How to Remember What You Read: 7 Techniques That Actually Work

Did you ever finish a book that you really loved, and only a couple of months later, when someone asked you what it was about, you couldn't say more than one or two sentences?

That was me, for a long time. I was reading a lot of self-improvement books, highlighting the parts I liked, and I felt like I was learning a lot. But when I wanted to actually use something from those books, most of it was gone. The only thing left was the feeling that the book was great.

At first I thought the problem was my memory. Then I realized the problem was the way I was reading.

Motivation

That frustration is actually the reason why I started building Bloomind. Before writing a single line of code, I wanted to understand why we forget what we read, and what we can do about it. It turns out that researchers have been studying this for more than a hundred years, and the answers are quite simple. We just don't use them.

So I decided to write an article about it and share what I learned, so you can start using it with the next book you pick up. Now let's get started.

Why do we forget what we read?

In the 1880s, a German psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus decided to test his own memory. He memorized lists of meaningless syllables and then measured how much of them he could remember after different periods of time.

What he found is known today as the forgetting curve. Our memory drops very fast in the first hours and days after we learn something, and after that it slowly levels off. The good news is that every time we revisit the information, the curve gets flatter, and we forget more slowly.

You may wonder now, what about highlighting and rereading? Isn't that revisiting? Well, not really. In 2013, a group of researchers (Dunlosky et al.) reviewed the most popular learning techniques, and both highlighting and rereading were rated as low utility. On the other hand, testing yourself and spreading your reviews over time came out on top.

In other words, memory doesn't improve by seeing the same thing again, it improves by actively working with it.

Now the question arises, how do we actively work with the things we read? Let's take a look at 7 techniques that actually work.

1. Read with a question in mind

Before you open a book, or start a new chapter, write down one question you want it to answer. For example: "How can I stop procrastinating on big projects?"

This sounds trivial, but it changes the way you read. Instead of treating every page as equally important, your brain now has a reason to notice and keep the parts that answer your question.

2. Write notes in your own words

Copying a sentence from the book is easy, and that is exactly the problem. When you rephrase an idea, you are forced to understand it first.

There is research behind this too. In lab experiments, people remember words they come up with themselves better than words they only read. Researchers call this the generation effect, and the same idea applies to your notes: the more of the work you do yourself, the more of it stays with you.

One thing to pay attention to: writing notes on its own is not enough. The same 2013 review rated summarizing as low utility too, mostly because it's hard to do well without practice. Your notes become really powerful when you combine them with techniques 4 and 5 below.

Here is a simple test. If you can't write the idea in one or two plain sentences without looking at the page, you didn't fully understand it yet.

3. Keep each note to one idea

Long summaries after each chapter look impressive, but chances are you will never read them again. Long notes are hard to review, so we simply skip them.

Short notes with a single idea are much easier to revisit. Aim for something you can read in ten seconds, like this one:

"Make the habit so small you can't say no. Two minutes of reading beats an hour you never start."

4. Test yourself instead of rereading

This one surprised me the most. Trying to recall something strengthens the memory much more than looking at it again. This is called retrieval practice.

In a well-known study from 2006, Roediger and Karpicke compared students who tested themselves on a text with students who spent the same time rereading it. Here is the interesting part. When the final test was given just 5 minutes later, the students who reread did better. But 2 days and a week later, it was the other way around: the students who tested themselves remembered much more.

That explains why rereading feels so effective. It works in the short term, so we think we've learned something, but it doesn't last.

So how does it look in practice? Look at the topic of your note, try to remember the idea before reading it, and then check. That small struggle is what makes it stick.

5. Space out your reviews

Reviewing a note five times in one evening helps less than reviewing it five times over a couple of weeks. This is known as the spacing effect, and it is the most direct way of flattening the forgetting curve we talked about.

A simple schedule that works well looks like this:

The next day,
a few days later,
after a week,
after a month.

Every time you successfully remember a note, you can wait a bit longer before the next review. That is the whole idea behind spaced repetition.

6. Connect ideas to your own life

An idea from a book is abstract. An idea connected to your own life is not. When you save a note, add one line about where it applies to you: a situation at work, a relationship, or a goal you have.

You can think of it as a hook. The more hooks an idea has, the harder it is for it to fall out of your memory.

7. Act on one idea

The best way to remember a lesson is to use it. You don't need to apply the whole book, that would be overwhelming. Just pick one idea and try it this week.

Even a small experiment creates an experience, and experiences are something we remember much better than sentences we read.

Putting it all together

If all of this looks like a lot, don't worry. Here is a simple routine that combines everything mentioned above:

Before reading: write one question you want the book to answer.
After each chapter: write 1–3 short notes in your own words.
Next day: try to recall each note before reading it.
Over the following weeks: review your notes on a spaced schedule.
Each week: pick one idea and act on it.

It takes only a few minutes a day, and the result is that books stop disappearing from your memory the moment you finish them.

How Bloomind fits into this

As I mentioned at the beginning, this is the exact problem I wanted to solve with Bloomind. It is a book notes app where you save ideas, quotes and lessons from books in your own words, organize them by life areas and hashtags, and Bloomind brings them back to you in short review sessions powered by spaced repetition. Bloomind keeps track of when you last revisited each note and shows you how many you're forgetting, and in Play mode the notes you need the most come first. So steps 2 to 4 from the routine happen almost on their own.

And if you already have your notes somewhere else, you can import them from a CSV file.

Frequently asked questions

Why do I forget what I read so quickly?

Memory naturally fades fastest right after learning, a pattern known as the forgetting curve. Without reviewing or using the information, most details fade within days.

Is highlighting a good way to remember a book?

Not on its own. Highlighting is passive. It's more useful as a first step: highlight while reading, then turn the best highlights into short notes in your own words.

How often should I review my book notes?

A good starting point is the next day, a few days later, after a week, and after a month. Spaced repetition tools adjust these intervals for you automatically.

Final thoughts

As you saw, remembering what you read is not about having a great memory. It is about a couple of small habits: writing in your own words, testing yourself, and coming back to your notes at the right time.

My goal was to show you that forgetting books is not your fault, it's just the way most of us read. Hopefully, you will try at least one of these techniques with the next book you pick up.

If you found this article helpful, feel free to share it with a friend who reads a lot. And if you have any questions or feedback, you can always reach me at banmarkovic@gmail.com.

Thanks for your time!

References

Ebbinghaus, H. (1913). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (H. A. Ruger & C. E. Bussenius, Trans.). Original work published 1885. Read the full text
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266
Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6), 592–604. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.4.6.592

If you want to dig deeper, Wikipedia has good overviews of the forgetting curve, testing effect, spacing effect and generation effect.