Are You Active Learning?

Here’s the 3-step daily routine that supercharged my skill development.

Image generated by author using GPT-4

Learning a skill is hard work — it’s so easy to feel like you’re spinning your wheels, not actually learning anything, wasting time. So, here’s the routine that has doubled both my rate of skill development and how much knowledge I retain from the material I’ve read.

Pieced together from all the productivity advice I’ve learned over the past few years, I use this little routine every day and it’s been a lifesaver.

I’ll explain the method first, and then I’ll dive in to explain my reasoning afterward. Here we go.

The Method

My three-step process is as follows:

1. Firstly, I read the chapter in full. No note-taking yet.

2. Once I’ve finished reading the chapter, I take a moment to rest before re-reading it, this time annotating. I write my notes in the book itself, taking care to:

• identify the “big idea” and structure of the chapter. What’s the key point of this chapter? What arguments is the author making for it? How does this link back to previous ideas the author has put forward?
• highlight ideas that relate to concepts I’m already familiar with.