How To Remember What You Read

 

It’s all well and good to read a lot of books. You flip those pages every night before bed, at every bus stop, and on every lunch break. You watch your bookshelf pile up with tomes you’ve torn through in record time. But what good is all that effort if you don’t remember what you read?  Here are a few tips on how to remember what you’ve read.

Get Familiar

Before you even open a book, you should get familiar with what you’re about to read. This applies equally to fiction and non-fiction. If you’re about to read the memoir of a prominent member of the French Resistance, you probably want to have some background knowledge on WWII. 

It doesn’t have to be a long and drawn-out research process. Usually, just reading the introduction is enough.  If you want to go a little deeper, just connect to any device to find what need to know about that book. So, really, it’s not that hard! 

Focus!

You’ll notice a huge difference in how you remember what you read if you make an effort. No TV on “in the background”, don’t check your phone, or cook dinner with one hand and hold your book with the other.  Even if you can only give 20 minutes of focused attention per day, do it. Take whatever time you can to focus wholly and solely on what you’re reading.

Chunk it

It’s a huge mistake to get all hung up on reading “fast”. Burning through a book quickly is actually detrimental to your recall. When you space out your reading by chunking, a few chapters here, a few chapters there – you force your brain to shift to long-term storage.  It’ll stick around in long-term storage as chunks, especially seeing as you’re rehearsing the memory every time you go to knock out a few more pages. If you read the entire book in a single sitting, your brain doesn’t need to store as much information. Your brain will abandon it in favor of something more valuable that it will actually need later. So, read in short chunks, and you’ll find you retain a lot more.

Think About What You’re Reading

Surprisingly, you’d be amazed at how many of us read passively, not really thinking about what we’re taking in. That can feel really good, but it’s not great if you’ve set a goal of remembering what you read.

So, what’s the easiest way to engage your brain? Challenge it! Find ways to put it to work. Your brain is like a border collie.  It wants work to do, and if you don’t give it any, it’s going to run off and find something else to play with.

Try these tricks to get your brain into gear as you’re reading:

• Ask yourself questions about what you’re reading as you go.

“Why would the protagonist do that? Is it what I would do if I were in her shoes? What do I like about the way this author writes? What’s the point that the author is trying to get across here?” It sounds really basic but try pausing after every few pages and posing a question.  Thus, this to force your brain to actively engage with the content to formulate an answer. Also, that’s most of the effort getting it to store the information for recall later.

Pause and visualize a scene or a character.

Imagine what they look like, what they sound like.  Make the whole thing as vivid as possible using the details that the author has given you.

Link what you’re reading to things that you already know.

That could mean putting the background knowledge to use. It could simply mean finding parallels between the book and your life experience. Say the author mentions someone’s birthday – see if you can figure out a way to remember that. Perhaps it’s a week before a major public holiday.

try to paraphrase what you’ve just read to yourself.

What happened? What did the author explain? Was there new information that came to light? Should you need to remember it?

Bonus:

These tips won’t just help you remember what you read, they’ll also help you understand and apply what you read.

Take Notes

For me, this is the most crucial step in remembering what I’ve read. I’m constantly pausing to scribble something down.  Whether it’s a great line, a thought I’ve had about a character, something done with perspective. In addition, it was these notebooks full of scribbles that gave rise to Keeping Up with the Penguins! 

There are different schools of thought as to whether it’s “okay” (or even optimal) to write in the books themselves. Chiefly, notes in the margins, highlighting or underlining the text, etc.  I’m from the school that says writing in books is sacrilegious, not to be done. That’s why I always have a notebook on me when I’m reading. I never write essays or anything particularly long-winded. Basically, it’s mostly bullet-points and diagrams, sometimes a paragraph or two if I’m really moved by what I’m reading.

The most important thing about taking notes is that you take them, regardless of how or where. Find a method that works for you, one that you’re likely to stick with. It might sound like a chore, but if your goal is remembering what you read, this is probably the best thing you can do.  Writing information down helps you to remember it, whatever your learning style, whatever you’re reading. Plus, you’ll have the notes to refer back to later if the memory doesn’t stick!

Read Out Loud

Reading out loud gives your brain additional ways to code and retain the information. You have the opportunity to remember hearing them and producing them with your own speech. This is particularly important if you’re an auditory learner, but it will be helpful for anyone. There are a number of other benefits, too.  For instance, if you tend to read for speed, reading out loud forces you to slow down and really think about what’s in front of you.

Teach Someone Else (Preferably, A Toddler)

There are about a dozen different sayings and quotes about this, and they all boil down to the same thing: you’ll understand and remember something better if you teach it to someone else. That’s because your experiential memory is the strongest kind there is, so you should really be taking advantage of that.

The “Feynman Technique” is learning about a concept, then doing your best to explain it to a toddler. That will help you identify any gaps in your own understanding, at which point you can return to your materials and review them until you’re ready to try again. Clearly, it worked for him!

If you don’t have a toddler, participate in a book club or talk to family and friends who have read the book. Discussing the content with someone else  strengthens the memories by associating them with other things. The more connections your brain makes between the content and your experiences, the stronger your memory and the longer it will last.

Finally, Choose Wisely

Perhaps this should have come first, but I think it’s a good note to end on: choose the right book. You’re going to remember something you find interesting than you will something that bores you to tears.  If you’re just reading a book so that you can say that you did, you probably have no personal stake in it at all. Your chances of remembering it in great detail won’t be good. Move on to another book – one that’s more suited to your tastes and circumstances and needs. You’ll find that memory comes much easier!

The quality of your reading matters infinitely more than the quantity of your reading. Far better to take your time and really immerse yourself in a book that you love, and get everything out of it that you can, don’t you think? When you do that and embed some really strong memories of what you read, you get to carry it with you for the rest of your life.

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Related:  Keep Reading Keep Writing – TUTORING YOU