Archival republish. From this blog’s Hakyll era; lightly copyedited.
I’ve been told the rate and retention I have while reading is abnormal to say the least. Others have been interested in trying my reading methodology and seeing if it would help them comprehend and retain more of what they read. As a result, I’ve been making an attempt to codify how I read so that others can try it for themselves.
Since college I’ve always read around five to ten books concurrently. Generally, this is received with awe and intrigue about how I’m able to keep them separate or retain any number of them let alone one.
Over the years I’ve found that reducing the amount of information consumed on a topic in a given sitting increases the ability to let that knowledge settle into long-term memory (references). Thus, one of the ways to increase concurrency is to read a section or chapter of one book and then read a section or chapter of the next and repeat until done reading for the session.
Simply put—I couple short reading bursts of an individual book with practised recall before continuing a book I read in a previous session. For example, in one session I might read “Type-Driven Development with Idris”, “The Thirteen Books of the Elements”, and “Abstract Algebra”. In my next reading session, I would take a moment before starting to recall the section or chapter I previously read of “Type-Driven Development with Idris”. Then I would read the next section or chapter before doing the same recall and reading of “The Thirteen Books of the Elements”.
By re-establishing reading context without re-reading the previous section before continuing a book, I ensure that I can keep the contents of a book relevant to some mnemonic (e.g., author, title, or cover).
The second idiosyncrasy to my methodology is the way I sort my books and order my reading. I sort books I am currently reading by a quality I’ve been calling readability. Loosely, readability is a multiple of the approximate word density, age (time since added to the reading list), and completion. This sorts my reading stack by how quickly I will finish books. I add age to ensure that books aren’t stuck at the bottom of the stack forever.
Formally, I currently define readability as:
(Area of Page * Pages Remaining) / (Font Size * Completion Percentage * Age)I hope this method provides an alternative mindset for reading and allows more people to read more of the things they want to. If you have any feedback on the method or would like to share your experience, please reach out to me on one of my various communication channels. The easiest would probably be to start a small discussion on Twitter and escalate as necessary.