 So you're trying to read for class but you can never seem to remember what you read. How can you make sure that your attention gets a little bit better? Let's talk about it. All right guys, welcome to the MD Journey channel, completely dedicated to helping you succeed on your medical journey. My name is Lakshman, I'm an internal medicine physician and resident in training. If you're new here, we make videos to help you become a doctor, but doing it with more effective study tips, productivities. So if you're new here, definitely consider hitting that like button, subscribe button. But today I want to talk to you about how to remember what you read. I get questions about this all the time through comments or emails saying, I'm trying to go through my syllabus material super dense. I have no idea what's important or what's not. And my retention just falling, like what should I do? Now for an example, to make this video just straight to the point, I'm gonna use the ventilator book, which is a book that a lot of residents will use to help them understand how to manage ventilators and ICU and take care of a really sick patient. Now I could go through this book in a very kind of basic traditional way and know that there's a good chance I'm gonna forget a lot of it. But as a physician in an ICU, that's not really an option. I can't really have the luxury of saying, well, sorry, you forgot that page. Ideally I need to remember what this book tells me so that way I can manage a ventilator or a really sick ICU patient. And so to make sure that I can remember what I'm reading here, one of the things I'll do is have a very systematic approach of how I go through any new material, whether it's a journal article, a textbook, a syllabus. And so the same applies for you studying for your classes. Now the traditional way of going through a new piece of material is kind of doing a stop and go kind of method where you go through material and like, oh, that's important. Maybe I should write that down or make a flashcard about it or something. And then you go back into learning and reading the tables and just kind of a big of a time waster as you're transitioning your energy between obtaining the information and then somehow trying to process it as well as creating a quiz material. There's a lot of messiness that goes with it. So one of the things I recommend to a lot of my coaching students on how to make their reading more effective is to be able to go through their systems of their syllabus much more effectively and with minimal friction. And so that includes going to the syllabus lecture in one pass without making so many stops and goes. And so while you may have the desire of saying, oh, that's important, let's take notes on it, instead I'll say, well, if you think it's important, maybe just create a mark on the side of the page next to kind of the line that that piece of information is. So if you're reading an important paragraph, maybe just put a star at that paragraph and continue to do this throughout your lecture. Now you've been able to get through the material, ideally in kind of a skimming quick phase. So you can say, okay, what's important? What's standing out? And now you can go back and find all those stars and markings that you've made throughout your syllabus to say, okay, these are the pieces of information that consider to be important. Now, once you've identified what's important, the next question, how can you make sure you retain that information? The answer to that is to make it as active as learning as possible. And so while you may just read it or try to process it and just rewrite it and regurgitate it on your textbook or your Word document, instead of what I actually encourage you to do is maybe write a question next to your marking or write a question on your Word doc that refers to that piece of information. So if you're reading about a patient with a specific type of liver disease, phrase that statement into the form of a question and put it into your notes. And once you've identified what you consider to be important in the lecture, the next question is how can you make it more unlikely that you're gonna go ahead and retain it? And the answer to this is by making that important statement and recreating it in the form of a question. So whether you're learning about hypertension, or heart failure, or liver disease, and you have a specific piece of information, ask how can I go ahead and create this piece of information that I normally would just like type in to my notes or my notebook, how can I create it in the form of a question? Now, by the time this video comes out, video on how to take notes is either come out or it will come out pretty shortly. But I talk about a method called a Q and E method which basically structures your notes in a question and answer format. And so if you haven't, go ahead and check that video down below if it's already out. And once it is out, I'll go ahead and also link it below in the description. And once you create your question, you can obviously add it to your word doc or your notebook. Sometimes I'd also go ahead and actually put it physically in my syllabus next to that paragraph that I refer to. And that way, when I'm doing my review, if I wanted to, I could actually go ahead and go through the different pages of that lecture and simply see, I answer all those questions in the margin. If so, I don't really need to read that paragraph. I've pretty much got the gist. But if I can't, then I know I can just quickly shift my eyes over and get that important information pretty quickly. Now, this is really just the first part of increasing your attention when you read. Honestly, the next part is the most important and that's having a very predicted and structured review schedule. Most people will typically not review what they read. They'll kind of review what they've created from their reading. That's why it's important that you create your notes in that Q and E meta that I mentioned through your notebooks or your word processor. Regardless of how you choose to review, it's important that you actually have a predicted schedule on one. You're gonna review lecture one, lecture 10, lecture 11. So that way, when you look at your schedule, you can say, okay, this hour block is dedicated for that lecture that I learned about a week ago. And it's for me to challenge myself in saying, can I answer those important questions once again? So you can refer to your notes or you can refer to your physical text if you chose to write your answers in there. The approach doesn't really matter, but having that structured time that's saying, I'm gonna go ahead and go back to the material and seeing if I can answer those important questions is really where a good portion of your attention comes from. And as a bonus tip, one of the things I really enjoy doing is I hate kind of going from start to finish when I'm reviewing a text. So for example, I need to understand what's on page three of this book as much as I need to understand what's on page 200. And so usually when I would create my study schedules, I would do kind of an outside in approach, meaning that on day one, if I could do four lectures, then I would do two lectures from the front and two lectures from the back. And each day I would kind of progressively move towards the middle and then move back towards the outside if I had enough time to review for a second time. This way I was reviewing some old material where it's been quite some times as I've learned it, as well as the material that I had just recently learned and make sure that I know both the old and the new equally well. But to review guys, to make sure that you're getting the most bang for your buck when you're reading, step number one is to make sure you're systematically going through the material as quickly as possible without so many stop and goes. So that includes marking topics that you consider to be important, that way you can come back and identify them later. Step two is to go to these important pieces of information and change them in the form of a question. Step three would be to take these questions and include them in your word processor notes or your physical notebook or on the actual text itself. And step number four is to have a very predicted review schedule that way you know what hour of the week that you're gonna review which lecture. And as a bonus tip, try that outside in approach to have a very authentic kind of review process that's gonna feel much more natural like the actual exam instead of going all the way in a chronological order. But that is basically my step-by-step approach that I use as a med student and I use in college. Hopefully it helps you guys out. If you guys do have more questions about kind of how to go through your reading material more effectively, drop those comments down below. If you have more questions about other things regarding studying and productivity in medical school also drop those down below. And while you're there, check out the details and the description so you can get some of the free resources as well as some of the eBooks and courses that we have including that level up your studying course which is three weeks to help you not only help you read better and get that information but also make sure you're gonna crush your exam by getting that long-term retention. So if you wanna check out that three week program that'll also be linked down below. That guys is basically it for this video. If you somehow made it to the end and didn't hit that like button make sure you support the channel and also let me know that you enjoy this content by hitting that like button and also consider subscribing if you haven't done so already. With that being said, thank you so much for the support. Hopefully I've been able to help you on your journey. Thanks for being a part of mine. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.