise. Initial discomfort is okay, we cannot just always follow the path of least resistance. Especially in these times when literally billions and billions of marketing dollars are spent on keeping you off-track, assisted by the brightest scientific minds, squeezing every last percentage out of making you a miserable mess.
noir_lord 6y ago
Because of the mistaken belief that doing something 'productive' is better than doing something you enjoy. Somewhere along the line lots of people decided that if they aren't running everyone else is running past them. The runners then posted endless blog posts about how they are faster runners and run for longer and it became it's old vicious circle. I opted out, Yesterday I spent two hours sat watching a working harbour (with the odd walk to get a coffee) - the boats coming and going, the change on the surface of the water as clouds floated past, the gulls swooping around and it was amazing - after that I spent a couple of hours riding around aimlessly on a motorcycle visiting villages I'd only seen as a name on a map before and running across interesting old buildings/memorials (socially distancing) and then headed home as the sun set. It was the closest I've felt to at peace in the last six months, nowhere to go, nothing that needed to be done. You don't have to be on a treadmill all your life, running without a destination is just running.

vs2 6y ago

A blog with a paywall!!!!

CharlesMerriam2 6y ago
Yes. Medium. There's a comment above on this: private tab or delete the cookies.

kmarc 6y ago

Off-topic: For all who complain about the paywall: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox Yes you are right, and no, it's not nice to the author / medium / whatever.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

I wish I understood how reading worked, for me. I just re-read an anthology (Dragon-themed short stories) I'd last read as a young adult (decades ago). All seemed new again. Saves me a bunch on books, since I've kept every one I ever read. But halfway through there was a story I remembered. Not just a little; every detail of every character and scene. Emotionally and intellectually. No idea why one story stood out, while the rest left my brain completely. Wish I could do that on command.

Mirioron 6y ago
Did you remember any of the stories after the one you remembered in detail? Because if you do then maybe it took your associative memory a while to match the pattern.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  No, nothing else was familiar. The story was "St Dragon and the George"
openfuture 6y ago
I'm the opposite, I give away every book I finish reading (with very rare exceptions). Normally the way I do this is that I actively look for people who would appreciate the book and then pass it on (I know the book and I know the person => I can try to evaluate if they'd like it).

otikik 6y ago

> Ayurvedic healing Oh, ok. Have a good day.

cambaceres 6y ago

> Speed read parts that might not be useful to remember. My brain cache is limited, there are things I like to keep and things I just discard. Learn to recognize those parts of the book that you need to remember and those that can be discarded. Why read those part at all if they are not meant to be remembered?

ben_ 6y ago
Context for the next bits that are worth remembering, or maybe the tone of the paragraph/section changes and suddenly an interesting or exciting part pops out and you read that normally.

Marcus316 6y ago

The mechanical how people read at higher speeds might be an interesting topic. What I often do when I am "reading" for knowledge can probably be simplified down to "I read fairly quickly", but there's no nuance in that statement to talk about what I'm doing when I'm reading and how I move so quickly. I am often doing some combination of: - scanning (moving quickly across sight-words, finding relevant points of entry into the subject matter) - absorbing (slower process of gathering words surrounding the entry point to gain better local context) - backtracking (taking local context and fixing it into a broader context) - full-on processing (often this looks like deep reading, but it is more like deep thinking; I take in fewer words from the page, but connect them to concepts I already understand) This is not a linear process, at least for myself. This is different from when I read for pleasure. My pleasure reading can only really be described as "scanning" I think. Authors who craft their paragraphs so carefully would probably be horrified by how I enjoy their works of art, but I appreciate their works in my own way, and I find that this reading for pleasure is probably the fastest reading I do. I could easily consume a book of fiction in a day or two, and I always enjoy re-reading. Another reading skills facet: my reading out loud is pretty clumsy (or it at least feels that way). I read often to my children, and it feels pretty slow and clunky. I enjoy doing it, but it's not the same type of "reading". Different skill, different goals. It's something I'm working on.

jwdunne 6y ago
Re. the part about reading for pleasure: I do this too and used to think it was a bad habit. But, actually, after years of re-reading particular favourites multiple times, I uncover something knew that clicks more of the story into place. It’s a delightful experience that increases the re-readability of your favourite works :)

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago

Only way to remember what you read is to read the same book multiple times. It’s like how people get encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars. The real trick is figuring out what’s worth reading twice. There’s no value in reading fast or shallowly. Bill gates does not remember 90 percent of what he reads, urban legend.

adrianmonk 6y ago

> Write notes every single time. Don’t copy paste notes from your kindle or phone, write manually, typing every single word. Also try to paraphrase, this way you are forced to actively think about the material you’re reading. This basically got me through college. With some of the less interesting stuff, my eyes would glide across the page without my brain being engaged at all. So I'd restart, and 10 minutes later I'd find I had read the same page 5 times and retained nothing. Probably this happened because I impatiently wanted to get to the end ASAP, so I would try to rush the process, ironically slowing it down. But knowing that I was going to be writing notes was enough to make my brain engage. I'm impatient, but I'm also too proud to write down something that I know isn't right, even in my own notes. Also, I guess it feels good to produce some kind of concrete work output.

mleonhard 6y ago
Taking notes helped me to stay attentive during lectures that were not engaging. In several courses my classmates photocopied my notes and used them to study for midterms and finals. I think taking notes during lectures is more efficient than sleeping through lectures and spending many hours studying.

misiti3780 6y ago

I do not see it mentioned in the comments anywhere, but the method that has worked for me, especially for hard subjects, is to start by reading a few books and get a "macro" view of the topic. Example: Right now, I'm trying to learn a lot about quantum mechanics, so I read two books and learned about the standard model, Schrödinger equation, the three generations of matter, relativity etc. I try to determine how they all fit together. I don't draw memory maps, but I basically try to calculate one in my head (probably should just draw them). Then I stick all of those concepts + new vocabulary into anki and review them daily. After a month or two, I pick up another few books and get deeper ("micro" view). When I get bored, I stop and move on to a new subject. I have done this with microbiology, physics, some time periods of history, computer science, etc. You just need to read a lot. I do not think speed reading matters but skipping over parts of books that are not relevant will certainly save you time.

rajlego 6y ago
Have you seen quantum country [1]? A relevant cross between quantum mechanics and SRS [1] https://quantum.country/ https://quantum.country/
- misiti3780 6y ago
  yes, i went through the first two articles a few while back. i like the idea a lot, but i wish they would offer cards for offline (the author has a great article on srs: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)