How I Remember Everything I Read

In this video, i'm going to take you through the seven levels along the journey of trying to remember everything that we read. Hey, friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is ali. I'm a doctor based in the uk, and on this channel we explore the strategies and tools that help us live healthier, happier, more productive lives. And if you're anything like me and you're interested in personal development, lifelong learning, becoming a better thinker and all that stuff, you'll know that reading is a very important part of this. Show more

But if you're anything like me, you've read a lot of books, but you've probably forgotten the vast majority of the stuff that you've read and probably haven't applied it to your life in the way that you'd liked. A few months ago, i realized that this was a big issue for me, and so i've been actively working to try and remedy it, and so, in this video, i'm going to share what i think are the seven levels along this path of trying to remember more of the stuff that we read and apply to our lives. Show more

We start off our reading careers at level one, the muggle. This is basically where we read stuff, but we're just reading it, we're not highlighting it, we're not taking any notes. We're not really engaging with the material beyond, just passively reading it. And when we're muggles and trying to learn about a new topic like entrepreneurship or whatever, we'll end up just reading loads and loads and loads and sort of hoping we're gonna passively absorb stuff by diffusion, by osmosis, whatever, but we're not like actively using any brain power to engage with it. This is fine if we're reading fiction, but for non-fiction, and when i read non-fiction i kind of want to get some insights from it. I want to learn stuff, i'm a dumbass and therefore i just forget everything that i read. And therefore this isn't good for me- and it's probably not just me- because there is a phenomenon in memory research called the forgetting curve, which just shows that over time our memory for everything decays unless we find a way to engage with it or consolidate our memory of the thing. Show more

At some point we might realize that our muggle existence is pretty unfulfilling, and so we'll come across level two of the journey, which is the squid. Show more

And when you become a squib at level two, you're now reading stuff, but you're highlighting or underlining the things that particularly resonate with you. This is easy enough to do if you read on a kindle or you can use one of these like old school things- i don't even know what to call anymore, because who even uses this stuff. And this is what i was doing since i first got a kindle in around 2008, 2009, all the way through to 2018- when i discovered that actually there were more levels along this path. And this is fine, because highlighting stuff is kind of nice and it's kind of fun to use one of these old-fashioned antique devices. But the problem with highlighting stuff is a we actually don't remember the stuff that we highlight, and there is a mountain of evidence that shows that highlighting or underlining does nothing to actually improve our memory of the stuff. And we also run into the issue that we've got all these highlights but they're sort of hidden away inside our book or inside our kindle and we don't really have a reason to go through them. So that was me from 2008 all the way through to 2018. Those were the dark days. But then in september 2018, i reached level three, which we're calling hufflepuff, and level three hufflepuff is when you have a systematic system for reviewing your highlights. Show more

So in september 2018, i discovered this amazing service called readwise, link in the video description, and what readwise does is that it automatically connects to your kindle account and it pulls in all of the highlights you've ever highlighted from all the books that you've read, and what they do is that every day, they send you an email with five random highlights. So i started using read wise in september 2018 and i've been getting this email every day, and for the first few months, i was religiously reading this email and i found, oh well, this thing that i highlighted five years ago is now very relevant to me today and the read-wise email has surfaced it for me, which was really awesome. Show more

But over the last two years, i've kind of become less and less religious about reading my five daily things in the read-wise email. I still get it, i still open it from time to time, but it's a bit too passive for my liking. Show more

And that is when we get to level four and we're calling level four ravenclaw, because i couldn't think of anything else and i deeply apologize for playing into the stereotype. Show more

I didn't mean it. I'm work, trust me. But level four is what i talked about in my video about the magical insight logging framework, which will be linked somewhere up here, and basically this is a system whereby you automatically pull in your highlights into a central note-taking app and so we can see here. I've got my read-wise database, which has all the books and it shows all the all the highlights i've made in each one. So i can look at the books and we can see i've got 126 highlights from tools of titans, all of which are going to be in here, and it also links very nicely to the location and it opens it up in the kindle web app, if that's what i want to look at. Show more

We also have articles over here, so this is taking all my highlights from instapaper and we even have tweets. So these are tweets that have saved to read wise, that are automatically coming into notion, and we have podcasts that this is podcast air- quotes that i've taken through the app air to io again a lot more details about the system in my magical insight logging framework video, which will be linked up there, and so this is level four. This is where we've got a tool that automatically pulls in our highlights and, because i use notion for absolutely everything in my life, pretty much it's all very convenient when it's sitting there. Show more

But level four is still a little bit problematic because this is still very passive, all we're doing at this point is we're bringing in highlights and we're hoping that our future selves will at some point revisit the highlights, just because we want to. And again, i've been doing this for a few months now, but i found that inevitably other things were coming up and i was not finding the time or making the time to actively review the highlights of the stuff that i'd read in notion. And this is where we start to get into the fun territory, because now we have level 5, which is dumbledore's army, and when you're at level 5 or a member of the da, you engage with books by taking quick notes on the stuff that you've read. Show more

Now i'm going to show you how i do this in notion. So i've got this book known to database that has all of the books that i read- fiction and nonfiction- and for each of these categories- fiction and non-fiction- i've created templates that i use for my very quick book reviews, and so if i've just read a non-fiction book, i will put a non-fiction book template here. So it asked me to give the title of the book. I can select a genre, so let's say productivity, philosophy and magic, why not? And i can say the date that i finished it. Let's say that was today, and basically what this notion template does is that it creates these categories for me. So, firstly, the book in three sentences: impressions, how i discovered it, who should read it, how the book changed me and my top three quotes from the book. So this is actually very quick, and this level, level five, is what i regret not doing with everything that i've ever read, because if you can just summarize a book in three sentences, that's like a really fantastic way of actually engaging with the content and, as someone like richard feinman would say, it's a way of actively ensuring that you actually understand the concepts in the book. Show more

And so here are some notes that i took on: show your work by austin cleon. The book in three sentences. Share your thoughts and your process and your work online for free. You don't need to be an expert to share your work. Beginners can easily help other beginners. And three, by sharing your work online, you'll attract an audience of people who care about the same stuff as you do, and this can change your life. So that that was kind of my three sentence summary of the book. Then i've got impressions, where i just sort of write subjectively what i thought about the book i have. Who should read it occasionally? I have how i discovered the book, if i remember how i discovered it, and here are some notes on how the book changed me and my top three quotes. Now the point of this system is that it does take a small amount of time to actually think about, but it's not a large amount of time and like i really wish that if i'd done this for every book that i've ever read- i know i will be- i'd like today i'd be infinitely more knowledgeable about all this stuff than i am, just because i just never considered engaging with the stuff. So level five is, i think, a good sweet spot between the amount of effort it takes to do this. Ie, it doesn't take that much effort, but i think it also gives you a lot of value when you can start summarizing books in three sentences and if we're doing it for fiction. This is what the template looks like for that. So we've got a section about what it's about, how i discovered it, general thoughts and who would like it. So, again, all of these templates are linked in the video description so you can check it out and if, for some reason, you don't yet have a notion account. You should follow the link in the video description and get it for free. Notion is an absolutely amazing app that i've been using since early 2019 and it's fair to say that it's probably changed my life. I organized my entire life around it. Show more

I organized my whole business. I used it to take notes in medical school and to prepare for my medical exams, used to track my workouts. I use it to write book reviews. I use it to script all my videos and to work with my team. It's just got so many different use cases and i've got tons of videos about notion that i'll be linked in the playlist over there. And, best of all, it is completely free. Show more

You only pay if you're going for one of the team plans or if you need like additional bonus features, but most people can use notion completely free of charge, basically for as long as you want. So hit the link in the video description if you haven't got a notion account, for whatever reason, and if you do, there'll be a link to my kind of booknotes template thingy so you can duplicate that into your own notion workspace and then you can start taking notes from books, which will kind of get you to level five. But yeah, thanks notion for sponsoring this video. Let's now move on to level six. Now this is where we start to get really interesting, because level six is the order of the phoenix and the only difference between level five and level six is that in level six you're still doing all of this stuff. Show more

You're still writing kind of book in three sentences, impressions how it changed your life, but we also have a section for a summary and notes on the book itself. So what i'm trying to do with all of the books that have particularly resonated with me over the years- books that i would break five stars or books that i think have changed my life- what i'm doing is i'm going through them again and i'm writing literature notes. I'm sort of creating my own mini summary of the book, but i'm focusing on the points that have particularly resonated with me or points that i found particularly interesting or insightful or surprising, and i think this is just a really great way of engaging with the book. But it does take absolutely ages. So, for example, the other day it was one o'clock in the morning and i was in bed and i couldn't sleep. So i got up my ipad pro, i switched everything to dark mode and i had kindle on one side of the screen and notion on the other side of the screen and i was taking literature notes from the e-myth revisited, which is a book about how to kind of build a small successful business. I first read, i think, in july 2019, and that book completely blew my mind, and so i was revisiting it and relearning some of the lessons from it, and as i was doing that, i was taking my literature notes. Show more

I was sort of summarizing bits in my own notes, and although it took absolutely ages- and i still haven't finished it, i'm still only halfway through the book. It's actually giving me a lot of new insights, because it's so rare to find a book that's genuinely sort of actually life-changing, and so when you do, like now, when i do, i'm gonna make a point that i'm gonna write my own summary of this book so that i can really consolidate the points. For me, there's a few things to keep in mind about this. Show more

So, firstly, there's a very good book called how to take smart notes by sanki orange, and i've actually done my own summary of this. Yeah, here's a summary that i've done using the toggle feature in notion, where i've basically written like a whole load of stuff and even drawn my own diagrams and tables and things about. Oh my goodness, there's quite a lot of stuff here. How many words is this? This summary, plus some of the highlights, is 6851 words. So i've spent a very long time taking book, taking notes from this meta book called how to take smart notes, but this is really good, and this book talks about the zettel casten method of note-taking, which is kind of what inspired this video, and sort of one level of this is, as you're reading stuff, you're taking literature notes. Show more

But the idea of literature notes, like these summaries that we're making for ourselves, is that we want to avoid copying and pasting quotes from the book. We want to actively try and rephrase things in our own words just to make sure that we understand the concepts. And the other benefit of taking your own book notes is that if you are interested in sharing your work online, you can actually publish your book notes. Show more

The first person i saw do this was derek sivers, who i've been following since 2016 and who featured in a deep dive on this channel- very kindly of him- and he's basically been taking these detailed notes on every book that he's read and he's got like hundreds of these on his website at sivirrs- again, that'll be linked in the video description- and also my new friend, natalia, who again was featured on deep dive, has this amazing website. Show more

His blog generates six figures a year for him in revenue, maybe even more than that- and a big part of his most popular posts are his summaries, notes and reviews from books that he's read. So this is kind of the level where i want to get to, where you know, in the future. On my website, aliabdullcom- forward slash booknotes, you'll find all of these summaries of books and i think this is just like an incredible resource and if anyone's considering starting a personal blog or a website or a youtube channel, taking notes from books is such a big value ad because a lot of people don't have time to read or think they don't have time to read, and there are also so many good books out there that if you can act as the curator- something you know, someone like nat or derek or what i'm trying to do- if you can curate the best books you know- anti-fragile binder scene talib, for example- he's got his notes on here. Show more

He's got a podcast episode about this. This is such good content and this is the sort of stuff that really kind of helps you build your own brand as a sharer, as an educator, and it's just a pretty fun thing to do. So this is where i'm kind of aiming with level six. But then we come to level seven, which is dumbledore himself, and this is where we're really going full ham on the settle casting method of note taking. Show more

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This is sort of where i'm hoping to go eventually. I've only really done it for a handful of books, but every time i've done it i found the exercise to be quite useful, and the idea behind this is that once we've taken our literature notes about the book, what we're going to do is we're going to turn them into permanent notes, as in the zetterle casten method or in evergreen notes, as andy matashak, who is this also kind of note taking guru on the internet. Show more

That is sort of the vibe. I prefer the phrase evergreen notes because i think it sounds a bit better, and so, for example, i have got this database on again on notion of evergreen notes, and the idea behind evergreen notes is that they're notes on topics that you find interesting or that particularly resonate with you, but they are atomic notes in their own right, like, the note is self-contained and very heavily linked to the other notes you've got in your system and the slit box again. Show more

Sanki irons talks about this in how to take smart notes. This is, i think, zettel casten translates to slip box. It was like a method that this german called lumen used to use back in the day and he churned out like loads and loads and loads of manuscripts and publications and books, because he had the systematic way of taking notes from the stuff that he read. And so, for example, what i've got is i've got these different sections: life, happiness, meaning, work, reading, luck, improvement, relationships, marriage, helping people, decision making, money, lifestyle, writing, etc. Etc. So a lot like all of these are topics that i'm interested in and as i read stuff in books, articles, podcasts, tweets, whatever, what i'm trying to do slowly, very slowly over time, is turn these into evergreen notes and then having like this index for evergreen notes. So, for example, you know the four important things in life. What's in this one? This is money, love, relationships, mental health, wellbeing, happiness and physical health, and i found this from a episode of the samantha ryan podcast that naval was on, and so i turned it into an evergreen note. I linked to the source and notion now has backlinks and so, for example, if i want, i can see what links to this page. So the idea money leads to happiness links to this page. So that is related to the note and we we can see, using the backlinks, how this all kind of relates together. This system, this kind of level seven, zettel, casten, slip box, evergreen notes, double door, note taking, whatever you want to call this system- this is a little bit niche and i'm not entirely sold on the power of it. Yet i can see from reading how to take smart notes and from reading the work of other people on the internet who have done this sort of thing. Show more

People say it's really useful. I like me personally, i'm very slowly starting to head in this direction, but i don't think i've given it enough time or stuck with it for long enough to actually be able to comment on whether it's actually helped me. It is kind of nice in a way, because it helps you consolidate your thinking on all sorts of different subjects, especially if you have a lot of interest. It can be kind of hard to keep track of all the stuff that you've read, but this is one layer of abstraction above the things that you read, figuring out a way to consolidate the insights from them, for example. Show more

So, coming full circle, if i were to give advice to my previous self, i would say that it's really, really useful to be at least at level five of the system. It is very, very easy to get to level five. Basically, you get to level four by following the magical insight logging framework linked up here, and then, for level five, all you have to do is- you can use my notion template if you want, but you don't have to- all you have to do is just write a summary of the book in three sentences- three, because it forces you to be concise and it doesn't take very long- and just write a few words about what you thought about the book. You know, this is the stuff that we used to do when we were in primary school. Show more

The teachers would say: write a book review of this, this book that you read, and again, like if i could give those a single piece of advice to myself when i was like 12, i would say, look, i'll leave me. You need to just write summaries in three sentences of all the books you've read and just write your thoughts on them, because in 10 years time, in 20 years time, you're going to be so incredibly grateful that you've got this treasure trove of knowledge inside a system other than your brain, because you're a dumbass and you're going to forget everything that you read. Otherwise, if you like this idea and you haven't yet seen the video about the magical insight logging framework with this, which is this automatic way of capturing highlights from books, articles, podcasts and tweets, then click the video over here. That will be the video about the magical insight logging framework. Thank you so much for watching. Do check out my notion template in the video description and hopefully i'll see you in the next video. Show more

Bye. Show more