Reading Comprehension: How to Retain More of Every Book You Read

An idea is useful only if we can find it when we need it, and the best way for saving ideas is to keep notes of what we read, using Deepstash of course!

Important messages, insights and points need to be saved and reread, as it is the only way they will be in your long-term memory. Otherwise, most of the stuff we read is forgotten the next day.

A book is not an island, but a ‘knowledge tree’ with branches that can be linked to other knowledge trees, forming a connection beyond what the book offers us. When we read something that reminds us of something else, we get a spark that connects to other ideas, forming new fractal insights that are unique to our mind.

One can make use of Deepstash and summarize a book using the Feynman note-taking technique. Write a few paragraphs about the book as if you are explaining it to someone who has not heard about it.

Explaining an idea to a beginner is the best way to learn and also reveals the gaps in our thinking.

Reading just one book and forming a belief system is plain stupidity. A book is not a commandment by itself but something that opens up our mind towards new ways of thinking. A mind needs to be subjected to diverse books, otherwise, it forms a personal belief system based on little or no experience.

Even one subject has to be seen by the lens of various authors to be understood.

Anything worth reading is worth reading twice, or even again and again. Just like a great song sounds better after you have listened to it a few times, a great book will give you new insights every time you read it. You will find older passages and ideas relevant to you which were ignored when you first read the book. This is because you would be at a different point in your life.

Returning to great ideas cements it in our minds.