📖 My reading technique to remember everything I read from books · The Bunker #72

What I'm going to talk about today isn't really anything new; it's something you can easily find on YouTube if you search for this same topic.

But I would like to discuss the different techniques I've tried, which ones have worked best for me, and which ones I think aren't suitable for me.

The first thing I want to mention is that these techniques really apply to everything, not just books. I would dare to say that you can apply all of this even to your university classes.

I must say that I haven't been much of a reader, honestly. I've never really found the knack or the taste for it, and I used to be one of those who said that a documentary or the movie version is much better.

And well, nowadays I still think, why should I read a book when the movie itself can provide more visual aid as a complement? The problem is that movies usually end up being significantly worse than the books. But what if they made movies that were faithful to the books, really?

Well, anyway, that's not the case of what we're here to talk about today. In this week's post, we'll discuss what reading techniques and methodologies I use to try to retain as much information as possible, considering that I'm not someone with a deeply ingrained reading habit. That is, habits and techniques from the perspective of someone who doesn't read frequently and even struggles to retain things.

Well, first of all - I see a clear difference between analog and digital, and although I must say that everything in my life is digitized and automated, when it comes to books, I prefer to use a more analog method. I like to touch the paper, smell it, take the book to different places, etc.

But what I consider most important is that it allows me to underline things.

I like to take my pencil and draw on the book.

What I have always done, even in class, is:

• Underline the most relevant things
• Summarize what I have learned/read

⏰ Analog vs. digital

I think this really depends on personal preference, and although I honestly have half of my life digitized, for certain things, I prefer analog. I like having papers, flipping through them, smelling them, and drawing on them.

Although I must admit that I also enjoy using the iPad to do exactly the same thing, and everything I underline is automatically saved in databases.

But, I must mention that the content that has stuck with me the best has always been when I had it tangibly somewhere, at least that's how it works best for me.

And why not, I like having books and accumulating them in my house.

Also, I like to recommend and lend books to people when they come over, something that's difficult if I have everything on the iPad.

🖊️ Underlining the most relevant aspects

I don't know why, and even some studies say that underlining doesn't mean anything and doesn't really have any impact, so it seems like a lie that we've all bought into.

Although, in my case, I think it does work, but for other reasons - I usually do tasks quite quickly and I'm sure I skim over many important things. The act of underlining makes me stop, reread, and store what I'm reading.

And here I've mentioned something important:

🗃️ Save what I've underlined in some database or Notion

Underlining may not have any psychological advantage, but for me, it has a fairly clear practical advantage, which is that it allows me to visually mark something important in a place where I have it.

So later, I can take the book and go directly to the areas I've marked as relevant in order to save it in Notion, and in the future, I can:

• Write content about that sentence I've saved
• Make a post for Newsletter, YouTube, Instagram…

It's very easy for me to turn it into content afterward. More practical than psychological.

But as I said, it's up to each individual how it works for them.

📋 Close with a summary

While it's true that psychologically underlining may not be useful, something that does help is summarizing - the task of summarizing all the content in 3 sentences helps me see if I really understood what I read or not.

You don't have to summarize all the content at once, but if the book has 10 chapters, it's good that when you finish each chapter, you make a small summary of each chapter, remembering what you've underlined.

So in the future when you have to refer to your reading database, you have:

• A summary for each chapter, a total of 10 chapters.
• A generic summary of the book, to quickly remember what you read
• All the relevant sentences from that book saved. It's hard for us to retain a lot of information, but it's easy for us to retain small fragments of something big. And sentences are great for that.

Furthermore, to close, making summaries, for example for an exam, will help you go through each area reviewing the content of each thing. By summarizing the information, you're actually studying.

As always, learn from others' teachings, but find your own methods.

This is what works for me, I hope it works for you too or helps you find your own methods.

Cheers, Jordi Espinosa.

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