| It varies, but one big thing I do goes as follows: 1. Read the book, taking notes on a wiki page dedicated to that specific book (I self-host a Mediawiki install for stuff like this). In this first pass, I tend to take really detailed notes, at times practically transcribing large portions of the text. 2. Re-read these notes a couple of times. Add hyperlinks to related material, read related material, etc. I may also edit the notes to reflect better understanding, or just to fix typos and suchlike. 3. Start a new page called "<Book Name> Synthesis". In here I rewrite my notes, but very specifically not direct transcription. I write what I think about the topic, based on my reading(s) above. 4. Re-read the notes from (3) above every now and then. Possibly editing for clarification or whatever as I go. 5. At some point I may do a synthesis page that synthesizes my thoughts from multiple related books on a similar theme or topic. So yeah, that's a lot of work and it doesn't scale to being done for every book I read, not even close. But it's what I do when I really want to focus in on something specific and really do an intensive deep-dive. The other thing I will sometimes do is make an Anki deck from the book I'm reading, and then review those periodically. Outside of that: if it's a programming book, I usually code up the examples / exercises, and then depending on what it is I may extend myself to push and do things beyond the provided examples / exercises (like a book on a new programming language I'm just learning, for example). For a book on something related to electronics, I may well assemble and test circuits on a breadboard, take measurements with the oscilloscope / spectrum analyzer / etc... And so on. What tangible artifacts come out of reading a book really depends on the book. I might even be reading a book on "Foraging for Wild Edible Plants" and the tangible outcome might be tonight's dinner. shrug |