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Comment by roudaki | Hacker News Reader

I started turning books into cloze flash cards. it forces me to pay attention and I can read in small chunks. If book is really really good I would retype it. If its really really good it becomes memory palace. But this is my passion and of course everyone cant do that. So try audiobooks and take long walks. Also it is really healthy to avoid screens 60 minutes before sleep and reading paper is nice way to do that.

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I don't do this with every book, but I've been doing it with some technical content lately. It's surprisingly effective. Read a chapter, marking up portions I want to revisit. Revisit it with the computer open and type a bunch of things into Anki (or copy/paste if it's a Kindle book or PDF) with appropriate pieces marked up to make the cards.

Really nice for math and CS books if you also have LaTeX as you can get it to render well with a bit of practice. Now I just need to get back into my Anki habit, I was good for a couple years and then just stopped late last year which is frustrating, it was useful but my momentum was lost and I haven't recovered it yet.

it is scary to break that chain as Anki is not a problem if used regularly. but when you first start there is a lot of work setting up and going through all the cards and not just the one you need. more you use it longer it takes to get back in. like entire weekend long. it is number one reason people dont use card system even when it is known it is best study method.

Yeah, that was my reaction the first time I broke the habit ("scary" seeing 100s of cards for review). But I got through it quickly. Now the issue really is just the habit, I'm not doing it daily and barely getting it in 2-3 times a week. I've managed to restore my exercise routine after work, now I need to restore my study routines.

Can you explain a bit more what are those cloze flash cards? Do you try to memorize the whole book?

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