I've wondered/worried about this, too. A book I promote is Make It Stick: the science of successful learning (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel, 2014), and the highlights I remember are:
Quiz yourself about what you just read, because effortful recall is effective at making long-term memories
Spaced repetition works (Leitner box, Anki, etc)
Interleaved practice feels less effective during practice but leads to quicker learning, if working on more than one thing
I don't worry about this much anymore, instead trusting myself to remember the actually important things. If it wasn't important I didn't remember it, yeah?
I find pausing while reading and holding up (in my imagination) the tidbit or idea or concept and spending aome time with it, perhaps even visualizing tying it into existing understanding. Play around with it, and relax. At the end of the day you just need to eat, hydrate, be warm enough, have a sense of purpose, love and be loved.
I love how this response starts practical and then directs the heart of the matter. I think my approach falls somewhere in-between.
When reading a paper book, I use underlining for individual sentences I want to remember and an extended bracket for a paragraph I want to remember.
Next to the underlined or bracketed text, I'll add a checkmark, star, heart, or exclamation point.
The checkmark means it's worth remembering. The star means it's really worth remembering. The heart means it's something I already know and love to see again. The exclamation point means it's funny or surprising, though I don't necessarily need to remember it.
When I finish the book, I review all the text that's been marked. This helps me remember what's meaningful to me.
Thanks for sharing your own one. I like that visual part of it a lot, I did use wavy underlines, but sometimes it goes too messy) Anyway, with these small signs I come up with a question: how often do we think in the pictures dimension of the text parts that we find appealing, smart or charged?
Indeed. Tried a few times, professional but such time-consuming.
Trying to figure out, how often do we want and need to brush upon the knowledge from the books we've read?
I find myself in a place where I have a few notes, but I barely check them and usually it tastes not as a Friday cocktail, so I'm not that enthusiastic during that time. I understand the value but without joy it doesn't work properly.
And the main questions: Do we really need to surf through a whole list of meaningful sentences and thoughts or we often seek for a specific knowledge that we find handful right now?
Quiz yourself about what you just read, because effortful recall is effective at making long-term memories
Spaced repetition works (Leitner box, Anki, etc)
Interleaved practice feels less effective during practice but leads to quicker learning, if working on more than one thing
I don't worry about this much anymore, instead trusting myself to remember the actually important things. If it wasn't important I didn't remember it, yeah?
I find pausing while reading and holding up (in my imagination) the tidbit or idea or concept and spending aome time with it, perhaps even visualizing tying it into existing understanding. Play around with it, and relax. At the end of the day you just need to eat, hydrate, be warm enough, have a sense of purpose, love and be loved.