How To Remember Everything You Read

If you read a lot of books, you might be having the issue that I have, which is “How the hell do we remember everything that we read?” Now, that’s a really good question because readers often struggle to remember what they read after a period of time. Before getting into the real motive of this article, let’s discuss why is it actually important to remember whatever you are reading.

There are few things guaranteed to improve your professional and personal lives, one of the most integral of them being ‘reading more’. Reading has been the ‘secret’ to so many peoples’ success, from Bill Gates who reads 50 books a year to Elon Musk who claims to have read 10+ hours a day when he was younger (including the entire Encyclopedia Britannica when he was just 9!)

Just reading more won’t do you any good if you don’t remember what you’ve read. The problem is, your brain can’t store everything and so it has to make decisions about what’s important and will need to be used later. We should try to remember the things that we read so that we can use that information later on and not waste time reading the entire book or manuscript again. This is really crucial when it comes to the situation when you are in a time constraint to deliver to your client.

The foremost thing you should be doing is finding books or reading material that will be required in your future pursuits. Finding the right reading material is also an art and requires practice. After you find the correct reading material, read it thoroughly, and then comes the part of remembering whatever you have read. Here are 6 tips in under 6 minutes of reading time to help you with that one.

Enjoy!

Tip 1: Highlights

Make highlights if you read books on Kindle. You can highlight anything which you think is important while reading the book and when you want to revisit the book, you can just look at all your highlights rather than re-reading the whole book. This is a really good technique to save time as well as remember things faster.

Learn more about Kindle highlights and insightful information on this topic.

Tip 2: Download the Readwise app

Readwise is a great app that pulls in all of your highlights from Kindle and then every morning, it’ll email you five random highlights which you have marked. These email refreshers work like a charm when you want to remember important points from the books you are currently reading.

Learn more on how to use Readwise to make the most use out of your highlights

If you don’t own a Kindle, I would highly recommend you buy one. There are some really good benefits of reading books on Kindle instead of physical books. For example, you can highlight the important points for future reference. It will also relieve you of the need to carry physical books while traveling, which honestly speaking, can be a source of great inconvenience.

You can buy your Kindle using the following links:

Kindle 10th Gen (Amazon Affiliate link)

Kindle Paperwhite (Amazon Affiliate link)

Tip 3: Write book reviews

Write a review for the book you’ve just read, on Amazon or Goodreads. This will help you recapitulate and recollect most of the important stuff you have encountered while reading that particular book. Writing those points down in the form of a review will also improve your writing skills. Most importantly, it will help you remember the stuff which resonated within you.

Here’s an explanatory video on how to write effective book reviews.

You can even compile some of your reviews in the form of a Medium article and gain some extra money. There are some publications on Medium which are specifically focused on book reviews and ratings. Post your review compilations in these publications to grow your audience as well.

Here’s a list of publications that publish book reviews.

Learn more about writing book reviews.

Tip 4: Write summaries

Writing summaries is also a great practice that helps you to remember whatever you have read. Summaries can be short paragraphs or long detailed ones, it's up to you whichever you prefer. If you ask me, I would recommend you write longer summaries because you can cover more points and, thereby, remember a greater amount of information. But, it takes a lot of time to gather all the important stuff from the book and present them in the form of a long summary. In case you have time constraints, then you can definitely go for the shorter forms of summaries.

Here’s a step-by-step explanatory video on how to write book summaries.

Personally, I like to write summaries as a series of bullet points. It’s a great way of adding value to other people by posting the points on social media and building my audience as well.

Learn more about writing effective book summaries.

Tip 5: Make Mental Links

Whenever you read anything, always try to find ways to link the information you are currently reading to the things you have already read in some other place. Making mental links is a great method to remember related things at once without putting much effort because when we link new stuff to the things that we already know, we’re far more likely to remember them.

Another technique related to making mental links could be mind mapping. It is a method in which you write down a central idea and expand around it as you discover new information related to the idea along the way. This method could take a long time to inculcate but it is definitely worth the effort.

Here’s an article on how to create mind maps with video tutorials.

Learn more about making mental links and mind mapping for more effective reading.

Tip 6: Focus on having fun

Yes! You read it right! Have fun while reading.

If you’re reading a book but you’re not enjoying it, simply close the book and read something else which interests you. We’re far more likely to remember the stuff that we read when we’re enjoying and interested in the topic. This acts as an organic technique to remember things faster and more easily.

So, that’s it from this article. Hope you found the tips helpful. Do try to inculcate these techniques in your daily routine and you will definitely observe improvement in the way you read and remember things.

Thank you for reading till the end!

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