How to remember everything you read.

In our day-to-day lives, we encounter a vast amount of information, but we often struggle to retain more than a small portion of it. To truly benefit from what we read, we need to understand the two critical stages: consumption and digestion. Consumption refers to the act of reading or acquiring information, while digestion is the process of memorizing and internalizing that information.

Adopting a structured approach to information processing can save us a significant amount of time. The primary issue today is that our rate of information consumption is much higher than our digestion rate. According to various sources, we retain or memorize only about 10% of the information we consume. To improve our retention rate, we need to focus more on digesting information rather than just consuming it.

The PACER Method

The PACER method is a powerful technique to enhance our ability to remember what we read. Here's how it works:

• Procedure: For procedural information, the best way to memorize it is through practice.
• Analogous: For information that is analogous, the best way to memorize it is by critique. This type of information is linked to what we already know, so we should explore different aspects and ask various questions and possibilities.
• Conceptual: For conceptual information, the best way to memorize it is by mapping. This involves finding correlations and creating networks of information.
• Evidence: For evidence-based information, the best way to memorize it is by storing and rehearsing it.
• Reference: For reference information, the best way to memorize it is also by storing and rehearsing it.

By implementing the PACER method, we can revolutionize our approach to information retention, ensuring that we not only consume information but also truly understand and remember it.