The Highlight Color System for Understanding (and Remembering) Everything You Read
A few years ago, I created an annotation system that completely changed the way I understand and review everything I read.
I did this because I had a problem: I’d read a bunch of books, put them on my shelf, and then months or years later wonder if I even remembered what I’d read. If you look at all the books on your shelf, you might look at a title and find it hard to remember a few important ideas from it.
My solution was to create a complete note-taking system for remembering everything I read.
You can read about the entire system here, but in this post, I want to zoom in to one part of it: the highlighting system.
The Highlight System
One general rule I operate by is: the more interactions you have with reading material, the more likely you are to understand and retain it.
Oftentimes while reading, we might skim through the lines on the page without really acknowledging the content of the author’s thoughts. This is while you’ll sometimes realize you need to go back a page or two to understand what the author is talking about.
A great way to keep yourself engaged is to determine the type of sentence you’re reading. Not ever sentence in a paragraph is the same. Some are making direct arguments. Others are providing supporting points. Sometimes the author needs to define a term or concepts. In some cases, the author is providing a valuable mental model for understanding something. And at times, the author might be quoting a different author.
These are all different types of sentences I’m trying to identify when reading. Once I do, I highlight each in a specific color. This forces me to pause and really think about that individual sentence while also visually seeing how it fits into the overall arc of what I’m reading.
It also makes it a lot easier to review my reading later on.
The Color System
The highlight system uses five different colors:
- Yellow — These are the premises, facts, and supporting points the author includes to make their argument.
- Green — These are when the author is defining or explaining the meaning of a term or phrase.
- Blue — These can be either main thesis statements or didactic phrases that begin with verbs (the sentences when the author is telling you to do or not do something).
- Pink — These are when the author is providing a mental model, analogy, or a conceptual framework for understanding something.
- Purple — These are for when the author is quoting someone else.
There are so many benefits for using this system while you read.
For one, it forces you to read a little bit slower and engage more deeply with what you’re reading. Quickly skimming over sentences for the purpose of getting through the book isn’t the great way to understand, and retain what you’re reading. On the other hand, pausing to identify the type of sentence you just read and taking the time to highlight it will help you better understand the argument than mere skimming alone.
But my favorite part of the system is when I’m reviewing. Because I’ve carefully color-coded sentences in my books, I can flip to any page in any book and immediately identify where the key information is or where the important terms are or virtually anything else I need to find.
How to Use the Highlight System for Your Reading
Because the system is such a huge part of how I read, I’ve found ways to implement it, not only in books, but also when I’m browsing the web.
When I’m reading a digital book (my go-to app is the Apple Books app), I simply select the sentence I want to highlight and then use the appropriate color it. But when I’m reading a page online, I’ve been using the app Liner, which allows you to add highlights to any webpage. This app works great with reader mode on Brave browser, which I’m also a huge fan of. This allows me to return to any webpage I’ve read in the past and immediately be able to review it in the same way I would a book.
On a side note, since I’m a Notion power user, I’m extremely excited to try out Thomas Frank’s Flylighter when I launches (no affiliation). I’m hoping this system will allow me to replace Liner and create a more cohesive system for all my highlights directly in Notion.
Lastly, as you read in my complete guide on how to remember everything you read, one essential step is to create learning notes out of what you read. This means converting all your highlights and notes from your book into a single document of learning notes. Once again, because you’ll have already taken the time to carefully color-code all the important content in your reading, converting them into learning notes becomes a lot easier (and a lot faster).
Three Ways I Can Help You Apply What You Just Learned
- Check out my complete guide on How to Learn Through Reading — It’s one of my most popular posts and includes everything I do to understand and remember what I read.
- Download my Accelerated Learning Notes Notion Template — This is my personal system for converting my reading into learning notes I can reference anytime. It’s also pre-loaded with a variety of note-taking templates to suit multiple types of note-taking.
- Have a question or want help for your own reading and research process? Send me a question here — I’d love to hear from you!
