[HN Gopher] How to Remember What You Read
___________________________________________________________________
How to Remember What You Read
Author : ajoy
Score : 299 points
Date : 2021-08-21 05:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fs.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (fs.blog)
| d0nut wrote:
| I highly disagree with "no starring mid air" in the focus
| section. It's something I do a lot, sometimes because I think
| about something I just read, sometimes because my mind goes
| travelling for a bit, which is a good side effect of reading (as
| opposed to infinite scrolling in social media which doesn't let
| you look up). there is a good Ted talk about it ("how to get your
| brain to focus" or something like this) which proves that your
| mind needs to wander in order to stay healthy and creative.
| noud wrote:
| > The best technique for notetaking is whichever one works for
| you and is easy to stick to.
|
| 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
| irrational wrote:
| Same here. I can type very fast (much faster than I can write
| with pen and paper), but taking notes with pen and paper is
| what works best for me also.
| chantzis wrote:
| A
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| B
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Nabokov's solution to this dilemma, reread. The only good reader
| is, as he said, a re-reader. If we're honest nobody can actually
| remember more than a dozen books, and if you pick the right ones
| there's more to learn in any of them than you can learn in years.
|
| 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.
| laserlight wrote:
| Recognition and retrieval are different mental processes. When
| one re-reads a material, they recognize it. Recognition gives a
| false impression of "knowing" the material, whereas retrieval
| is a better measure of knowing. In order to get better at
| retrieval, one should practice retrieval, for example, by
| answering questions about the topic.
| testcase_delta wrote:
| Well said. A great book that covers this (and suggests ways
| to practice retrieval) is called Make It Stick. I highly
| recommend it.
| pps wrote:
| There is also good website on this topic, with free guides
| https://www.retrievalpractice.org/
| paganel wrote:
| I found this related saying from Eco even more insightful (at
| least for me and for my particular case):
|
| > 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Weber
| RMPR wrote:
| > 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
|
| If anyone else is wondering, it's in his book encyclopedia of
| imaginary lands
| ekianjo wrote:
| This whole article is too long. If you want to remember something
| while you read, the only advice is simply to take notes as you
| read. If you are on a paper book, you could take notes directly
| on the paper. For digital reading, use a wiki system or any kind
| of note taking tool to grab interesting points of what you read
| before you forget them. And re-read your notes on a regular
| basis.
| andi999 wrote:
| Reading out loud might also help a bit in addition to the note-
| taking.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| It's important to distinguish books you need to
| understand/remember versus casual reading. If you need to retain
| and understand then please take notes, re-read, explain the book
| to someone (Feynam method), etc.
|
| 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.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| No, actually, faster reading often helps with better retention.
|
| 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'
| [deleted]
| lqet wrote:
| > Because when you're finally in a situation where you could use
| its insights, you've completely forgotten them.
|
| I once read a short essay by Patrick Suskind (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.
| yottalove wrote:
| Absolutely agree. My wife can read and remember everything, but
| is hard pressed to say how the elements fit into her life.
|
| When I read I recall little but compile the experience as if
| holographically, enlarging my store of metaphors that surface
| unbidden as needed.
| chubot wrote:
| Paul Graham wrote a 2014 essay saying basically this:
|
| 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_
| joshuaissac wrote:
| I think it might work the other way. Remembering more details
| prevents the reader from likening their own life to what they
| read because they can more easily recall the incompatible
| differences between the two.
| nathanyukai wrote:
| This reminds me a plot in "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber",
| where the Taichi master asks the student how much he remembered
| what was shown to him, and keeps doing it until he "remembers
| nothing", that's when he has fully learned Taichi.
| jyriand wrote:
| Honest question: why would you want to remember what you read?
| Instead take notes or use post-it notes to mark the interesting
| bits and you can always come back to them, given you have a good
| enough system for storing and linking. You can't rely on your
| memory anyway.
| simonw wrote:
| I've had some success using the Kindle app highlight feature -
| highlighting key points as I go along, and then later reviewing
| just my highlights (which can also be exported). You can add
| notes to the highlights too.
| kej wrote:
| I do this with Google Play Books, and my notes magically appear
| as text files in Google Drive.
| sec400 wrote:
| Would be great if it worked for books sent to the device not
| bought through the Amazon kindle store
| anirudhgarg wrote:
| Readwise (readwise.io) can make that automatic
| tagolli wrote:
| Readwise is awesome! Plug: I made an extension to show you a
| Readwise quote in your new tab.
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readwise-new-
| tab/i...
| etherio wrote:
| I do this too using my remarkable (reader tablet )and then
| scripts that export highlights / notes which I then index for
| as plaintext - it makes this process much more seamless.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Would you mind elaborating -- What is your exact process to
| export highlights and notes from RM2 ?
| etherio wrote:
| I use https://github.com/lucasrla/remarks, which OCRs (text
| recognition) your highlights to extract what exactly was
| highlighted, and also outputs screenshots of all pages on
| which I wrote notes.
|
| This way I can go through my annotations sequentially, save
| highlights / their main ideas, and reformulate my notes
| into plaintext a bit more clearly.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| this looks very useful, thanks!
| ngai_aku wrote:
| I've heard that the Remarkable does not function well as a
| reader. Is that true?
| etherio wrote:
| This is just subjective, but I use it to read many books
| and enjoy it. I can scribble / highlight / notetake very
| easily and find the whole experience quite convenient.
|
| Where did you hear that?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| It took me a while to learn this. In college however I found I
| would read something and think, "Yeah, I totally understand
| this." and then need it later to find I didn't really understand
| it at all.
|
| 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.
| jmfldn wrote:
| The importance of reading is as much about how it shapes your
| understanding as remembering discrete facts. I'm not necessarily
| great at recall of characters names in novels, or specific dates
| in history, but I'm quite good at abstracting the high level
| meaning of something. It means that, whilst I may not win as many
| general knowledge quizzes, my actual understanding of things I
| read tends to be ok. This strikes me as much more important.
|
| That said, it would still be nice to have better recall of facts
| for sure.
| AkshayD08 wrote:
| I believe is using the tech and apps for remembering what I read.
| I recently started using Readwise app for getting all my
| important sections from different books into daily dose of
| reminders. It works well. I also use Notion for auto syncing of
| book highlights.
|
| I don't think it's fair to eliminate technology from reading. Use
| it for your advantage.
| charles_f wrote:
| > Consuming information is not the same as acquiring knowledge
|
| 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.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Actually, by now I think "consuming information" does actually
| mean "acquiring knowledge".
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| nousernamegiven wrote:
| what is zk
| raju wrote:
| Not the author of the comment but a quick search led to this
|
| https://github.com/sirupsen/zk
| sudeepdino008 wrote:
| In general zk means zettelkasten, which is a way to take
| notes and organize information. There are plenty of
| implementations on this idea-- like neuron or roam research.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _Yes but this:_
|
| The next sentence was: "No idea could be further from the
| truth." (I know, this is how we read today.)
| charles_f wrote:
| Oh, I misinterpreted that entirely
| gjm11 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure what they mean is "No idea could be further
| from the truth than the idea that consuming information is
| the same thing as acquiring knowledge". In which case,
| unless I misunderstand badly Koshkin's implied criticism of
| charles_f is entirely unfair.
|
| 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?
| Koshkin wrote:
| You may be right.
| BooneJS wrote:
| One bit from this post was on taking notes. I've purchased
| several nice notebooks (moleskine, Baron Fig, etc) to use but I
| always hate how jumbled my commonplace notes got and I'd quit.
| Most of these notebooks are 25% completed.
|
| 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.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I use Readwise and honestly it's been game-changing. I highlight
| quotes out of books I'm reading in my Kindle, and everyday,
| Readwise sends me a random selection from quotes I've highlighted
| in the past. Such a simple idea, very low effort, but I
| definitely retain and absorb a lot more than I did before.
| tagolli wrote:
| Yeah, Readwise is great! It feels like one of those things that
| is so obvious, and yet somehow it took so long.
|
| 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...
| [deleted]
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Nice opinion piece.
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| Ironically I've just bookmarked this article to read later
| because I got past the intro and can't be bothered to read
| anymore ;P
| shannifin wrote:
| > Mark up the book
|
| 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.
| newbamboo wrote:
| I like to see others' notes and highlighting, as long as it's
| not too much. If the notes are banal or stupid it just makes me
| feel better about myself. If they are too smart for me or make
| connections I cannot, all the better.
|
| 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.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| I used to feel this way too! But I've rethought it completely.
| The way I reframed is: If you spend money on a class, you can't
| then donate/sell that class to a used bookstore; I'm just
| turning the book into a class by writing in the margins. So, if
| I can increase my retention by 10% by writing in a book, I'm
| gonna write in the book. In reality I'm probably increasing my
| retention by something like 100% to 300%.
|
| 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.)
| gillytech wrote:
| The way to remember what you read is to make sure you understand
| all the words in the text, the way they apply in context.
|
| 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.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| >I just get the definitions of words that I don't understand
| and I do just fine.
|
| 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.
| ttesttom wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you mean words that are technical or
| specific to a field? Or more general words such as
| 'didactic'?
| gillytech wrote:
| Exactly! Somewhere along the line we started being taught
| things like context clues and other study traps. No amount of
| technique can possibly replace proper vocabulary building. I
| spent a lot of time in the dictionary in my younger years but
| it's paid off massively in my ability to study and assimilate
| new things.
| kiba wrote:
| It's easier to remember something if you understand it, which
| is why rote memorization is inferior, because it takes so many
| more repetition to get something to stick in your mind.
| gillytech wrote:
| People need to realize that human memory != computer memory.
| It's not even similar. Human intelligence is all about
| identification and differentiation. Intelligence comes from
| being able to work with raw data and seeing how it can apply
| to given circumstances, predicting outcomes and selecting
| correct actions.
|
| 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.
| spdionis wrote:
| Honestly, I am amazed that there are people that don't do this.
|
| 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.
| philipswood wrote:
| I really dislike this article:
|
| >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.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| You can use both strategies depending on the book.
|
| 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.
| philipswood wrote:
| Yes, agreed.
|
| 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.
| spats1990 wrote:
| Are you talking fiction or non-fiction? Strategy 2 will work
| pretty well for most non-fiction books, especially trendy ones.
| It'd be a bit odd for fiction IMO.
| philipswood wrote:
| Non-fiction. Definitely non-fiction.
| zerop wrote:
| To remember what you read, following two works for me:
|
| 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.
| jjgreen wrote:
| Related: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-to-talk-about-books-
| you-ha...
| riffic wrote:
| I was going to suggest a _zettelkasten_ but while reading this
| noticed the author namedropped _" How to Take Smart Notes"_ by
| Sonke Ahrens*.
|
| 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...
| mblock wrote:
| Write stuff down, the act of writing it down and reading it more
| than once will help you remember
| mpalczewski wrote:
| The best way to remember what you read is to apply it. If you
| read a book about programming in python and you want to retain
| that knowledge, write a program in python.
|
| 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.
| joshthecynic wrote:
| No, speed-reading absolutely IS bullshit.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| If the book is on surgical techniques... do I need to apply
| every technique to remember it?
|
| 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).
| mpalczewski wrote:
| Yeah I could expand on this some more. If a book is on
| surgical techniques then yeah you need some practice.
| Surgeons don't get trained from books. I certainly wouldn't
| want to be operated on by someone that only reads about
| operations.
|
| 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 wrote:
| > _you should get a fancy note taking tool_
|
| I have one, but every time I turn it on, it wants to run
| Windows update...
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| > Fancy apps are not needed
|
| 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
| Rainymood wrote:
| I'm also using flashcards and the Anki app to memorise syntax.
| I got sick of looking up the difference between list.append and
| list.extend and all kinds of small things. Hope it helps...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's _more_ effective, but rather that it 's a
| great addition _to_ note taking and active reading. Those
| activities are what drive my Anki use (or flashcards in
| general, though my use of physical cards has essentially
| dropped to zero, I sometimes make them but turn them into Anki
| notes within a week). But Anki itself is "just" a mechanism
| for automating the review and tracking of those notes and
| flashcards. You could (and I have) done the same thing with a
| stack of physical index cards.
|
| 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.
| npatrick96 wrote:
| The 3rd 'truth about reading' in this article states that:
| "Book summary services miss the point."
|
| Then a couple of lines below, we are given this disclaimer:
| "By the way, the book summaries we write for Farnam Street
| members are definitely not in the same class as the standard
| fare."
|
| As the old saying goes, 'people in glass houses shouldn't throw
| stones'!
| etherio wrote:
| They say about their own summaries: "And we still don't pretend
| they're as valuable as reading the book!"
| Koshkin wrote:
| ... unless the glass house is "not in the same class," of
| course.
| blueboo wrote:
| The individual guidelines are good, but the motivating context is
| missing a crucial ingredient: genuine curiosity. Reading to tick
| the box of having read something is a tough sell to convince your
| memory to weave the new knowledge in usefully.
|
| 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.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Quality matters more than quantity.
|
| > 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.
| mromanuk wrote:
| All these types of heuristics, secretly push you, in a good
| way, both of them make you read more. It's like hitting the gym
| and looking for the perfect routine, doesn't matter which one
| is the optimal, working out is enough. That's the hack
| rvn1045 wrote:
| A good way to remember what you read is to become a domain expert
| and read everything about some particular domain you are
| interested in.
|
| When you read in clusters around the same topic the same concepts
| will get reinforced over and over again.
| gamedna wrote:
| So, should I read this article before reading this article?
| aristofun wrote:
| The article presupposition is misleading.
|
| Forgetting is good. This what makes our brain grow.
|
| You read to train it, not to be a walking reference book.
| etherio wrote:
| I think a lot of this is true not only for books, but also for
| articles.
|
| 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.
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