The Brutal Truth About Reading: If You Don’t Take Notes Right, You’ll Forget Nearly Everything

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Seven years ago, I swallowed a bitter pill.

Up to that point I had read hundreds of books. Yet, when asked about specific ones, I often realized I had forgotten almost everything. The brutal reality was I had wasted thousands of hours.

You know what I’m talking about. Right? It’s that moment you find yourself struggling for words when you try to explain an audiobook you spent eight hours listening to a few months ago. It’s the surprise of revisiting a childhood movie (ie, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Home Alone, or Star Wars for me) and realizing you only remember a few plot points.

It’s in these moments you realize the brutality of the human experience. That memories are sandcastles blown away by the tides of time.