#101 | How to Remember More from Books
A collection of the best hidden gems, mental models, and frameworks from the world’s top thinkers; to help you become 1% better and live a happier life ❤️
Hello curious minds 🧠
What’s the point of reading lots of books if you don’t remember most of it?
Is there a way for us to remember everything we read?
Yes and no.
No because our brains are amazing at making new ideas but not so great at remembering things.
Yes because we have tools and systems that can help us remember more; the simplest way to remember more is to write down important stuff.
The only problem is, over time, our notes can get messy, which introduces the problem of discoverability. Plus, we might not understand our notes in the future since we no longer have the context that originally inspired those notes, introducing the problem of understanding.
We need a knowledge management system to help us organise everything we learn; to help us discover the right information and understand them when we need them in the future.
🚀 If you are new here…
Hi, I’m Ryan 👋🏼 I am passionate about lifestyle gamification 🎮 and I am obsesssssssss with learning things that can help me live a happy and fulfilling life.And so, with The Limitless Playbook newsletter, I will share with you 1 actionable idea from the world's top thinkers every Sunday 🎯
So visit us weekly for highly actionable insights :)
✍🏻 The 4 levels of note-taking
After dedicating countless hours of research, I've found a system that works well for me. This is the method I've been using to make notes from the books I've read, and it has four distinct levels:
Highlights
Organise
Synthesise
Connection
The first two levels focus on individual books, while the latter two emphasise on creation and connection.
In this week’s newsletter, let’s dive into the foundational levels - the first two - and explore how to answer a crucial question:
How do you remember what you've read with a single book?
📝 Level 1: Highlights
The first level… the foundation… highlights.
This is where most people are.
You read something important and you highlight it.
Nice and simple.
Here are some of my highlights for the book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days.
Most people stop at this level.
Highlights are good, but as you can see from my examples, they're not great for understanding and really bad for finding things later because we have bits of highlights all over the chapters.
Starting with highlights is okay, but it's not enough.
To make it easier to find things later, we need to do more.
🗄 Level 2: Organise
Think of your highlights as scattered puzzle pieces.
Now, let's put those puzzle pieces together in a way that sticks in your memory.
I've got two favourite ways to do this.
First, there's the bottom-up approach. Summarise each chapter, then bring it all together with the overarching idea from the whole book, mentioning each chapter. This way, when I revisit my notes in the future, I can quickly recap the key takeaways and take action.
The second way is making a cheat sheet for easy use or creating my own story to explain the idea quickly to my future self.
Now, let's see how it looks once I've organised it, building on the highlight examples above:
Remember, it's not just about reading; it's about remembering and doing cool stuff with what you learn. Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter where I'll introduce you to even more fun levels — synthesise and connection! 🚀
🎉 ToSummarise - a library of “Level 2: Organise”
Want more examples of “Level 2: Organise”?
A big shoutout to our friends over at ToSummarise newsletter, who shares many detailed non-fiction book summaries such as Atomic Habits, Thinking in Bets, Never Split the Difference, and more! 📚
Recently, I finished reading the Feel-Good Productivity book by Ali Abdaal, and ToSummarise perfectly showcase the “Level 2: Organise” of the book. Check it out here!
Happy reading, everyone! 📖✨
📚 This week, I finished reading…
Have interesting gems you want to share with me and others? Share it by replying to this email and I will include it in the next gift box :)
With love,
Ryan O. 🎮
😈 Connect with me on:
🎬 YouTube, 🐦 Twitter, 👨🏻💻 LinkedIn, 🌍 Personal Website, and 📸 Instagram