Stop Forgetting What You Read, Do This
Why do we struggle with information? Because our brain is a forgetting machine. Here I will tell you how you can stop forgetting information.
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I remember when I started reading one book per week.
I was influenced by many people encouraging me to read a lot, saying that it would change my life.
It did! But I had one huge issue: I forgot almost everything I read.
Sometimes I never felt like I truly learned something after finishing a book, even if I enjoyed it.
But my life had a radical change when I started taking notes.
Here I will tell you WHY you struggle with this, and how you can stop forgetting any type of information.
Let’s go!
Our Brain is a Forgetting Machine
The answer to why you can’t remember most of what you read is because of how the brain works.
You may think that most of your memories are pretty accurate with precise detail but …
Ask yourself:
What Did You Do on Friday 2 Weeks ago at 3pm?
Try to remember it well, what were the details of that memory?
Perhaps that day was emotionally intense for you: either happy or sad. In those situations, you may remember the details pretty well.
But if you’re struggling to remember the details of that moment, that’s completely okay. It’s normal.
Because your brain is a forgetting machine.
Storing all our memories vividly and with great detail it’s computationally impossible for our brains.
That’s why you can’t remember the lecture, book, or whatever. Our brain struggles with a lot of information, so it only processes and keeps a tiny percentage of it.
No matter how much you try to devour the information, you will not learn it. And if you do it in a short time, you will probably forget it in a long time.
If you’re interested in the topic, I did a brief review of a book called “The Forgetting Machine” by Rodrigo Quian Quiroga in this article:
Make Your Brain’s Life Easier With the Magical Recipe: Taking Notes
Okay, we learned that our brain struggles with a lot of information. You’re not dumb, it is just biology!
You’re pretty smart! I’m sure about it. So let’s try to make our brain’s life easier, okay?
But how?
Well, by taking notes.
Our brain LOVES notes. It summarizes a lot of information in just a few words and sentences.
Imagine you read a book of 300 pages but you didn’t summarize it, just highlighted it. You will forget what you read, that’s normal.
But when you go back to the highlights, you will still see a lot of info. Also, you will see words that are not yours, making it harder to learn.
That’s why taking notes make it easier to process, and therefore to learn.
Learning How to Take Notes: The 3 Sentences Strategy
Learning to write notes takes practice, and with time you will be a pro in summarizing information, I promise you.
Learning how to take notes gave me an agile way to process information in all my contexts, and it will to you.
By summarizing information, you will also rapidly learn your lectures, books, and papers. You will also store your ideas and relevant information.
So one thing that I like to do when taking notes is to try to summarize something in just 3 sentences.
The next time you read a book or book chapter, attend a lecture, or watch an interesting YouTube Video, try to summarize it in 3 sentences with your own words.
Try to write it simply, so another person can understand it as well. This will make you understand what you are writing, and not simply copying pasting what the book or the information says (this is the problem with highlighting everything and then studying it).
Another tip: There are many software like Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, and more. I will not cover them here, but it will be a matter of another post!
Build a Second Brain: a Place Where You Can Go Back to Remember
In this article, I focused a lot on the idea of how our brains process, store, and remember information.
Even when we’re not reading or studying, there is a lot of information out there. You open your social media and suddenly receive a massive tons of information (messages, news, etc).
Poor brain! Does it feel overwhelmed? It does.
If you start writing and summarizing using the 3 Sentences Strategy and storing it on paper or Software, you will start creating a place where you can go back and remember what you studied.
This place is your second brain, and I think it is one of the most powerful personal philosophies of the XXI century.
And if you’re starting it right now, Congratulations! I’m proud of you!
Conclusion
We learned that our brain is a forgetting machine that struggles with a lot of information.
We then learned that our brain LOVES notes, as they process and summarize information easily.
Finally, using the 3 sentence strategy, we can start writing down our notes, and slowly creating a place where you can go back to remember valuable information: your second brain.
In the next articles, I will write more about this second brain and how I use it in my daily life, so stay tuned!
Thanks for reading! Hope you have a Wonderful Day!
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Axel