Although I plan out a lot of my day, I still find moments of ‘idle time’ where I’m doing nothing but mundane tasks like going on a jog, washing dishes, or grocery shopping. My body is engaged in an activity, but for the most part my mind is free to wander. Everyone has moments like this throughout the day, and sometimes if the moment is right I’ll allow myself the quiet, unfocused ambling of my thoughts (e.g., when I want to immerse myself in the woods). Most of the time though, I fill the void with podcasts or audiobooks*.

None of this is special. A lot of people listen to podcasts on their drive. You could argue this is the real problem, and that we could all benefit from doing nothing and simply unplugging from the attention economy. I value my ‘do nothing time’ but I get a tremendous satisfaction from filling the gaps. What I’ve been thinking about instead is “how do I remember all the things I’ve listened to or read?” In the last week, I’ve listened to news podcasts, watched hours of YouTube videos on geopolitics, read a book, and listened to interviews with interesting people. As I started to queue up the next thing, I asked myself whether I was retaining all the information. If I wasn’t, then how could I?

I came up with a few low-lift ways to capture more of the information I digest.

Recall

Sharing what I learned - Having to articulate what I learned is one of my favorite ways to remember things, probably because there’s a social component to it and it makes me feel smart. I mostly do this with Leah who’s been open to hear me explain things like how Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile (but still kept its naval officers). This requires an eager listener and knowing when your audience has had enough of you talking. I also do this in written form (e.g., my trip write-ups, or this post here).

Pausing to list the main takeaways - Before I queue up another book or podcast, I ask myself what the main takeaways were. It takes 30 seconds at most and I also ask myself how, if at all, anything I’ve learned will change my thinking about the world. The brief reflection is easy to implement but also easy to forget.

Repeat

ChatGPT summaries - I’ve only done this very recently and have had mixed success. After reading a book, I’ve asked ChatGPT to provide me a 1-sentence summary, a 1-paragraph summary, and a 5-paragraph summary. It takes me a few short minutes to read the responses and I can quickly tell if the summaries are accurate. This works best for very popular books and of course would fail at any new writing that was released after ChatGPT was trained. It’s also pretty fun to ask ChatGPT to make a haiku or limerick summarizing what I just read.

Reframe

Multi-modal consumption - I’ve done this recently after learning about Richard Francis Burton’s quest to discover the source of the Nile River from an NPR Fresh Air interview. I was so fascinated by his life that I found another podcast about him and eventually got the book written by the interviewee. There was a lot of overlap in the material, but there was also a lot of new things I learned. I had a similar strategy in college when reading Supreme Court case rulings, which were dense and hard to parse. Rather than just read the text, I’d watch YouTube videos of law school professors discussing the same material for a different context. Reading the text afterward gave me a better appreciation and I was able to form my own thoughts.

Book reviews - Most of the books I read are pretty popular, so there’s often a book review from the NY Times or another publication. Reading a human perspective on the material provides a whole new dimension of appreciating the work and not something I trust AI to do (for now).

Reduce

Cut back on media - Finally, the biggest thing I could do to retain more may be to simply consume less information. There’s a limit to how much I can queue up before listening becomes just hearing.

* I trimmed down how much music I listen to years ago when I realized that my rate of learning about the world outside my bubble reduced to a trickle after college. These pockets of ‘idle time’ were great opportunities to learn something new instead of playing a song again. Now, whenever I do listen to music, I feel I get a lot more enjoyment out of it than before!