Today I’m going to share a simple tactic that can boost your reading efficiency. You’ll retain more, so you won’t have to waste time re-reading books. You’ll also understand more, so you can spend less time trying to master each new subject.
The basis of this trick comes from a psychological quirk that happens at parties.
“Sorry, What Was Your Name Again?”
Have you ever been introduced to someone, then only a few minutes later realizing you’ve forgotten their name. Why does this happen?
The reason is that you haven’t forgotten the name, you never remembered it in the first place. “Forgetting” in this case is not a bit of memory that was accidentally lost or deleted, but a memory that was never formed.
When you’re being introduced, you often aren’t paying attention to remembering a person’s name. You’re focused on what you’re going to say or your impression of the person–not their name. You lack awareness of that detail while it comes up, so it never gets etched into your memory.
The distinction for better memory is to not just hear something, but to realize it’s important enough to remember. Elevating the significance of a detail of information, greatly increases the likelihood that you’ll remember it later.
How to Retain What You Read
Many students have inefficient reading habits for the same reason they forget someone’s name at a party. They move the information into conscious awareness, they just never encode them into long-term memories.
The solution is to develop reading habits which forcefully elevate the significance of important information, so you form long-term memories.
Just reading text isn’t enough. Unless you deliberately elevate the key pieces of information in you consciousness, what gets stored in long-term memories is little better than random. That’s why many students need to constantly review and re-read, and still forget many ideas on a test.
The key to reading efficiently is to read something once, and have excellent comprehension. Cutting out the re-reading and wasted time due to details forgotten is the best way to read more in less time.
If you’ve followed this far I’ve explained how (a) the problem isn’t details forgotten, but details never properly remembered in the first place, (b) awareness of the importance of an idea makes forming memories easier and (c) the solution is to create reading habits which forcefully take important ideas and facts to a heightened awareness so they will be turned into long-term memories. Now I’ll show the specific practice to achieve this.
Active Reading to Read More Efficiently
Active reading is a module I teach in Learning on Steroids. Part of its power is that it’s an active learning method, not a passive one. Which means it is easier to sustain focus for longer periods of time.
Another part of its power is that it forces important information into your conscious awareness, so you will transfer those details into long-term memory.
The basis of the tactic is that you split your reading into layers. Each layer is a filter, picking out the important information and forcing you to create memories for it.
For a course which is mostly conceptual, a good 3-layer approach is:
Read
Highlight
Mini-Feynman Technique
To practice this, you would read through a chapter, and selectively apply each of the layers. You would read all of the information (first layer). From that, you would highlight anything that would need to be remembered for a test (second layer). From those, you would do a quicker version of the Feynman Technique on all the ideas which need deeper understanding (third layer).
Reading and highlighting could be seen as a two-layer approach, but it’s fairly weak since most students put barely more mental emphasis on the highlighted material than the rest. Having 3 or 4 layers (and at least one that is active) forces you to filter and cue your brain into what is important.
Here’s another 3-layer approach, this time for a detail-heavy factual course:
Read
Web
Mnemonic
To use this, you would read (first layer) and then create a web storing any facts that need to be remembered on a separate paper, grouping them into connections (second layer). Finally, you would re-read the concept map and deliberately use a mnemonic technique such as chaining, pegging or the memory palace to seal in the most critical details (third layer).
Active reading is more intense than normal reading, but it needn’t take a lot more time. The third or fourth-layer tactics should be quick to do, only adding an extra minute or two to each section. A good goal would be, if it takes you 30 minutes to read a chapter normally, to active read the same chapter in 40 minutes (provided you don’t also use speed reading to increase your reading rate).
The small time addition of active reading is more than offset by the huge gains in retention. Also, because you’re able to integrate other learning tactics, you can reduce the need to set aside separate time for those tasks. Less re-reading and less review means more time for you.
TAKE ACTION: Implement Active Reading
You’ve read about active reading, and you see how it works to improve your retention. Now take action and practice this skill so you can reap the benefits of less review time and re-reading to remember:
Pick the book you’re going to try active reading on for the next 7 days.
Design the layers you want to use to (a) read actively, not passively, and (b) force important information to be transferred into long-term memory. I suggest using one of my two examples if you’re unsure.