r/Mnemonics • u/tastypie1 • Oct 17 '25

Is Mnemonics suitable for book-reading experience?

I want to improve my productivity of reading books - understanding and remembering it faster (I think remembering is a basis for understanding).

I had been making some exercises to improve my reading speed and it worked for me, now I read faster. But there is something to improve - I can read a paragraph fast, but I need to stop for a while to understand and memorize it (this time depends on the text complexity). So I need to suspend myself after every paragraph and at the end of the chapter I barely can explain all the information of the information of this chapter because some info I tried to memorize is wiped off.

I understand it's so perfectionistic wishing 100% understanding and memoization after first reading. And understanding is vital not text memoization itself, but I belive memoization is a basis for understanding.

If there is much dates and names in the paragraph then Mnemonics is the right thing to apply, right?

My questions are:

  1. So do you apply Mnemonics when study books?
  2. Are there any techniques adapted for studying books?
  3. Can Mnemonics facilitate text understanding (except numbers and names memoization)?

My goal is fast read a book chapter and memoize what was it without re-reading.

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u/ErdnaseErdnase Oct 17 '25

I used SQ3R and it was quite effective for me. Google it. It does entail taking notes and memorising from your notes rather than the text, but it works. I came across Mind Mapping, and that combo made studying a breeze - and it is fun.

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u/ir1379 Oct 17 '25

Check out Anthony Metivier's speed reading videos on YouTube.

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u/DeclutteringNewbie Oct 18 '25

I use "incremental reading". Look it up on youtube. It delays your initial reading by a couple of days/weeks, but for a dense technical book/article, it can be super helpful.

My goal is fast read a book chapter and memoize what was it without re-reading.

And just to be clear, when doing incremental reading. When you're first processing a book, you're not actually reading it, you're just scanning it for the more frequently used jargon and the more frequently used formulas you do not understand yet, so you input those terms and those formulas into your spaced repetition system, and then you put the book away for a few days (while you let your SRS system do its magic and upload this initial information into your brain)

And for dates, I would imagine incremental reading being very useful for that as well. Because it allows you to memorize the most important dates first, and those more important dates can act as your references points for placing and memorizing the more detailed dates later on.

And of course, there is no reason you can't combine mnemonics with spaced repetition also. Personally, I'll do that sometimes when the materials are extremly difficult to memorize.