How To Read Books Effectively
During summer students are be occupied with different activities. But I am sure that whatever you do, in your free time you will devote yourself to reading books. During the summer you can read many books, however, reading will make no sense if you forget what you have read. So that every book you read remains in your memory, I offer you some tips on how to keep new facts in your head.
First of all, we need to understand how memory works. Memorization occurs in at least two ways.
The first is emotions. Having found out an interesting fact in a book, having discovered an interesting thought - you experience a vivid emotion - interest. After reading an idea that you thought before, you are delighted. After reading what you disagree with, you feel discontent.
Remember any moment from the book that you read last - most likely, this moment is associated with a certain emotion.
However, it is not enough just to experience an emotion to remember a fact. Often we remember that we experienced some kind of emotion from the book, but we cannot remember what idea it was associated with. This can lead to the fact that we will associate the book with our emotion, but forget what caused it. To prevent this from happening, we must know the following factor affecting the storage of information.
Reiteration. A huge amount of all kinds of information enters our brain daily. Remember your last trip to a grocery. I am sure you have some kind of memory left in your head about this: some kind of person, product, discount... In other words, useless rubbish that your brain for some reason remembered. But this piece of memory could be filled with something important! It’s a pity that you can’t tell the brain what to remember. Or can it be controlled?
In the long run, our brain erases about 90% of all information received daily. Basically, only events that have caused some emotions remain - we subconsciously remember unusual precedents in order to be more dexterous in a similar situation in the future. But the periodic repetition of the same information leads to its long-term storage. More expensive than emotions, but this method gives us the opportunity to memorize information selectively.
How is it most rational to repeat the information of a book? Is it really necessary to re-read the whole volume?
Of course not. There are two ways.
The first is to paste color stickers on that line in the book where the thought you are interested in is located. After reading the book, it will be a hedgehog of stickers. Put the book on the shelf, and after a couple of days, weeks or months (depending on how important this information is to you) re-read only the places where the stickers are glued. And after another period of time - re-read it again.
The second way is to write thoughts in a notebook. After reading the book, you will have an abridged version of it in handwritten form. It should also be re-read at least a few times.
I hope the tips will help you spend your summer more productively.
Tips by
Ivan Voznesensky