How to remember everything you read

The simple process that turned me from a forgetful reader into a memory machine.

When I read non-fiction, it’s mostly driven by a desire to learn. The topics I dive into vary from the medical approaches in Ancient Rome to the way memory works, or say the transition in English rural life during the Industrial Revolution.

I’d always read a couple of books and feel satisfied that I’ve learned a new topic. Or so I’d think for a few days.

Memory is a slippery beast. After a month I could maybe tell you the titles of the books and a few tidbits that stood out. Did you know that the average age of marriage in 17th century England was 23.5 for women?

I dedicate so much time to learning through reading but little of it stays in any readily recallable memory.

I’ve wondered if it’s my age? Is my brain just not capable of holding information well after turning 30? And really, have I ever been able to remember things I read well anyways? Was it all just an illusion of mastery born of superficial familiarity with a subject?

Frustrated, I looked into the science of learning. Surely, I thought, someone must have come up with a better way to commit read content to memory.

Human ingenuity didn’t fail me.

There are ample resources for the avid autodidact. The book Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning and Andy Matuschak’s work stand out. I’m still learning and experimenting but in the last few months I developed the below process and it has worked well so far (I can remember things!):

1. Read a portion of text + highlight: I read a chapter / section and highlight parts that I want to remember.

2. Write Q&A-style notes: Without looking at the highlights, I write down notes on concepts that caught my attention or ideas I want to remember. I write everything in a question and answer format in Notion. *only if I’ve read the chapter or section in one sitting just before I write notes, otherwise I skim highlights before writing the Q&A format notes.

3. Skim highlights: I skim the highlighted parts of the chapter / section and amend the notes or add to them if something is missing or isn’t captured as I’d like. I find it better this way to avoid just copying out slabs of text which is much less effective for learning and remembering.

4. Repeat^: I repeat for all chapters/sections and add the notes into one Notion page.

5. Get csv of flashcards: Once I’ve finished reading the book (or whatever else I’m reading), I copy paste the notes in Q&A format into ChatGPT and get it to format it into a csv format for flash cards.

6. Upload csv to Anki: I upload the csv into a new Anki deck (named as Book:[title of the book]). You can also add flashcards manually.

7. Do Anki: I do the Anki flash cards as scheduled by the app. Anki shows you flashcards based on how well you self-report knowing the answer. With each deck there’s an initial period where I’m shown all the cards and then increasingly only those I struggle with. Anki then shows me those I have ‘mastered’ at optimised intervals to help me remember the information for the longterm. Based on the book, this may take 5-15mins initially and progressively shortens.

Results?

I can remember the books I’ve read well. I used to try to take comprehensive book notes that could serve as a summary. Those were too effortful most of the time, so I ended up making them for maybe 10% of what I read to learn. Now I use the above process for all my ‘learning’ reading.

With this new process I do finish books less quickly but not significantly so. I’m not one of those people who measure their reading speed, so I can’t give you a precise speed change but it’s fast enough to not put me off reading.

I only use this technique for books that I deem to be ‘learning’ material. I haven’t tried it for books I read for pleasure, though certainly with some of the classics it mightn’t be a bad idea. Maybe this is how I could become a person who can quote Vergil?

Why it’s good?

• Highlighting: makes me feel like I’m paying attention as I’m reading and makes it easier to pinpoint bits I want to remember later on.

• Writing notes in Q&A format: this forces me to recall information I read which aids memory consolidation.

• Anki: Anki makes spaced repetition easy. Spaced repetition is the concept of recalling information at spaced time intervals that optimise memory recall.

So far so good.

*cover image: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash