How to memorize information from books and articles

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

People read for two reasons: it's interesting and useful. What's more important? Should you read for pleasure or strain your memory trying to remember all the useful information? I will share my opinion, as well as the opinions of several interviewed experts.

Perhaps reading is the most unusual activity in the world. We look at sheets of paper with words and use fantasy to turn them into reality, even if only in our head. For me, reading is more of a pleasure than a search for new and useful information. If I were asked to divide them as a percentage (they ask on the street every day), I would give 70% to interestingness, and the remaining 30% to usefulness.

But books are the best source of one of the main resources of our life - experience. By reading a book, we can gain the experience of other people and learn from their own mistakes, without making them ourselves. It is as if we are immersed in a simulator, living the life of another person, making mistakes and applying the experience gained in our life.

Therefore, books can be both entertainment and a useful pastime. But, even when I read non-fiction books, I still have problems remembering information from them. I decided to research this issue and found several ways to fix it.

Write out quotes

This is inconvenient when reading paper books, but once you put this process on the conveyor belt, you will be surprised how much useful information you can remember thanks to it. If you read e-books, for example, through Bookmate, then this is much easier, since in the application you can create quotes by simply selecting a piece of text and clicking the "Quote" button.

When I promised myself to read 52 books in 52 weeks, I copied the quotes into Evernote, creating a separate note for each book. This method also has the right to life. It is much longer and more complex, but your quotes will always be safe.

View quotes

After you read the book, open your notebook and look at all the quotes you wrote out. They will refresh your memory, and you will remember even what you did not write out. It is worth opening a notebook with quotes every few weeks or according to the situation. For example, if you are faced with the fact that you cannot organize your time, open the book on time management you have read and look at the main thoughts.

Connect the most important moments with real life

I will try to explain what I mean. Once upon a time I read the book "". I didn't like her. But there were some very interesting thoughts in the book that I wanted to remember. For example:

Do you know how to paint a perfect picture? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just write it naturally.

or

Truth knocks at the door, and you say: "Get out, I'm looking for the truth." And she leaves.

I wanted them to stick in my memory forever. Therefore, I took them out on a blank sheet of paper, looked at them for a long time and, inspired, wrote a short note. So they were forever deposited in my memory, because I connected them with real life and told, albeit to myself, what I think about it.

You don't have to write an essay on the quotes you like. You can memorize them in other ways as well. For example, print and attach to the fridge or make yourself a T-shirt with a print. But better not.

Opinions

I interviewed several people whose opinion I was interested in. Here's what they answered.

Armen Petrosyan Creator of the project "Life is interesting!"

I read fiction less and less. Rather, every year I read 10-12 books. But the total amount of reading is constantly growing. In 2014 he read over 100 books.

I don't try to memorize information. If the book is not fiction, my reading turns into a search for the information I need. Necessary means being in demand for solving certain problems. For this, before taking up the book, I write questions to which I would like to find answers.

The information that is stored for future use only hurts me. It interferes with thinking and making decisions at the moment. With constant access to the Internet, I see no point in this. The information sought should be applied. In the books I have read, I make sure to leave notes and make bookmarks. If necessary, I can quickly find the right quote or piece of text.

I try to link the information that attracted attention with the tasks, questions, ideas I have. I collect them in lists. I have long ceased to store and even more to subscribe something from books. If I read e-books, I use the convenient functions for saving quotes in Bookmate and Kindle services.

Slava Baransky Editor-in-Chief of Lifehacker

I usually read books for a purpose. For example, before Doubt was published, I read books on health, sports and nutrition. After that, I began to read books on financial management and management, as it became clear that the business was growing and there was not enough knowledge - you couldn't pull anything out on your own. Then I read books on sales, because advice was needed here - I raised the level of sales themselves. Now I am reading the books I need for the second book. That is, each book is a step towards the goal. I do not take into account any opinions of anyone. I don't read it just because someone praises or advises the book. This is if we talk about non-fiction. If we talk about fiction, then everything is chaotic: then Remarque about the war, then Khaled Hosseini about the Islamic world, then Akunin about the history of Russia, then Subtelny about the history of Ukraine. Sometimes I reread the classics that I did not understand at school: "Lolita", "Gobseca" and so on.

If we talk about collecting information, then I do not write these notebooks and I do not pack everything in Evernote. I believe my head and I am sure that I will remember only what I need. The rest is garbage, and I will leave it to others to collect it for the sake of the process. The collection takes place only when preparing your book, this is a complex process of selecting the most necessary from books, articles, conversations, video and audio information. I do it in Evernote or the tagging system in OS X. Someday I'll tell you on LH, if the conditional "DOUBT-2" becomes the same bestseller as the first book. It sounds cool: "Information collection system from the author of two bestsellers …":)

Alexey Korovin Traveler, entrepreneur

It seems to me that one should not memorize, but try to absorb, disassemble, analyze.

My advice is simple:

1. Observe yourself, your sensations while reading. What is happening to you, why this or that emotion has so overwhelmed you.

2. Take your time. Better to read one page a day, while savoring and not missing a single moment. Don't aim to read certain books. In reading, as, in general, in life, the process and content are important, and not the goal and the number of books and pages read.

3. Put the book down if you feel that it is "not yours." Again, don't set a goal to finish reading the book to the end - value your time.

Karina Shlapakova Author of Lifehacker

I read fiction for pleasure. It's just a delight when you realize that you have a free evening to devote to a good book. Now I am finishing my fifth year and am actively writing my diploma, in this regard, I have to read a lot of educational literature (textbooks, monographs, scientific articles, sometimes even dissertations). Here, of course, there is not so much pleasure, but mainly the search and isolation of the necessary and relevant information.

I try to read regularly, two books a month, sometimes it turns out three (educational literature is not included here).

My methods of memorizing information from books are rather conservative:

1. Read with a pencil in hand and mark the points to which you want or need to return. Since I very rarely reread what I have already read once (why go back when there are still so many unread books in the world), my pencil marks help me to pay attention to the most important things.

2. For me, the best way to remember information is to retell it. I constantly retell the plots of the books I have read to my relatives, my friends are already used to my "fad": to the simple question "How are you?" I can give a 30-minute monologue on the book I just read.

3. Read aloud. Especially if you need to memorize definitions or poems, it helps a lot.

4. Write reviews of the books you have read. I developed this habit relatively recently, from the moment I became an author on Lifehacker. When you try to fit 300+ pages of a book into 7,000 characters, you learn to do squeeze and, of course, remember the most important things.

5. The last method, which, unfortunately, is not always possible to apply, is to read what you are interested in, what fascinates you. Then the information read will be deposited in the head by itself.