Lecture #9: How to Read So That You Retain Information

Source published date: 2021-08-17

Source link: Lecture #9: How to Read so that you Retain Information by Jeffrey Kaplan

• Literature note: jeffrey kaplan lecture 9 how to read so that you retain information

Introduction

Engagement Over Consumption

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force yourself to interact with the semantic content of what you’re reading. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: Engage with the material

Thinking Through the Text

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have a procedure that forces you to think through the ideas contained in the text. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: Abstract the key points and ideas.

Marginalia: Capture Thoughts In Context

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The procedure that I’m going to recommend in this video is a version of marginalia. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: Jeffrey Kaplan recommends the practice of taking notes along the margins of the printed text. Providing context and locality of your notes, summarizations, questions, and reflections.

Muscle Memory

Analytical Reading Practice

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if you want to stand a chance of remembering that text, what you want to do is you want to read with focus and thought. You want to be thinking through the ideas, mulling them around in your mind right as you’re going through. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: Be an active, mindful, reader. Not to read to absorb, but to read while applying critique and analysis of current text and previous arguments made from the author.

Micro-Summarization Method

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Here’s what you do: you read the first paragraph of the reading. You read that paragraph, and in the margin, you summarize that whole paragraph in one sentence. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: The Jeffrey Kaplan’s reading procedure:

• Step 1) Read the first paragraph of the reading.
• Step 2) In the margin summarize that whole paragraph in 1 sentence.

How to Read

Compression Requires Understanding

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It’s important that you summarize right. So if this paragraph is six sentences long, you can’t just write six sentences in the margin; that won’t work because copying over text you can do that without really thinking about what it means. But summary — you can only summarize something. You can only take six sentences’ worth of ideas and condense them down into one sentence of ideas. You can only do that if you understand what those six sentences mean and figure out what the central core idea is that all of those six sentences have in common. So it has to be a summary; you write a one-sentence summary in the margin. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: Don’t transcribe, don’t just rephrase, the paragraph. Extract key ideas/takeaways. You’ll loose some resolution, but the goal is to condense and summarize the multiple points articulated.

Build Understanding Incrementally

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Then you move on to the second paragraph. You read that paragraph, and for that paragraph also, you write one sentence of summary in the margin. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection:

• Step 3) Read the 2nd Paragraph and write a 1 sentence summary of the 2nd paragraph you read

Contextualizing New Information

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Then you get to the third paragraph, and this is where things get interesting. When you read the third paragraph of the text, you’re going to write two sentences in the margin. The first sentence in the margin next to the third paragraph is not going to have anything to do with the third paragraph. This sentence is going to summarize the first and second paragraphs. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection:

• Step 4) After reading the 3rd paragraph two sentences are written in the margins: 1 - a sentence connecting ideas and summaries leading up to the current point (summaries of paragraph 1 & 2); and, 2 - a sentence about the 3rd paragraph you’ve just read.

Expanding the Summary Chain - Never Start Fresh Carry Forward

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then we move on to the fourth paragraph. The fourth paragraph also gets two sentences in the margin. The first sentence in the margin next to the fourth paragraph summarizes everything the previous paragraphs, one, two, and three, and then the next one just summarizes paragraph four. Then you keep going. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: From the 3rd paragraph on every paragraph gets two sentences summaries: the first sentence connects summaries prior to the current paragraph; and, the second sentence recaps the current (n-th) paragraph.

Distilling the Big Idea

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one sentence that summarizes everything that came before. You condense it all down into just one sentence. You’re going to leave things out, of course. You have to, because now you’re condensing many paragraphs into just one sentence. So, you’re going to have to leave a lot of stuff out. You’re going to have to make a decision. You have to think through what’s the most important thing that all of these paragraphs have in common or that connects them, or that they’re getting across: one sentence for everything previously, and one sentence for that last new paragraph. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: From the 3rd paragraph on the first sentence gets updated encapsulating or highlighting the most important elements or what connects each summary.

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what a waste of time is? Sitting and passing your eyes over the text and not retaining it, not thinking through it and absorbing it, that’s a waste of time; that’s inefficient. - View Highlight

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There is no way to summarize a text like this without thinking through the material and understanding it and retaining it. I want to emphasize this point again: taking notes in the margin in this way where you summarize what’s going on actually saves time. - View Highlight

Efficiency

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I’m medium-level smart, but I show up to everything having thought through the material, right, and retaining it - View Highlight

Active Learning in Action

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On the first day of lecture, the professor asked, “What is economics?” There was silence in the room for a long time. Then, I raised my hand and said, “It’s the study of the allocation of scarce resources.” The professor said, “Correct,” and then just moved on to the rest of the material. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: Actively engaging with the material improves memory recall.

What is Economics

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if you think through the ideas, the powers of retention of memory that you will gain, will be incredible. - View Highlight

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Speed reading is a scam. - View Highlight

Bonus Rant

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is this a prank? Are you kidding me? The order of the words in sentences matters to the meaning of those words. You need to read all the words in order; or else you’re not going to understand what those words mean. - View Highlight

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“Professor Kaplan, you’re not being fair; that’s just one thing that one person said.” But you should test speed reading by its most sophisticated methods, such as the well-known technique of rapid serial visual presentation. - View Highlight

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First of all, just because you give something some fancy label doesn’t mean it’s a Real things - View Highlight

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The results every single time show that speed reading works like skimming, which is to say, it doesn’t work. - View Highlight

Pop Quiz

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definition of economics up on the board; I never wrote it up. I just said it a few times. - View Highlight

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I made you think through it. - View Highlight

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I like walked through a thought process involving this definition of economics. Remember the whole thing about sand and I got the B-roll photo of sand and sand as a scarce resource that’s thinking through the definition of economics. - View Highlight

Thoughtful Reading = Lasting Memory

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If you have to think through what something means, then you absorb it and you remember it. - View Highlight

Marginalia / Reflection: Think while reading, so you can learn it and remember it with context.