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The Textbook Method for Absorbing Information Faster
Introduction
• When I was 16, someone asked me about a book I read 2 years ago-and I didn’t remember a thing
• This pissed me off, so I studied memory
Goals
• Internalize material ASAP
• Immediately apply lessons from non-fiction books
• Remember facts or theorems 5 years later
• Easy reference
Three Key Facts about Memory
• Association
• Struggle
• Chunking
Three Key Facts about Memory
• Association
• Struggle
• Chunking
Association
• The brain is a network of neurons-just hearing a word or idea practically forces us to think of related ideas
• Example: the question “was Gandhi 140 years old when he died?” makes people more likely to recognize words such as “old” or “decrepit” in crosswords. It even makes them walk more slowly!
Three Key Facts about Memory
• Association
• Struggle
• Chunking
Struggle
• In Kahneman terms, struggle means using System 2
Three Key Facts about Memory
• Association
• Struggle
• Chunking
Chunking
• Humans have finite short term memory. Studies suggest we can remember somewhere from 4-13 “things”, such as words or digits
• This is why Bell Labs chose 7 digit phone numbers
• We are very good at changing the size of a chunk
Example: Arabic
• When you start learning a language with a different alphabet like Arabic, each letter is a separate chunk
Example: Arabic
• After some time letters become trivial and words are chunks
Example: Arabic
• With practice, whole phrases become chunks
The Textbook Method
• Goal: come up with something that uses association, forces you to struggle, spells out explicit chunks, and is easily searchable in the future
• Idea: write a mini-textbook on the topic
Format
• Hierarchical outline– Top levels represent chunks you want to learn,
lower levels represent details• Your own words– Do not copy words from another source. Rewriting
a concept in different language forces you to struggle
What should the chunks be?
• Questions– Asking “what were the causes of world war II?”
and listing the answers makes it much easier to remember the facts and why they matter
• High-level concepts
What should the details be?
• Examples, especially ones you think of on your own
• Related questions• Points of confusion
Example: summarizing a math book
• (See PDF)
• Focus on concepts, definitions, theorems, and techniques
• Note the TODO statements for parts I didn’t understand
Example: learning about decision theory
• https://checkvist.com/checklists/190426
Example: reading a semi-technical paper about Deep Learning
• https://checkvist.com/checklists/170923
• Note the parts in red-these were concepts that I didn’t understand, and made a note to look up later
• Use of memes and personal language
Example: Thinking, Fast and Slow
• https://checkvist.com/checklists/188239
Example: Machine Learning With Python
• https://checkvist.com/checklists/144223
• Had to aggregate information from blog posts, websites, and experiments
When is the textbook method most useful?
• Summarizing books– It typically takes several repetitions to chunk a
concept and make it your own. Creating your own outlines significantly speeds up that process
• Aggregating information from several sources such as blog posts or papers– Disparate information is much harder to
understand, and cognitive biases lead us to believe what’s most frequently repeated instead of what has the most evidence
