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Comment on Ask HN: How do you synthesize books that you read?

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Depends on the type of book.

coding book -> jypter notebooks.

physics/ math book -> a notebook with the feynman method.

History, general reading -> rewriting your understanding in a narrative word doc.

Always have a 'Why' when reading. Play with the problems and use the concepts towards some 'end' not in the book.

edit: "How to read a book" is a good book.

I think it's a great advice. I'd also add that reading a book from cover to cover without a clear application of the knowledge can be wasteful in terms of time and retention, and might lead to feeling motivated to finish the book as opposed to understanding it.

Learning on the fly for me personally is a more suitable approach: determine what I'm lacking and build a dependency graph of things I need to understand before achieving it. The n conquer the individual topics.

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