> I hated the idea of wasting all that time I spent reading
Personally, I've come to the conclusion that I read in order to draw broad patterns, not necessarily to remember all the things in every book - my brain has limited space.
What are your thoughts on optimizing retention at the expense of remembering to see the forest?
100% agreed. It's been a journey for me to get to this point, but Tiago Forte's thoughts were really influential for me here.
Now I try to only save notes that I found particularly surprising or insightful, I'm definitely not trying to save everything in the book. I don't put it in:
* If the fact didn't make me think
* If it doesn't trigger an "aha" moment
* If it was something I already knew,
For example, I'm currently taking notes as I read The Art of Doing Science and Engineering. If you looked at my notes[1] then you could barely tell that it's a book about engineering.
Personally, I've come to the conclusion that I read in order to draw broad patterns, not necessarily to remember all the things in every book - my brain has limited space.
What are your thoughts on optimizing retention at the expense of remembering to see the forest?