How I remember everything I read (How to Read Better)

What's up guys, Clark here. Welcome to my home library. I want to make this video for you because I used to believe that I wasn't good at reading. I thought I would just get distracted or I would read a book and not retain it. And then one day I'm like, what am I reading for? And I realized this, it's not about consuming the most. It's not about what you read. It's about what you keep. You can read a hundred books and retain nothing from it and just be wasting your time. Or you can read a couple books and really get the most out of them. They stick with you forever. So what's the difference? Well, it's how you approach reading. And over the years, reading 300 nonfiction books. Plus, I've kind of developed some unorthodox tips that I wanted to put in this video and pass along to you. Because I think they can really help you not just read more, but retain and get the most out of your investments in yourself. It's two parts for you. Part 1, this is reading, mining for the gold nuggets that are going to change your life in a book. Part 2, this is synthesizing, taking what's in there, boiling it down so you can retain it. Very first tip I want to give you is super underrated. You should only be reading what's hyper relevant to your situation or your problem right now. That's it. Example, you're actively trying to break a bad habit. Reading a book on habits is a super good idea. Because now you can immediately use what's in there. But on the other hand, if you're not planning on starting a business, you probably can skip all the business advice out there. Not the best use of your time. And just because someone recommended it to you doesn't mean it's relevant to you and you should read it. Being selective with what you read is so important. I can't underscore this enough. Because here's the real like deep reason you need to be selective, especially with self-help or nonfiction. They're essentially prescribing advice to you. Every time you get a piece of advice given to you, you store it in the back of your mind as almost a little box of am I doing that or not? And it doesn't seem like a lot at first. But over the course of a year or two, you can read a dozen or so books. They're all going to have 10 or 12 things that you should do to quote unquote change your life. So now you have like 140 boxes that you're either checking yes or no on. And the ones that you check no on, subconsciously you feel guilty. That you're not doing it. And in that way, self-help, self-improvement and things that you are reading and consuming to feel better can start making you feel guilty. And you can use as ammunition on yourself. I'm bad for not doing that. I'm lazy. I'm not progressing. And that is the opposite goal. Okay, so you eliminate that when you go in with the intention. What do I need to be reading right now for my current situation? Is that relevant to me? Tip number two. This is a mistake. Most people read and I made it myself. And this one is going to save you tons of time and potentially hundreds and hundreds of pages of reading fluff. I want to tell you about a pattern. And once you see it, you literally can't unsee it. You've been warned. Most mainstream self-help books have three sections. Part 1, part 2, part 3. Part 1 is usually why you bought the book. It's your problem. Part 2. It tells you why it's a problem for you. Part 3. It teaches you how to fix it. That's it. Part 1, part 2, part 3. That's like 80% of bestsellers. They follow that same formula. Why? What? How? So most people, they open a book and they start on part 1. And they read it word for word. And then they kind of get tired a little bit or the book loses interest. And by part 2 or 3, they don't even make it there. They jump ship. They go to the next book and they're like, yeah, that thing didn't grab me. I didn't get much out of it. Repeat that two dozen times. And that's how a lot of people read books. That's how I did and used to before I did this tip. This tip is treating books like a choose-your-own-adventure guide. Another sub tip here is not reading word for word. So if a section is not grabbing you, it's totally fine to move on and go to the next one. Yes, there's exceptions with books that are dense, more dense, and you need like a ton of context on. So if you're reading something about trauma, and it helps to have the background information of it, like how your brain works, how we store things, like, of course, there's exceptions to this. But in general, I look at a table of contents and I go directly to what's most interesting. And I start there. There are no rules. All right, next tip. This one is people get superstitious with books. Like they are afraid to write in them or highlight them. And this comes again from school where you like had to rent textbooks. And remember how like they would charge you if it wasn't an immaculate condition. I think this gets ingrained into us. And so we're afraid to like highlight and everything like that. This tip is to rough it up. I'm giving you full permission here to write in the margins, highlight, underscore, make as many notes in here as possible. Here's an example of what I'm talking about with roughing it up. You can see here. I have underlined key points or quotes. And then the red is when I reread it. If something sticks out to me again, I'll go back through. Sometimes if there's a really cool study, I'll highlight that and write in the line study in case I want to use that for like a video or reference it. Maybe it's ADHD. Maybe it's my TikTok addiction. Whatever it is. Sometimes sitting in one spot and just reading, you know, you can get a little antsy. It can be difficult. This tip is to change the format you consume in. So what I have found to be very useful is to download audio books. I use Audible or Spotify has them now. And what I'll do is I will do one of two things. Option one, you take the audio book and you go on a long walk. Like I'm talking an hour, sometimes two hours. Sometimes I've even done three hour walks listening to an audio book. So instead of just sitting there and like reading it, I'm getting some sunlight. I'm moving. I'm breathing fresh air. Now I said there was two. So the second thing you can try. I got obsessed with doing puzzles, physical puzzles like your grandma does. I promise I don't have 20 cats and 50 sweaters. I give you those little mint candies when you walk in, you know, the silver ones. I was like a staple of grandma's. They all had those. My point, puzzles and it's just fun. It gives you something to do. So I find that in the same way, having some white noise on in the background, if you're working, flipping that and having like the visual stimulation, be that sort of white noise while you're listening to information. That has been a game changer for me. Also, one app I've been using recently that I think does it better than any other app out there is called short form. I love this app. Okay, like I've tried a lot of book summary apps out there. Pretty much all the major ones on the market. Something about the way they write their one page summaries gives you the best ideas, but it also pulls things out and makes connections that you didn't make on your own. I've gotten so many good ideas for videos for my life, for anything, just reading the 15 minute summary in the sauna every single day on a book. A lot of learning is remembering, and it's really hard to remember everything you read. You're always going to have to revisit either your one page note summary, like we're talking about in this video, but also helps to see what someone else has. So it's sort of like a companion guide for your own notes and your own summaries. I've really used them in that way. So if you're interested in this, you want to check it out. I'll link down below where you can get a free trial and just see for yourself. I'll link down below our affiliate link. That is a way you can support the channel. Worst case scenario, you know, it doesn't work out. That's totally fine. Best case scenario, you love it like I do. That's a 20% off link as well. If you get the annual plan, my opinion is money well spent. Part two, synthesizing what you read, retaining everything. So my biggest hack for retaining information from books, it might sound like it takes a lot of effort, but I can't tell you how worth it it is, because this is something you can look back on in a year, two, three years from now, and you don't have to read the book again. And it's custom and specific to you, and exactly what you need to know, because you wrote it. This is where you create a one-page summary of the book. Let me show you, not just tell you. I'll pull up a few of these one-page note summaries, and what they look like based on the book. So this is my journal, and there's a section here called students. Now, during this year, I read this book on Steve Jobs. This one's beefy. It was like 600 pages. And I wanted to get some notes from it. So what I did is I wrote down my one, two, three, four, five biggest takeaways. And now instead of going back and having 600 pages to reread, I can look at these throughout the year. I'll give you a few more. Read that same year, the Almanac of Naval Ravikant. Didn't plan on posting these, so the chicken scratch, excuse my handwriting, but you can pause it, and hopefully you can make something out of it, if you want to see the actual notes. So what I did is, I made a one page summary, with some of my favorite points on wealth, happiness, and philosophy. Here's a two pager. Shared this in a recent journaling video, on the happiness hypothesis. So you can see I have a page here, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, and chapter four, which is another note. You don't have to do this for every single chapter. Even getting a few of what you read from it, is still beneficial in my experience. This one right here, the courage to be disliked. Sigmund Freud. More of an essay. Civilizations and its discontents. Classic Freud sense, smoking a fat cigar right there. Because this does take effort, I only do this for the books that are like, ten out of ten, or my favorite books I read that year, which I always go over on this channel, like the five books I read in X year. Those are the ones that I'm doing a one page summary for. All right,this tip, this is to argue. Yes. Start an argument with the author in the book. If something sticks out to you, and you're like, wait, is that really true? I'll write DA. That stands for devil's advocate. And so I'll just put that in the margin, DA. And then I'll give a point, that kind of backs up the other side. Now you're doing this, not to be like the annoying kid we all had in class, who would always try and argue with the teacher. You're doing this for the selfish reason, you're going to retain way more, when you start seeing the other side. Maybe a better word for this, is having a conversation with the author. Here's an example of linking concepts. So this is talking about loss aversion, and how we value more things, when we have them and they're ours, than when other people have them, and they're not ours. So the example I linked here, was selling a car, you think it's worth more, than buying a car, you think it's worth less. So little concepts like that,guys, they go a long ways. Linking what you already know, back to what you're learning new for the first time. And again,those little associations between, oh,that's like this, that is learning right there, where you're able to link in your brain, how does this relate to thing, how does thing A relate to thing B, and you're forming that connection, that's the whole process of learning. The point is turning a monologue into a dialogue, a two-way back and forth exchange. I find an easy way to do that, is to argue with the author. Just don't take that habit into your relationship, it's not gonna go well, let me tell you. Actually babe, here are the three reasons why you're dead wrong. This tip on retention, is a mistake people make, is moving on too quickly, and not rereading your favorite books. Okay,so I've always said, it is much better for you to read 10 books, 10 times, than it is for you to read 100 books, one time. Assuming those 10 books are really, really good, you revisit them, and it ingrains deeper into you. Think of the last book, that just blew your mind, that you got a lot from, that's a good book for you to revisit, and read next. Now, I want to take a bit of a detour in this video, and really underscore something, that I think is vital, in this modern era, of how we're approaching learning. And maybe there's even the belief right now, when I'm giving like my strategies, to be like, Well,Clark,isn't this really slow? It doesn't seem very efficient. This is more of a philosophical point, but I think we're so conditioned, of how fast can we read? How much can we consume? How many books did you read? Even when we're listening to things, you know,we have to put it at 2x speed, or 1.5 speed. And what this does, is it really messes up your brain. It puts you in this neurotic, trance-like state, of where you're just seeing, so much information, coming at you at once. And it overwhelms you. Your brain actually can't learn that fast. Good learning is slow. You ever read philosophy? It won't make sense. It will not make sense. It's a clunky read. It's a lot of $4 words. Hard to get through. And after like 10 pages, you're like, What's this dude saying? Why is he talking about his water wet? And then boom, he'll finally make his point, and you're like, I don't even know what the point is. That's the average philosophy experience. Now you're tempted to be like, Well, I'm too dumb for this, or I just can't read this. That's not true at all. Deeper concepts require a deeper time investment. Going after what's fast, quick, and immediate, in the same way with health, or relationships, or anything in life, doesn't actually fulfill you. It's kind of the same thing with reading books. It's like the deeper concepts, you actually have to earn, and you have to wrestle with the ideas, and you have to like search for them, and put in the effort. We get like mentally lazy with this, and I'm not like preaching at you, and that's why you have to read philosophy. That's why you have to read primary sources. There's a huge market for pop psychology, and mainstream self-help, because of the fact that it's hard to go back, and like to read some dude's writings from 2000 years ago. So I've just had some boundaries in my life, and they've really helped with retention, and peace of mind, and not making this process of like, trying to consume everything stressful kind of. Like you shouldn't be stressed reading books. You shouldn't be stressed improving your life, and consuming knowledge. If you're feeling stressed, it's because you're trying to move too fast through it, and you're consuming too much probably. So yeah, I think that's just a very important point. Don't fall into the trap of consuming as much, and as fast as possible. Good learning is slow. Now I'm curious, what is your best tip to read, and retain information out there? I'm really curious. Like put it in the comments below. Let's make that section just full of awesome tips, that people can use, and we can swap ideas and pull from. Thanks so much for being here. If you want to check out short form, I'll link our link in the description below. Appreciate you. I love you. See you in the next one. Stop settling, start living. See you.