Key Takeaways
- Reading a good book is a great way to gain knowledge.
- Unfortunately, if you don’t retain what you’ve read, that knowledge won’t compound to become wisdom.
- If you’re reading to learn, there are some ways you can better retain what you’ve read.
“If you get into the mental habit of relating what you are reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.” That’s a quote from Charlie Munger, and it speaks to something many of us seek in life: wisdom.
One really great way to learn is to read non-fiction books, but the challenge is to retain and then synthesize what you’ve read, allowing the knowledge you’ve gained to compound over time. An article by James Clear, 7 Ways to Retain More of Every Book You Read, provides strategies to accomplish this. We’ll review three ways here.
First, only read books you would read twice or more. Choose quality books that will teach you something new each time you read them. As your situation in life changes, these are books that will help you view things in a new light over time.
Second, stop reading more books than you want to read. Stop feeling obligated to read a book that someone selects for you. Oftentimes, we get “shoulded” into reading a book, with someone telling us “You really should read this book.” You don’t have to read every book. If you start one and it’s just not doing anything for you, then set it aside and move on.
Third, use an easily accessible online library of notes on books you’ve read. Do this to highlight main ideas you want to retain. Consider writing a short summary of the book to include in your notes. Doing this online makes it easy to search your notes in the future. And with really good books, you’ll find yourself referencing them at various stages in your life, helping you better understand what these authors have imparted in wisdom to you.
Take a look at the full article for more tips on how to retain what you’ve read. Hopefully this will help you to build your knowledge and make a big difference for you. Until next time, enjoy.
If you’d like to know what books Gary has on his “read more than once” list, go to Bookshelf on garyklaben.com.