I read a text at high speed, much higher than the speed that allows 100% retention, and this means that some of the content I read I do not retain. Even more when I am stressed or in a hurry. How do I choose what I want to remember and what I want to skip?
This is really a complex subject. Any strategy is probably better than random selection, since it enables revisiting and filling in the gaps. Yes, every strategy should come with a complementary strategy to fill in the gaps at lower speed. But which strategy to choose?
Question 1: Is this content in the field of my expertise? If so, probably I need to remember authors, terminology used and where I saw it. Otherwise, maybe I should just focus on the main idea and write myself a link somewhere for future revisit.
Question 2: Do I need specific numbers or just trends? It is easy to remember trends and graphs, much harder to remember actual numbers. Is it worth the effort? After all, it is very easy to find numbers when revisiting the article.
Question 3: Does this article belong to specific chunks of things that interest me, or is it opening a completely new domain of knowledge? Almost always it is sufficient to remember the differences between the current article, and available knowledge in the domain, enforcing stronger links within the knowledge domain.
Question 4: If I wanted to take 3 things from this articles, what would they be and how I would use them? When revisiting, what other 3 things could I learn? For the high priority things I use more detailed markers, and more detailed linking with many strong links. Can be done per article, per section, per paragraph with increasing detail level at larger portions of content.
