Those of us in academic fields read several thousands of books and papers in our lifetime and it’s vitally important to retain and recover what we’ve read, because there’s not enough time to read the same source twice. I have several ways that I chunk information, enabling me to recall or retrieve the contents of the thousands of books and computer files in my library. There is only space in this post to share two of those techniques.
Technique 1: Record special pages in the frontispiece of your book.
Many people have been taught that they should not write in their books. My belief is that books are for use–not decoration. Make them serve your intellectual needs. I always read non-fiction sources with a pen in hand. When I come across some information or idea that I think has value, I mark that paragraph and then record in the frontispiece (that mostly blank page at the beginning of any book) the page number and a brief comment such as, “p. 227 Good quote from Einstein about the essence of physics.” When finished reading the book, I can enter the information on the frontispiece into a Word or InDesign document so that I have an important summary of the information I wish to retain from that book.
Years later, if I want to recall that quote or the paragraphs surrounding it, I can leaf through the frontispieces of various books and zero in on that section. Alternatively, I can use a keyword search in my Word or InDesign document to retrieve the information. This can be done very efficiently if reading e-books such as those on Kindle.
When you combine all these notes into a giant folder, your keyword search provides almost instant access to everything you’ve absorbed or read during all your decades of reading.
Technique 2: Record your information visually
An old adage asserts that a picture is worth a thousand words. This is particularly true in the storage of information in our brains. For example, facial recognition is almost instantaneous, but if we were blind and had to recognize someone from a verbal description of their facial features, it would be an onerous task. One of the best ways to store huge amounts of information visually is through pictorial or graphic representation. Suppose you’re studying the civilization of Ancient Greece. When did Aristotle set up his school? Was it during the time of Pericles or before or after? Was this before or after Euclid or the Pythagoreans. To help retain this information in a precise and retainable form, I created the following timeline.
from Kelly, Brendan (2019) Intelligence: Where we Were, Where we Are & Where we’re Going
Notice how easily you can answer the questions above from a visual representation of all that information. Imagine attempting to record all the information in verbal form. Here is another example from that same source, showing the relative popularity of the major religions in the world.
By storing information in line graphs, circle graphs, tables, and flow charts, we condense a great deal of information into formats that are more readily retained and retrieved. When René Descartes introduced the cartesian grid for graphing equations, he brought algebra and geometry together, providing a visual representation of equations and paving the path to calculus and analysis. In this information age, we receive hundreds of times more information than those of previous generations, and retention through chunking has become more important than ever. In The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “Up to the age of thirty, the man is learning; after thirty, he is learning to learn.” As we move into middle age, we have to revisit through a more sophisticated lens what we learned previously.
