Master these 7 methods to help you remember every book you've read

If you read for the sake of learning, what should you do?

Translated | boxi

Source |The Divine Translation Bureau

Editor's note: Fast-paced life, we often like to make a lot of flags, such as how many books to read this year. But does the amount of reading really matter? Is every book you read good? How much knowledge in books have you memorized in a year? Reading is a person's practice, do not blindly pursue quantity, but pay attention to reading good books and absorbing knowledge. So, how to read a good book effectively? This article is from a translator and introduces 7 practical tips to help you remember every book you've read. This article is compiled from a compilation and hopes to enlighten you.

There are many benefits to reading more books, but maybe I like reading because reading a good book can make people better interpret their previous encounters.

Whenever and why you learn about a new mental model or come into contact with a new thought, it's updated like a "product" in your brain. There is no doubt that you can run old information elements through a new program. For example, you can generate good ideas from old meeting minutes to come up with new examples. As Patrick O'Shaughnessy put it, "Reading changes the past." ”

Obviously, you can pretend that you're actually recalling some of the knowledge you've read in the books you've read in the past. Once this is done, then the information may become more complex. Therefore, it is important not only to read more books, but to draw as much knowledge as possible from each book.

Obviously, access to information is not the primary motivation for reading. Reading for fun or pleasure can make good use of time, however this article is read for learning. With that in mind, I might want to share some practical tips I've found.

1. Stop reading too many books

If you think there's something worth reading carefully, it doesn't take you long to sort things out. Genius works and excellent ideas will stand out.

Therefore, many people should start reading more books than they do now, but that doesn't mean you need to read each book page by page. You can browse the structure and chapters of the entire book by chapter list, title, and subtitle. Choose an interesting area and take the time to look at a few pages, or casually flip through the pages and look at the bold text or tables. Soon, you'll understand how great it is.

By doing so, you yourself will realize which books are worth reading and which books can be immediately removed from the to-read list. Life is too short for us to waste reading ordinary books, or it will cost too much, because there are countless amazing things worth reading. I think Patrick Collison, founder of Stripe (a fintech company whose core business is online payment clearing), has a great saying: "Life is short, and in the moment when you realize the moment, you might as well read the absolute best book." Here's my advice:

Try to read more books, select good books worthy of depth through rough reading, then stop reading a large part of them useless books and peruse the extraordinary books twice.

2. Pick an applicable book

One way to further develop reading perception is to choose books that you can apply quickly, putting into action the ideas you read from books, and probably the most ideal way to convey knowledge to you. Practice is an attractive way to learn.

Pick a book that you can practice, especially when something important is at a critical point. For example, if you have the opportunity to start a business, you'll get a lot of inspiration from the business books you're reading. Similarly, people working in science may be more cautious than the average reader when reading The Beginning of Species, because the book is directly tied to their day-to-day work.

Obviously, of every interesting book, only one is practical, instructive, and you can quickly practice and apply, which is good. You can find practical tips in a wide variety of books that improve the quality of your life.

3. Make easy-to-find notes

Write down what you read, any way. But you should be aware that it should not be a complex framework, but rather a simple and effective emphasis on the main points.

Reading books in different forms, I do it in different ways. When I read online on Encourage, I pay special attention to chapters and entries. When reading a paper book, I read the pages carefully and take notes wherever I go.

Whatever the case, the real key to reading is: store your notes in an easy-to-find file directory.

There is no compelling reason for you to leave the task of reading cognition entirely to your memory. Usually, I save my notes with Evernote. I prefer to use Evernote because it can be found instantly, 2) the various gadgets that come with it are not difficult to use, and 3) you can create and save notes under any situation, even if you don't have an internet.

In general, I import notes into Evernote in the following 3 ways:

1. Book Notes: I make an Evernote document for each book, and then I'm able to type the notes directly into that document when I listen to the book.

2. E-Books: I show off some book chapters on an e-reader and take advantage of a program called clipping to send all my Fuel features directly to Evernote. Then, based on that, I added a synopsis and some thoughts about the book, and then presented them all on the summary page.

3. Print notes: Just like the recording program, I print out the notes while reading. Because taking notes while reading a paper book can be annoying, because you're constantly putting the book down and picking it up again, taking notes on your computer and printing them out is the best way I've found.

Obviously, your notes don't need to be programmatic to find. For example, you can use the "Present It Notes" feature (print notes) on a tag-specific page. In addition, Ryan suggested that each note could be written on a note card and sorted by bullet point.

Either way, the central idea is similar: make notes easy to find. This method is very helpful for reading, because you can find it whenever you want to look at the notes.

4. Build an information tree

Imagine a book that resembles an information tree, in which a storage room is made up of several basic concepts, and the subtleties become branches. You can learn more and further deepen your reading and understanding by connecting the trunk to the branches and by sharing existing reading books with other books. For example:

While reading Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran's The Obvious Mind, I found a central problem related to an idea I got from social work scientist Brené Brown.

In my notes on The Unpretentious Specialty of Not Giving a F*ck, I noticed how Imprud Manson's concept of "suicide" was on a par with Paul Graham's "keeping one's personality."

When I read George Leonard's Authority, I understood that while the book is about the process of progress, it also reveals the link between genetics and execution. I added all my knowledge of the book to the notes of that book.

Such associations can help you recall what you've read, and this approach can help you generate more ideas and better thoughts. As Charlie Munger puts it, "If you have a psychological tendency to relate what you read to the basic ideas you expound, you will slowly accumulate some insight." ”

When you read something that helps you remember a book topic or quickly helps you make an association or idea, don't let the idea always come back and forth in your head, but write it down. Write down in detail what you're already aware of and how it relates to other different ideas.

5. Write a short outline summary

When I finish a book, I challenge myself to summarize the whole book in three sentences. Obviously, this request is gameplay, but it prompted me to think about what really matters to this book.

In summarizing a book, I had the following questions in mind:

What is the main idea of this book?

Suppose I put one of the ideas in this book into practice now, which one would it be?

How do I describe this book to my peers?

In general, I have observed that by reading the outline of an article and looking at the notes taken, I can usually get data that is just as useful as when I would read the whole book again.

If you feel like it's impossible to write the whole book in three sentences, consider using the Feynman learning method.

Feynman's method is a method of note-taking named after Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. The method is simple: write the name of the book at the highest point of a piece of paper, and then, on that paper, write how you describe the book to someone who never knew about it.

Let's say you're stuck with what you're writing, or you see that what you're writing isn't comprehensive, revisit your notes, go back to the book with those questions, re-read what you didn't read and try to refine again until you have a good idea of the main idea of the text.

I've observed that there's hardly anything more rewarding than telling an idea to a little white who has never read a book, and that the process is a better way to reveal holes in your own thinking. Monetary expert Ben Carlson makes much the same point: "I've found that the most effective way to comb through what you've found in a book is to write something that's relevant to it." ”

6. Surround yourself with themes

I often think of a quote from Thomas Aquinas: "Beware of a lonely man." ”

Suppose you only read a book about a certain point of view and see it as a reason for your classification of life as a whole, how reliable is that classification? How accurate and complete is your view of life?

Reading a book takes effort, however, people use a book or an article again and again as a reason for the entire belief framework. As Morgan Housel notes, "Your own encounter may be 0.00000001% of the probability of what is happening on Earth, but it may be 80% of the probability that you think the world works." All of us will always take a one-sided view of our own series of experiences. ”

One way to solve this problem is to read various books on similar topics. Approach similar issues from different perspectives, look at similar issues through the eyes of different creators, and try to transcend your own insights.

7. Read it one more time

Finally, I want to return to one of the points I made at the beginning of this article: Read these incredible books twice. The scholar Karl Popper happily elucidated the merits of this approach: "Anything worth reading is worth reading not only twice, but also worth reading over and over again." If a book is good for you, you can usually get new revelations every time you read it and find something in it that you were never aware of before. ”

In addition, it is useful to re-read the book because the problems you face at different stages are different. Of course, when you read a book twice, maybe you'll get something you didn't learn in the first place. In everyday life, it is normal to have different understandings of life depending on where you are.

You've read a similar book, but you've never read them the same way. As Charles Chu puts it, "I usually come into contact with creators like that. Also, no matter how often I read their books, I feel that they have really new things to express. ”

Obviously, whether or not you're absorbing something new with every reading, it's beneficial to re-read those amazing books because your mind needs to be rethought. Writer David Cain said, "When we only learn something once, we don't actually learn it because not everything changes us right from the start." ”

Nassim Taleb has set a standard for all readers: "A good book will gain something with every reading, and a good book will make you feel different on the third reading." Any book that is not worth rereading is not worth reading. ”