At university, I had to write an essay (2 thousands words or so) every week or two on the subject we were currently studying. Then I had to talk about them for an hour or so with someone far better informed on the topic than me. I retained far, far more about subjects by doing this than I did about subjects which I just read about or went to lectures on: even though a lot of time was used in apparently less optimal ways (skimming for things to quote, writing the actual essays to be elegant as well as make the relevant arguments etc.)
As a caveat to this, I should say that the subject was often very subjective (I wasn't embedding fundamental complex truths, more taking sides on debates: the most rigorous it got was analytic philosophy and science-being-talked-about-by-a-humanities-student), and that I really enjoy those sort of arguments, so I might be predisposed towards them.
For me, this way of learning things is a bit like realising that I can be incredibly creative (in the sense of making up arguments and crystallising my thoughts) in a test situation: I know it works, but I find it very difficult to force myself into the artificial situation of having to do it. If I need to in the future for some reason, I think I'd need to find a buddy or something to provide pre-commitment.
Then I had to talk about them for an hour or so with someone far better informed on the topic than me. I retained far, far more about subjects by doing this than I did about subjects which I just read about or went to lectures on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem comes to mind.
I'm looking to build up a “tool-box” of strategies/techniques/habits for reading non-fiction effectively and efficiently. I'm looking for methods to help me retain concepts, locate main ideas, make connections, etc.
If anyone has posted about this topic previously, please link to the post.
Please point to relevant resources that have worked for you; additionally please describe skills/systems that you've developed personally.
An example of a useful comment I got posting in an open thread, from Jayson_Virissimo
“As I read textbooks, I summarize the most important concepts (along with doing the exercises, if there are any) and write them in a notebook and then later (less than a week) enter the notes into Anki as cloze-delete flashcards. I don't have an objective measure of retention, but I believe that it has vastly improved relative to when I would simply read the book.”
Here is an example of an existing resource that I found useful:http://violentmetaphors.com/2013/08/25/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper-2/
Here are some questions/prompts that may spur your thinking:
Describe the setting where you read.
Do you schedule reading time? How?
How do you decide what to read next?
Do you write notes by hand, on a computer?
Do you wear noise-canceling headphones?
Do you skim texts?
Do you reread texts?
How often do you reread “foundational” texts, or texts that shifted your paradigm?
How often do you decide not to finish a book?
I may do a series of posts on this in discussion, and if other users find it interesting/useful I may eventually make it into a post for the main page.