Highlights

Introduction

• In my teaching practice I am always aware of the need for my learners to regularly engage with material I am teaching them to embed it in their long-term memory. It’s also important they practice retrieval in order to remember (00:40).
• Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve in under 2 minutes (01:17).
• Something I have realised while studying my master’s in education is that I don’t pay enough attention to this with my own learning - particularly with what I read. So I did some research and tried a few techniques to help me remember what I read. I will share my approach in this episode (01:55).

Materials in Focus

• This episode focuses non-fiction rather than fiction, and ‘real books’ rather than audiobooks (03:10).
• 12 non-fiction book target for 2021 (04:32 ).

How I Remember What I Read

• Highlighting is great but not enough - highlights must be revisited (05:57).
• Add annotations to highlights - what does this highlight mean, why did you highlight it and how is the idea interesting or useful to you? (08:04).
• Send highlights to Readwise and use spaced repetition via email (09:55).
• Use a tool like Notion to manage your notes, annotations and highlights. For example I have: (10:27)
  • A reading database (each entry includes author details, progress etc and for academic reading the original PDF, annotated PDF and bibliographic details).
  • A Readwise database (linked to my notes and reading databases).
  • A notes database.
• Write a book summary (11:25).
• Consider a three sentence summary in the style of James Clear (11:57).
• Summary (12:58).

Helpful links

• Readwise
• How to use Readwise with Notion
• Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
• James Clear’s three sentence book summaries