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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.)

Effective non-fiction reading does NOT start with picking up the book. You can multiply your reading effectiveness by taking a few minutes before you start reading to decide why you’re bothering to read in the first place. I call this technique “Purpose-Setting.”

Purpose-Setting is the act of deciding what you want to learn by reading this material. By figuring out what information would help you, what questions you want answered, and how you intend to apply the material, you’ll make it much easier to recognize useful information when you find it.

I’ve found the best way to purpose-set is to write down 8-10 questions on an index card or in a notebook before opening the book. This effectively programs your brain to look for the information you’re trying to find – a very important concept called “Priming.”

I believe this is the future of digital publishing. Learn from open source. The idea of content lock down just makes no sense. Paper books don’t have DRM. You can share them, write on them, cut bits out for your scrapbook and so on. But imagine if you could do all that digitally…

Why shouldn’t books be a little more like Wikipedia and a bit less like a copy-protected CD?

It might seem like the editable, annotable, shareable book is a pirate’s charter, but publishers have little choice but to adapt.