Do you ever close a non-fiction book and worry whether reading is a time-waster? If you ever feel like the knowledge in a book can’t help you live a better life, it’s likely because you don’t know how to read to remember.
Many people rely on passive reading. But our brains don’t work like recording devices. The words on the pages don’t magically stick to our memory.
To make reading effective, you need to factor in the two components of learning and memory: the learned information itself and the so-called retrieval cue that helps you find the material you learned.
Your first three steps on learning this skill:
- Elaborate on what you read. Whenever you stumble upon something interesting, scribble your thoughts on the book’s page or in your favorite note-taking app.
- Write a summary after you finish a book. How can you summarize the book in three sentences? Which ideas do you want to keep in mind and apply? How does the book relate to what you already know?
- Teach and explain the contents of the book to your friends or co-workers. This is also the technique Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman used to remember what he learned.
