How To Read a Book Effectively?

Fat Boy

Fat Boy

Fapstronaut
How do you guys get the most out of your books, especially the ones with lots of complex material? I feel like I forget 95% of what I read and would like to retain way more information.

What strategies do you guys use to learn more effectively and retain the information?
 
No idea. If I read something that interests me, I remember it. If it's not interesting, I forget it no matter how hard I try.
 
Fat Boy said:
How do you guys get the most out of your books, especially the ones with lots of complex material? I feel like I forget 95% of what I read and would like to retain way more information.

What strategies do you guys use to learn more effectively and retain the information?
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Spend several minutes skimming the chapter you are about to read. Read it. Write chapter summaries when you are finished. It is also helpful to get clear with yourself about the purpose behind your reading and the questions you want answered.
 
Highlight, I find it easier to do on an e-Reader. You can easily access the notes.

Also practice it. Even if the material is not self-help in nature, translate the points into some kind of actionable step. For example, I was reading these passages on this book on the neurscience of metacognition, the bit about typing with one hand got me thinking about some kind of hack that can be done, specifically for people with some kind of chat/sexting issue. It occurred to me aside from maybe using the one hand you j/o with to type NoFap forum messages, you can try to learn Dvorak keyboard and have the ability to switch between QWERTY and Dvorak. So of course you have to also think about the ideas and think how it relates to practical concerns.

there are multiple action control loops at work: a higher-level loop governing the choice of which word to type, and a lower-level loop that takes this information and works out which keys need to be pressed in which order.

Not only are there multiple levels of action control, but the higher levels know little about the workings of the lower levels. We know this because one of the easiest ways to screw up someone’s typing is to ask them to type only the letters in a sentence that would normally be typed by the left (or right) hand.
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(Know Thyself, Stephen Fleming)
 
Fat Boy said:
How do you guys get the most out of your books, especially the ones with lots of complex material? I feel like I forget 95% of what I read and would like to retain way more information.

What strategies do you guys use to learn more effectively and retain the information?
Click to expand...

After years of reading, i think that the right question would be: "Who told u that u can remember 95% of a book after reading it, and why u think that is possible or should be normal?"
 
Take a pause after every couple of pages and try to recall as much as possible of what you have just read. The scan back through to check what you forgot or didn't pay attention to.
Do the same at the end of each chapter, and again at the end of the book, or whenever you feel that you have read a lot of information that you would like to retain.

Textbooks and non-fiction should generally be read during the day, sitting upright, and with pen and paper to hand in case you want to make a note of something or jot down a page number to refer back to (etc). Fiction I usually read at night in bed, and if I am tired I will frequently forget bits and pieces (but it doesn't matter too much so long as I can follow what is happening).
 
I think this is somehow a problem to me as non-native english speaker, mostly non-native speakers have hard time getting the thought from the text. I also discouraged to read even though I want to because of these unusual words. Thu I even tried to jot it down some words then look for it's definition afterwards, and yet I still forgot it all.. some advice. Pls..

I love reading self Development books mostly motivational, most of them aren't the actual book but I just use my phone reading it,.. i also get intrigued about stocks, investment, blablabla.. then I want to read some of Warren Buffet's book, but I cant afford to buy the actual book, and e-books are difficult to find... #respect
 
As a person who reads very complex material for fun, I will tell you to take advantage of modern technology, and also to just keep reading. Use YouTube and listen to someone summarize the ideas in the text you are about to read, then read the material and see if you can find all of the ideas from the summary video as you go through the text. If tracking and reading is challenging or you, get a recording of what you want to read, and listen to the recording as you read.
 
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SocratesTheKing said:
As a person who reads very complex material for fun, I will advise tell you to take advantage of modern technology, and also to just keep reading. Use YouTube and listen to someone summarize the ideas in the text you are about to read, then read the material and see if you can find all of the ideas from the summary video as you go through the text. If tracking and reading is challenging or you, get a recording of what you want to read, and listen to the recording as you read.
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I'd worry that learning someone else's opinions first would lead to the reader's bias and blindness to things that the reviewer missed.
 
Anti-Hero said:
I'd worry that learning someone else's opinions first would lead to the reader's bias and blindness to things that the reviewer missed.
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Hi,

I did think of that as I was writing the above, but that part can come later after a person has become a more experienced reader. Say someone is reading Aristotle or Kierkegaard for the first time, there are specific takeaways that the reader should be looking for. Unfortunately some of histories greatest thinkers are not also histories greatest writers. Both of those authors have a tendency to be pleonastic. Having a guide can help, but ultimately most complex texts were meant to be read more than once, each time the reader will find something new.

Another advantage to studying the material before you read the material, when dealing with older texts, it sometimes help to have a guide give you cultural or historical context to understand what the author intended.
 
Mate, read with a pen in your hand and bracket off anything you find interesting or aesthetically pleasing. I use a red pen, un stylo rouge.

When you have done this go back through the book and make extracts of the things you would like to remember.

This is called commonplacing (Google it!). Anyone with any intellectual ambition whatsoever should maintain a commonplace book as a depository for their working materials.
 
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