How to better read non-fiction books and actually remember them
New year. New goals. New… books?
It’s no surprise that when January 1st comes around, “getting more exercise” or “going to the gym more consistently” tops most New Year resolution lists, once again, year after year. In 2017, the global health and wellness industry was worth $4.2 trillion.
But there’s another goal that seems to be getting increasingly more attention: reading.
Whether you’d like to dive into mindfulness more seriously, invest your money like Warren Buffet, learn how your cat is plotting to kill you, or finally get around to opening that Excel sheet that’s always looked so evil to you, chances are there’s a copy available at your local bookstore or on Amazon.
Investing in yourself will help get you many great places in life, both personally and professionally. Luckily for us, there are a plethora of ways that can help you learn new skills or become more knowledgeable in a specific domain.
From physical books and e-books to webinars, “academies”, “universities”, online courses, conferences, mobile apps and masterclasses (anyone else seeing the MasterClass ads pop up on their IG feed?), opportunities for improvement or a change of career are far more readily available to us today than ever before.
There’s something for everyone.
All about metrics
New year, new me. No wonder the self-improvement market’s worth continues to skyrocket every year. According to Market Research, the industry is projected to reach $13.2 billion by 2022 with an average yearly growth of 5.6%. That’s a heck of a lot of improvement for the average Joe.
Love it or hate it, self-improvement is a journey, and books tend to be a popular starting point to embark on that journey. But making new year resolutions and listing out goals to achieve along your new journey is great… as long as you can keep yourself accountable for reaching them.
The trick? Tracking progress.
Instead of using vague statements such as “I’ll read more this year”, more and more readers are using metrics to keep track of their yearly goal. A common one: “I’ll read 12 books this year” or, more specifically, “I’ll read 1 book a month.” If you’re feeling a little more confident in your abilities, perhaps “2 books a month” will be up your alley.
If you’re feeling very Jim Kwik-like these days, how about “one book a week”?
“The faster you learn, the faster you earn.” — Jim Kwik
Being bookish is a popular way of life. Book clubs are thriving. Friends are dragging other friends along so they can keep each other accountable and pile up the bookshelves or their Kindle library.
But while everyone processes information differently, I argue there’s a big problem in using those types of metrics when it comes to reading.
Losing the big picture
We’re in early February and so far you’ve been doing great. Your goal back on New Year’s Day was to read 2 books a month and you’ve been killing it, already almost halfway through your third book as of February 10.
But of course, life happens.
Work gets in the way. Longer hours take most of your daily energy out of you because of that new project you took on. Suddenly you don’t feel like reading when you get home, so you push it to the weekend. You may have kids, friends to meet, activities to partake in, uncurable FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), and before you know it, it’s almost the end of the month and you haven’t even finished that third book.
Damn it.
You’re falling behind. Your New Year goal is in jeopardy.
The problem here is that we focus on the number, not the outcome — the bigger picture. Why do we want to read 2 books a month for 12 months? What’s the point?
That’s 24 books by the end of the year.
Imagine you’re at a New Year’s Eve dinner party and tell your friends about this impressive achievement; what are the chances of your remembering every bit of important information from all 24 books in addition to all the other sh*t that happened in your life along the way?
Hats off to those who can. But many of us can’t. A shift of mindset is necessary to make our book goals more valuable and help us retain important information more sustainably over time.
From “reading to read” to “reading to learn”
If our goal is to achieve consistency by reading the same amount of books every month, certainly waking up earlier every morning or cooking twice a week at home would feel like less of a waste of time. But if the goal isn’t just to read books, but to learn from them, then we’re onto something.
Once you’re in a mindset of growth and learning, you’ll need to build a system that works best for you to help you retain all that useful information. For that, only you will know what works best for you. And that takes a lot of trial and error.
Building your own information retention system
If you’re committed to reading books for the purpose of learning (and being able to remember what you learned), you’ll be better off with some kind of information retention system to refer back to.
From personal experience after months of testing things out, I was able to not only enjoy reading a whole lot more than I did in the past but now I always look forward to the next book not because it will be “one more book to add to the list” but because I know I’ll be able to learn something new or solidify the knowledge I just learned from the previous book.
With that said, here are a few tips to help you build your own retention system and better remember all the information you read from your list of non-fiction books for the year:
1 — Take a moment to think about what you’d like to learn first
Do you want to become a better wine connoisseur? Improve your communication skills? Learn the rules of corporate management? Whatever your goals may be, think about 2–3 specific domains you want to sink your teeth into, look for recommendations online or from friends, and then head over to your local bookstore or Amazon to start buying.
If your goal is to focus all your spare energy on mastering that one skill by the end of the year, find the books or online resources that’ll help you get there, and get crackin’.
2 — Figure out what time of the day works best for you based on what you’re learning
I’m a morning person. I have been for most of my life, so I know my brains can get going more quickly in those waking hours before the sun has begun to rise above surrounding city buildings. But what I found out after reading different types of books is that I process more “serious” books better in the morning than I do in the evening. So I built my morning routines around that.
After I wake up, I leave my phone disconnected from the internet, make a fresh cup of coffee, and dedicate one hour to reading business-related books on my couch before I make breakfast and start my workday. I’m more tuned in and it sets me up for the day, while I reserve more cultural or less work-heavy books for evenings. For instance, while I do want to become more knowledgeable in wines, I know that’s not the first thing I want to be learning more about right after I wake up (especially while drinking coffee; that’s just weird).
At the moment, mornings are for “The Personal MBA” by Josh Kaufman and evenings for “The Future is Asian” by Parag Khanna.
3 — Find one place to keep notes of all the useful information you’d like to remember and stick to it
Whether you’re more old school and love piling up physical notebooks or hate writing and would prefer keeping things digital, you’ll NEED to have one place where you can keep track of all these useful insights. And while highlighting may work in the short term, if you end up highlighting 100+ sentences or paragraphs by the time you reach the end of your book, good luck remembering them all.
After trying different apps, I found that Evernote works best for me not just for books but for everything else I want to keep track of, including cooking recipes, tech skills, personal workouts, online resources, etc. I always have it open while I’m reading so that I can make notes of what I’m learning and come back to it later on.
What’s great about Evernote (and other productivity apps of the like) is the ability to categorize your notes. For this, I created a “Learning” notebook with sub-notebooks, including “Books”, “Programming”, “UI/UX Design” and “Google Analytics”.
Yes, it takes time. No, you may not be able to read 2 books a month consistently depending on how big they are and how much information you want to retain. But you’ll feel less pressure from having to finish them before the month ends and find more peace while reading them.
In the wise words of the Japanese monk and Zen garden designer, Shunmyo Masuno:
“Happiness is to be found in taking your time. Life requires time and effort. That is to say, when we eliminate time and effort, we eliminate life’s pleasures. Every so often, experience the flip side of convenience.”
4 — When you’re done with your book, come back to your notes and read through them one more time
Not all of the books we read are packed with the same level of insights. Some of your notes will take hours to process, while others may just be a 10-minute exercise. However long your notes may be, it’s important to take another look at them after writing them all down so you can put things into context or, in case you forgot what it means, come back to a specific part of the book and spend more time understanding it.
Building a “process” takes time. Look at the ‘76ers 🏀 (Philly fans will get that one.)
5 — When you’re done with a book, read 1–2 more on the same topic
This one’s optional based on your level of knowledge and willingness to truly master something. But think about it: it’s hard enough for the average reader to get through one book and remember what it talked about, truly. So if you read 1–2 more books on that same topic, you’ll become an expert.
It’s also always important to get different points of view so you can have a holistic perspective and build your own opinion based on everyone else’s professional experiences.
6 — Practice talking about what you’ve learned with your friends
It’s one thing to learn something new; it’s another to be able to talk about it. After all, what’s the point of knowing all the stuff you’ve been learning about if you keep it all to yourself? Not only will this help make you look more knowledgeable at your next dinner party or networking event, but it’ll help you articulate your ideas more cohesively.
If you feel this is something some of your friends might be interested in hearing more about, shoot them a text to tell them you’d like to share something interesting you’ve just learned. Get on a phone call and talk through it (a phone call!? Who calls people anymore?!).
“Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.” — Letter 6 from Seneca to Lucius Annaeus, ‘On Sharing Knowledge’
You’ll find the whole learning process even more enjoyable once you see how valuable the information you’re learning is to both yourself and to those close to you.
It can feel like an ordeal, but the end result will be far more valuable. And once you’ve built the habit of keeping track of the information you learn and talk about it to other people consistently, the sky is the limit (Note to readers: there’s a book with the same title available on Amazon for $14.95).
