I love reading books, but I enjoy incremental reading too much to read books, blog entries, etc. in the linear fashion they were intended to be consumed. The negative aspects of linear reading will be covered in another post soon. Until then, to make it easier to read books using Supermemo, I have found this to be particularly helpful:
There are many sites that allow you to create text documents of .epub and .mobi files. Here is one that I have been using: Whoosh.
Right now I am reading at least 10 books (Two of which are fiction), and I have thoroughly enjoyed this way of reading. If you haven't tried it, it is a very fun way to read scientific and historical books (Which is what I enjoy reading the most).
To summarize:
-Incremental reading is superior and more fun than traditional reading.
-Convert an acquired epub or mobi file into .txt.
-Only copy 10-15 pages of text at a time to prevent slowing Supermemo down.
NOTE REGARDING FORMATTING ISSUES: I'm not sure if you are encountering formatting issues with this blog, but I am. When I view this post on an RSS feed, the text is white against a white blackground, meaning I cannot read the post. It is a mild annoyance to say the least. Tell me if you are unable to view what is posted here. If it is too big of a problem, I'll try to change the settings for the blog. Otherwise, I'll try to make due with what I've got here.
ReplyDeleteHi, I can't see any text in this post. Only by viewing the page source I could read it. And I wonder, what do you mean by "text that has no value to me"? You could cut out parts that might be of interest, no? Or do you kinda fast-read over the 10 pages and then deceide which parts contain junk?
ReplyDeleteSorry about the formatting, I reposted it again (I had problems viewing it in Google Reader because the text was white, and Google Reader's background is white...).
ReplyDeleteI tried to answer your question in a post that I just now put up, hopefully it helps answer your question. I'm working on another post that articulates how I break an article down from Time magazine as an example. That should be up in a few days.
So, if you only add 10-15 pages at a time, after all you do linear reading of the book, and the incrementalism enters in processing the extracts, is that the case?
ReplyDeleteYes, for me I like to incrementally process the extracts. When I make extracts I like to form them as a question as soon as possible, even in the moment I encounter it. I like doing as much work up front as possible so the process of making the flashcard happens easily later on. I find that when I have a lot of work to do in processing an item I dread it a little bit more. If I'm going to look at this information right now, I would like to get it as CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to a flashcard rather than think "oh this might be interesting" only to find out later that I don't really care. Basically I have become very ruthless on the first pass of the information. Sometimes this means that I stop at a paragraph or sentence for a long time as I think about if I either 1) know the information, 2) can recreate the information with the knowledge I already have on hand or 3) is this really worth remembering in the long run?
DeleteIt's always easy to delete a flashcard after the fact. I would rather make a few extra flashcards that I delete later on because they aren't necessary. Also, when I try to make the information into a flashcard right away it forces me to look at the information and drill down why it's so worth remembering. Often times as I try to do this I'll realize that the info isn't really worth remembering, it was just fun to read in the moment.
Hello! Since this article was written more than 10 years ago, I have kind of changed how I do incremental reading. What I do now is read a book on my iPhone or iPad, copy and paste important paragraphs into my Notes app and once a day I add those Notes into SuperMemo as a topic. Those topics eventually surface after I do my Items and they are converted into flashcards within a week or so. Right now I am working on an external incremental reading system that I use for my iPhone or iPad (I LOVE IR but I HATE that I can only do it inside of SuperMemo on Windows, I want to do IR when I’m standing in line or commuting). I think my system works, but I want to give it a few more weeks before I publish it. I don’t want to publish what has worked for a week or two, but for at least a couple of months.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, if I did all of my IR on SuperMemo itself, I would probably do the same thing. Copy and paste big chunks of a book into SuperMemo, read them, make extracts as I go along, and once I finish the big chunk I copy-pasted, copy and paste another big chunk of the book. I just don’t want to overload SuperMemo with large text documents, I’m just weary of the “scaffolding” of SuperMemo, don’t want anything to crash. Let me know if you have any more questions on previous posts. I’m finishing up a book about my experiences with SuperMemo, I might publish the entire book and then break it into a bunch of blog posts. I want to make an audio version so those that like to listen to audio books can listen to it.
Thanks for the quick answer. I am brand new in SuperMemo (less than 2 months) and tried Incremental Reading before using RemNote's plugin by James, but am now trying SuperMemo to a full experience. Heard about you watching Guillem's videos and imported your whole blog to SuperMemo, and I am processing it incrementally lol. I know this is an old post, but I am trying to find my way in IR; large topics in SM are not a good idea; I tried splitting long articles and books, but in many books not having the first reading made linearly (shufflying everything) did not look a good idea to me. I tend to prefer the processing you mentioned: firstly reading almost linearly and then incrementally processing the extracts). Thanks for your clarifications. And I am eager to see this system of yours being released, as well as your book. I'll certainly read it!
DeleteNo problem! Yeah, hit me up with any questions you have. As far as processing long articles or books, something else I’ve done is make each chapter its own topic in SuperMemo and then dismiss the topics I’m not reading. So the book has maybe 10 chapters, so each chapter gets its own topic in SuperMemo, but the one I’m reading is the only one that is “active”, the rest are dismissed. What I love so much about IR is that you can read a paragraph or two, then say “see you tomorrow.” I’m not sure if it’s best practice, but I like to read one paragraph at a time, then delete the paragraph as I read it. Instead of thinking in terms of pages or long “marathons” of reading, I like to think in terms of just paragraphs and subheadings. If I just focus on that, it’s easy to make quite a bit of progress without thinking about it. What I would love would be to have a voice read me the paragraphs one at a time, then I delete them as I don’t find anything worth remembering in the paragraphs. This kind of gets into what I want with a non-SuperMemo Incremental Reading system that syncs across all of your devices, I’m still working those details out.
DeleteIncremental Reading took me a lot of time to “get.” When you learn to trust the system and reschedule important books or articles to be read (For me it was mostly the next day), you get into this really awesome ‘flow state’ of zapping from one article to another, making items here and there, deleting topics as they are completed, making new topics out of ideas you get while reading, it’s such a cool feeling. But it took me a really long time to use it properly and to get hooked on it.
Good strategy this one of leaving only the topic of the current reading chapter memorized, and dismissing or pending the others, if the material does not suit shuffle reading. Thanks once again!
DeleteCan you clarify another point of your current workflow? You said you copy and paste important paragraphs into your Notes app and once a day you add those Notes into SuperMemo as a topic. How do you handle this process? In the Notes App, do you paste material from diverse sources in a single note or you have a note for each source? And in case you have a single note, how you manage the references and the Knowledge Tree in SuperMemo afterwards?
DeleteYeah, sure! So the process is like this: I'm reading stuff on my phone or listening to an article on my phone. I come across an interesting point or an idea. I stop reading and then look at that paragraph and think about it. If I CAN turn that point into a question and answer pair, I do it right then and there. If I can't, I just copy and paste the paragraph. BUT if I can turn it into a question-answer pair right away, it makes it easier to add that info later on into SuperMemo. Also I like to write down the context or source of the flashcard along with the information. For example, this morning I was listening to the TV Tropes article on the animated Lilo and Stitch movie (REALLY good, I'm surprised I missed it after all these years), and the article mentioned how caffeine can kill dogs. I didn't realize this and paused the article and looked up information about dogs and caffeine. Sure enough, caffeine is basically poison for dogs. So I made a question answer pair that looks like this:
DeleteLILO AND STICH TV TROPES
Why can dogs not drink coffee? Caffeine is poison to them.
This flashcard is basically already in its final form, it just needs to be actually put into SuperMemo. I will add the reference to the "answer" section of the flashcard (If I saw it in the question part it might give away the answer without me having to think of the answer).
Something like this is the ideal scenario, getting a card as close as possible to its "final form" in my Notes app, then sending it to SuperMemo tomorrow morning after I finish my daily flashcards.
Does this answer your question?
Also, I add the reference to each paragraph or question answer pair that I make, since my Notes app can end up with a weird hodgepodge of information from different sources. So if I'm reading a book, I will note the name of the book at the beginning of each "extract" that eventually goes into SuperMemo.
DeleteThanks for the quick answer. I am brand new in SuperMemo (less than 2 months) and tried Incremental Reading before using RemNote's plugin by James, but am now trying SuperMemo to a full experience. Heard about you watching Guillem's videos and imported your whole blog to SuperMemo, and I am processing it incrementally lol. I know this is an old post, but I am trying to find my way in IR; large topics in SM are not a good idea; I tried splitting long articles and books, but in many books not having the first reading made linearly (shufflying everything) did not look a good idea to me. I tend to prefer the processing you mentioned: firstly reading almost linearly and then incrementally processing the extracts). Thanks for your clarifications. And I am eager to see this system of yours being released, as well as your book. I'll certainly read it!
ReplyDeleteSince I wrote this post years ago, I have found that I really like to offload reading to my phone and then process the extracts (parts of the book I copy and paste to the Notes app on my iPhone). Nothing TRULY beats adding stuff to SuperMemo at that very moment, but the next best thing is to add them to your phone and then as soon as possible add them to your flashcard collection (I usually do this once a day, after I finish my daily reps). I have enjoyed using an app called Voice Dream to listen to articles and books on my phone and as I come across interesting information, I pause the book, write down the "extract" into my Notes app and then move on with the book. When I'm riding my bike or driving my car I can pause the book and use Siri to dictate the note that I fix when I get to my destination (Or at the very least the next day after I do my flashcards). Basically, reading inside of SuperMemo is the BEST way to read information with the goal of putting it into SuperMemo, but the NEXT BEST thing (Which is my only option) is to use my phone and find extracts as I read or listen to the book. I get into this more with my book, but that's a summary of my basic flow for the last 10-ish years.
Delete