As a philosophy major I spent a lot of time reading… I spent less time retaining. I quickly learnt that I spent less time reading to retain than I did when I read to get it over with. It is a skill that must be continually practiced and over time honed.
The key is to read slowly. If you do not take something out of each paragraph your saying the author wrote it for no reason… s/he most certainly did not, go back and reread the paragraph. If there is still nothing of note try going back a few paragraphs. If you still find nothing of note then it is safe to say at very least, the author was not writing toward your goals, it is safe to move on.
Soon you will begin to assume that you missed something and make a natural practice of reading everything twice. This is a good practice and the following assumes your doing it. Eventually I’m sure we are all capable of moving past this twice over, but no necessarily to our benefit.
It is not necessary, and certainly not always possible, but one of the best places to take notes is in the text. This of course assumes you own the work and therefore have a right to write your thoughts within it.
After your first reading your should be able to underline KEY phrases. Less is more. A lot of beginners will end up with an entire page underlined. This form of annotation is meant to draw your eye to key idea’s. Not to tell you what is going on.
Next I like to draw an up side down L such that it points to the start of important information and ends at the informations end. This hash should contain the above underlined phrases within itself. This mark should not be so much that it catches your eye, only that once your focused you know where the key ideas start and end when you go back to read it at later dates.
Jot down key phrases next to each hash you placed or really anywhere along the page. In my experience this is so valuable it separates a well annotated work from a work devoid of annotation.
The over all idea is this. You have read the entire work twice, hopefully in proper time allotments so as to maximize retention. You have underlined to catch your eye. You have ‘hashed’ to save time in re-clarification. And you have giving your own synopsis, so that upon revisiting you know your thoughts from the previous reading. And all of it together presents you with a organized non-obtrusive page for further reading.
This is not speed reading, this is smart reading. Best used on books where the knowledge within is something YOU care about. Otherwise, your likely not to spend so much time to understand what is written within.
