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Ask HN: How do you retain knowledge from books?

2 points by gashaw ↗ HN
I sometimes wonder if reading all these books is worth it, given I seem to remember so little from them.

Other than rereading what do you do to retain knowledge from books you value?

9 comments

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WheelsAtLarge
I think most reader have this problem. The problem is that most of us just read and hope the information sticks. The trick is to not just read but to immediately recall and reflect on what you read. You also need to write down a summary of what you read. Yes, this will slow down the amount of books you read but you will retain much more.
underthensun
Yep. Read, write down, try to connect as much things as possible to make easier to retrieve it later
gashaw
This is probably the best (and most effortul) way to aquire the knowledge initialy. I did it a lot back in school, then few months upto a year later I would forget most of the material all the same.
jolmg
Spaced repetition[1], maybe?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

gashaw
I'm already rereading the most valuable books and it does help to retain their knowledge. I guess doing spaced repetition every x time would help even more. I feel that rereading and to a larger extent spaced repetition are very wasteful.
jolmg
I think spaced repetition is not every constant set of time but rather every increasing set of time, like reviewing in a week, then a month, then a year, etc. basically reviewing when you're about to forget. I don't think it's even necessary to review it in the same manner, as long as it causes you to remember, it's probably fine.
jolmg
As examples of reviewing in different manners, you can "review" by applying that knowledge or learning on top of it. Like you can read about an alphabet, then review by practice writing it, or review by learning words that use that alphabet. In that way, "reviewing" is not a waste, as you can gain new knowledge or experience. Spaced repetition is merely trying to improve retention by putting increasing spacing between the recollections of that knowledge.
airbreather
You need to be genuinely interested in what you are reading.
gashaw
I am. About 70% are technical books related to my job (SWE) and the rest are combination of textbooks and popular science in fields that I find very interesting.

If for some reason I lose interest in a book then I just stop reading it and don't mind if I don't remember anything from it.