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Ever had the experience of reading a book and not feeling like you’re learning anything useful? What about realizing a week later you don’t even remember what the book was about?

What’s the use in reading if you don’t understand and don’t remember what you read?

You’re not alone… many people have difficulties fully comprehending and remembering written material. Fortunately, it’s easy to improve your reading comprehension and retention. Here are three simple techniques to get you started…

1. WHY am I reading this?
2. WHAT might I need this information for?
 
 

These questions are immensely important for two reasons:

 

First, asking why you’re choosing to read a particular piece of material helps determine your purpose: what you ultimately want to accomplish by spending your time reading. Setting your purpose is the best way to factor in the opportunity cost of your time and attention… if you don’t believe what you’re about to read will be useful, you can choose to do something different.

 

Second, asking why you might need this information primes your brain to make connections between what you’re reading and what you want to achieve. Our minds work primarily via pattern recognition – by reminding yourself of your areas of responsibility before you read, you’ll make many more connections than you would otherwise. (Be sure to keep a notebook and pen close at hand to capture your thoughts and ideas without breaking the flow of your reading.)

What do you think? Could the success of 'Unschooling' be largely due to the very effect described in the current article?

I agree that anticipation of a discussion will also make your preparation for it more effective

After some time you will have a reasonably presentable paper. More than that, though, you will actually understand the issues: how the various ideas in the field fit together, why you really disagree with some of the papers you've read, and perhaps even what your own take on it is. It's hard work! But writing is what makes the difference. If you just read a lot you can come away with the misapprehension that you understand the field, when in reality you just know a lot about what people have written.

Trying to remember what you’ve just studied, then writing it down, may be a surprisingly good way to learn.

In a study published January 21 in Science, researchers asked 200 college students to spend five minutes reading a short passage about a scientific subject. Afterwards, they were either told to re-read it several times, as if cramming for a test; make “concept maps” of the material; or spend 10 minutes writing a free-form essay about the passage.

One week later, the students were given short-answer tests on what they remembered, and asked to draw logical conclusions from those facts. Students who originally wrote essays performed best. Next came the crammers, then the concept mappers.

A couple of weeks ago, I learned a great deal about writing fiction with characters of a different gender or race than you. I never set out to, but I do NaNoWriMo each year, and one of the most active posts on their forum was about "writing the other." It fascinated me, so I followed it, and learned something for it. This, to me, is what lifelong learning looks like.

As for choosing a topic, that's entirely up to your personal interests. There are no shortages of posts on Hacker News listing books the readers are interested in. Search Hacker News for "good books", go through one or more of the lists, and choose one (or more) of the books that sound interesting to you, and get started.