Ask HN: How do you remember what you read and how to take notes? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you remember what you read and how to take notes?

15 pointsClaude_Shannon19 comments

I've been somewhat inspired by the latest discussion about internet addiction and its' effect on book reading. What are your ways of taking notes from books?

As for me, I'm mostly reader of historical books. On my desk I had recently China. A History by John Keay and The Power Broker by Robert Caro. I admit I had finished neither of both, mostly due to laziness. The book on China I ended reading in around 1/3. I've got back to it yesterday and one thing hit me hard. I had forgotten almost everything besides some really obvious themes, and so I'm going from the beginning again.

Enough for preface, here comes my question. How do remember what you read, and connecting with that, how do you take notes and how do you organise them? From school I remember old good method - you take a notebook and copy most of the book. Still, while I believe that method has some merit - I take notes from the famous Tanenbaum book in this way, because I am expected to know that topic really well. But that takes a lot of time and I wouldn't do that if it is not necessary. Another method I had some success with was writing a one-liner summary of a single paragraph in the book, but I've been raised to never write in books and I can't shake that off.

It’s hard to remember - unless you have photographic memory. For the rest of us mortals we’re reduced to taking notes - which make books feel like textbooks! Not a good way to retain information and actually works against you enjoying reading - you called it lazy but the act of trying to memorize when your life doesn’t depend on it doesn’t work. Grades mattered in school hence forced memorization.

Here is what I do - not sure where I picked it up. While reading I try to lock on interesting concepts that is worth remembering… instead of taking mental or otherwise notes - I compose an article about it. Think of it as a blog post exploring the idea with personal experiences sprinkled on it - I put tags on it and references the book as footnotes.

I never post the articles anywhere - it’s just personal. Think of them as storyboards. I might share with a friend or two after refining it.

Now you have a database of tags with stories that link to your reading. I often look up tags because of unrelated thought or reading and it’s takes for an interesting discovery.

This works great for me compared to book summary - a chapter, paragraph or even a sentence in a book can be the biggest takeaway and result into a subject or topic of interest that leads you to more reading and the cycle continues.

As a side note - even if you don’t retain information as in real memory bank. Ideas from books make love and make babies in your mind somehow. Keep at it.

What software do you use to compose the articles and tag them?

I started with Evernote, now using Apple Notes… but I plan on switching to Notion going forward.

I love org-roam, and keep an extensive knowledge base. That said, it's important to know what not to take notes on. The notes are useful if you'll want to use them later.

One way to use a note is to look it up to know how to do something, or how to respond to a situation -- the note prompts or directs an action. A less popular but sometimes astoundingly effective use of a note is as a prompt for writing and processing -- it doesn't have to encode anything with knowing, just something worth thinking about.

If it won't be used in one of those two ways, it's just drag.

I have friends who remember great details of the books they read. I remember books, almost photographically, when I dip back in, but often I can’t conjure it independently. Especially history books.

I watch discussions here at HN and some of them feel like they’re fueled by people remembering the kinds of things I can’t.

I do remember conversations I’ve had, verbatim.

I’ve tried remembering books, but I’ve also realized, at middle age, I’ve made these efforts numerous times over the years and this is unlikely to change now. So I’ve stopped reading those kinds of books because they have little utility to me. I can’t capitalize on them. I’ve moved to more impressionable and abstract works and more of it sticks to me. My teenage son can remember all of these things in great detail but still can’t remember todos. He has a simpler life and greater focus and concentration than I can manage without disrupting my entire life.

I’m now okay with this.

I read +50 books/yr and I use highlighting to help me retain the most material. Highlights help in so many ways: they are physically attached to the material, it gamifies the reading process as you chase the next highlight, and you can easily skim past highlights to help you pick up a book you didn't finish or just to review the best parts.

After I've finished a book, I translate those highlights into written notes on my blog. Last year I consulted a reading specialist on retention and they said this process is also what they recommend.

Remembering it is exactly what Supermemo was designed for. After a few years, you learn to take notes better with it too.

Their wiki lists good ways to take notes, including some examples of common mistakes and how to do it better: http://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm

The older version is available for free but the same techniques can be used with Anko.

Ahh, Supermemo. I do know it - though I use Anki, because I can use it both on Linux and on phones. I know that Woźniak is against this as he believes this is too prone for distractions, but I'd rather learn something than nothing :P

This talk can give you some techniques:

Marty Lobdell: Study Less, Study Smart https://youtu.be/IlU-zDU6aQ0

Thank you, I'll check that out!

I take notes in org-roam:

* for each book, article, etc I read I keep a singular literature note. These read very stream of consciousness.

* I create permanent notes based on my literature notes.

* I create Anki cards from both kinds of notes to commit crucial ideas to permanent memory.

All of this Ideally, often enough I just take literature notes and don’t put the time to create permanent notes.

Reading aloud should help. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320377

I don't try too hard to remember stuff I read. Treating it like it's a textbook and I'm preparing for an exam sounds like a great way to suck all the enjoyment out of reading.

In youth it's easier to want to learn something even if you don't know what it's for. At least it was for me. I blame evolutionary optimization: Kids (which, behaviorally, today includes plenty of people in their thirties) don't know what they're going to do, and don't know what they'll need for it.

Yeah, but reading history books - it is a waste to read and not remember most things.

this is the answer

Why books don't work : https://andymatuschak.org/books/

> I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details.

The people writing these kinds of books hopefully spend a significant amount of time researching (reading), thinking and writing about the topic at hand. Reading a book about that topic once cannot by proxy give the reader an equally deep understanding of the subject matter.

> Reading Quantum Country means reading a few minutes of text, then quickly testing your memory about everything you’ve just read, then reading for a few more minutes, or perhaps scrolling back to reread certain details, and so on.

The author seems to, at least to some degree, equate knowledge with memorisation. I find this to be an limited perspective, since knowledge is also about connecting and balancing diverging information on the same topic, as well as putting it in relation to other topics. This point is actually talked about a few paragraphs earlier while discussing the hypertext format. An analog approach to this is the Zettelkasten[0] method.

It seems to me, that knowledge is the continuous engagement with a topic through reading, thought and writing. What the author is calling for as "new mediums" is nothing more than the technological encoding of certain practices of organising one's mind.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten

The fact is, just by reading something once, I barely remember stuff.

What makes me remember stuff is enforcement of the concept. This can be done-

1. Actively, by applying the knowledge to get things done- building something, explaining something you see IRL with the new concept. (Books like Made to Stick by Heath, Heath, and Black Swan by N. Nicholas Taleb add layers to your perception, and many things unexplained before start to make sense.) Write stuff (an elaborate blog or a four-line journal entry.)

2. Passively, by being in a community. This community can be an IRC channel, a university dorm, a school, a book-reading club, a dev meetup group, a cultural club, a study-group etc. (Do you notice that you can barely remember something that was just covered in a class, but you remember 70% of the lyrics of a catchy, new, viral song that you happen to hate?) This happens by being in a zone created and enforced by others. You repeat something many times, you hear it repeated many times, you dabble with ideas that take the original idea as the base. In this way, what you learn is cemented inside you, and the idea seems trivial. So, place yourself in a situation where you can repeat the things that you just learned, and the thing getting thrown at you now and then. Writing is also relevant here. Teach others what you have learned. Learn about the Feynman Technique.

Go onto Coursera and take the course- "Learning How To Learn". This is designed for college freshmen, may be? But it is still relevant for people like us. And although it is focused towards college and studies, it is still relevant for non-fiction Hobby-Reading.

When I attend a technical lecture, or watch a video, I take notes of stuff that I figured out, and was not explicitly mentioned in the lecture. I take notes of interesting stuff and "between the line" stuff and pair it up with class notes or slides.

When I was in college and HS, I gave mock-tests. My teachers often took Mini-Tests and quizzes. These are more valuable than revisions.

When I read non-fiction, I use Zettelkasten to store new ideas learned. New connections made. I revisit those notes.

And I have designed my circle appropriately. Nowadays, so easy to do with several options.

I have also found writing (and teaching others in general) to be highly valuable in learning.

What you need is some study techniques, proper note-taking, and a community.

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