Committing to Long-Term Memory

I have been planning to be more intentional in the way I read books. I'm currently going through "How to Read a Book" and picked up more than a few things to focus on. Some of it aligns with general advice on how to make your reading more engaging. This directly affects how you can remember what you read more effectively.

I decided to commit to this effort and work on my long-term memory. Part of it is the fact that I want to stay sharp as I age. I believe that building a habit now for long-term results will pay off. The commitment is to focus on all the non-fiction books I read since the beginning of the year. I would like to remember confidently not only the general content, but also some interesting facts.

To do so I will use Anki! For every book I will create flash cards that I'll review daily for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. I'm hoping to see some results next quarter so that by the end of the year I'm able to re-collect and converse about any of the books I've read.

I already reaped the benefits of spaced repetition for the US Citizenship interview. There you can be asked a maximum of 10 questions from the 100 Civics ones. Flash cards made it incredibly simple to learn and memorize, to the point that I went to the interview incredibly confident about it.

Thoughts

I will conclude by saying that everyone should commit to do this exercise and being more intentional on information that we want to retain. That could range from some fun facts to specific philosophic principles.

Another reason why I think flash cards are a good idea is to better balance the "waiting" times in your life. Rather than instinctively grab the phone for some good 'ol scrolling, you can alternate between pure quiet and focus times and quick reviews. I will test myself roughly at the end of next quarter to see if it had the impact I expect.