Improving Enjoyment and Retention Reading Technical Literature

None of these are incorporated in molecular biology books and publications that I can find. But the answer was still there: visualize what I read. But not just visualize like the little diagrams of cellular interactions books usually give you – like stupid, over-the-top, Hollywood-status visualization. I had to make it dramatic. I had to mentally reconstruct the biology of a cell in massive, fast, and explosive terms.

I'm having the same problem with molecular biology right now, and I agree with the track you're taking. The issue seems to be the large amount of structure totally devoid of any semantic cues. For example, a typical textbook paragraph might read:

JS-154 is one of five metabolic products of netamine; however, the enzyme that produces it is unknown. It is manufactured in cells in the far rostral region of of the cerebrum, but after binding with a leukocynoid it takes a role in maintaining the blood-brain barrier - in particular guiding the movements of lipid molecules.

I find I can read paragraphs like this five or six times, write them on flashcards, enter them into Anki, and my brain still refuses to understand or remember them after weeks of trying.

On the other hand, my brain easily remembers vastly more complicated structures when they're loaded with human-accessible meaning. For example, just by casually reading the Game of Thrones series, I know an extremely intricate web of genealogies, alliances, locations, journeys, battlesites, et cetera. Byte for byte, an average Game of Thrones reader/viewer probably has as much Game of Thrones information as a neuroscience Ph.D has molecular biology information, but getting the neuroscience info is still a thousand times harder.

Which is interesting, because it seems like it should be possible exploit isomorphisms between the two areas. For example, the hideous unmemorizable paragraph above is structurally identical to (very minor spoilers) :

Jon Snow is one of five children of Ned Stark; however, his mother is unknown. He was born in a castle in the far northern regions of Westeros, but after binding with a white wolf companion he took a role in maintaining the Wall - in particular serving as mentor to his obese friend Samwell.

This makes me wonder if it would be possible to produce a story as enjoyable as Game of Thrones which was actually isomorphic to the most important pathways in molecular biology. So that you could pick up a moderately engaging fantasy book - it wouldn't have to be perfect - read through it in a day or two, and then it ends with "By the way, guess what, you now know everything ever discovered about carbohydrate metabolism". And then there's a little glossary in the back with translations about as complicated as "Jon Snow = JS-154" or "the Wall = the blood-brain barrier". I don't think this could replace a traditional textbook, but it could sure as heck supplement it.

This would be very hard to do correctly, but I'd love to see someone try, so much so that it's on my list of things to attempt myself if I ever get an unexpectedly large amount of free time.

How long have you been doing this for?

I've enjoyed the Mindhacks tip to write in books -- If you can see how to write it better, summarize it better, index it better, or organize it better, doing so is an active use of the information.

I always find it easier to motivate myself to research something if there's an immediate application. Sometimes this is an actual immediate application, such as reading an article on nutrition and thereby deciding it would be a good idea to buy a certain kind of food next time I'm at the store. But sometimes what I want to research doesn't have such a quick, visceral effect on my action, in which case manufacturing an immediate application is what I often find necessary to motivate myself.

To be specific, what I usually do is try to write an article on the subject. This seems to signal to my brain that there really is an immediate application to this research (using the information to write an article), but of course this is more of a hack than anything else, as not everything has a practical application (demonstrating a meaningful distinction), but everything can of course be made into an article (throwing the meaningful distinction of "does this have a practical application?" to the wayside, despite my brain feeling like the answer is "yes, this action I'm taking right now (writing the article) is the practical application!")

So yeah, I don't know whether you're sufficiently similar to me in this respect for this suggestion to be useful, but it does seem to be that this may be a common brain setting (feel motivation if there's a clear practical application for acquiring the knowledge, don't feel motivation if there isn't), and it also seems like what you're working on (reading highly detailed descriptions of mechanisms in molecular biology for the purpose of something far away in the future) may be just the sort of thing that one's brain may find boring because the practical application is not enough in near mode, and thus may benefit from the hack I've suggested (writing articles on the topic to give your brain something sufficiently visceral to grasp onto for motivation).

Thanks for posting this and I wish you the best in your seemingly valuable quest.

One key point: are you using spaced repetition? The spacing and testing effects are valuable memory tools, indeed, and you would be remiss if you did not at least try it. I have some biology Anki cards here to get you started in case you are interested: http://andrewtmckenzie.com/sr/#biology. Also feel free to PM me.

Jonathan Hayward's An Abstract Art of Memory describes a similar process of coming up with memorable images for material where you actually need to absorb new ideas, not just arbitrary information like phone numbers which traditional mnemonics are useful for.

Spaced Repetition is only the beginning. http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/assessing-the-evidence-for-the-one-thing-you-never-get-taught-in-school-how-to-learn

Here's How to Read - on page 2 there's a table that lists all of what this guy recommends, use that to evaluate if the rest of the document is worth your time. http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf

Also, if you know anyone who has gone to CFAR, start PMing them for the material on Propogating Urges. http://rationality.org/schedule/

Use some of the best-tested principles in experimental psychology to reinforce the behaviors you want to want, and avoid punishing yourself for doing things you want to do again. Pay attention to the immediate rewards and punishments you’re already doling out to yourself without noticing. If you always feel anxious when you think of a slow-moving project, you may be training yourself not to think about it at all. Connect the intermediate steps toward your goal to your natural enthusiasm for the result.

What you're doing to make reading papers fun is apparently something that Andrew Critch is very very good at, so keep it up, Critch Jr.

I read a lot of technical material for my job (physicist) and find that trying to make it as 'active' as possible is key to making it enjoyable. I made a list of actions that make it active, things like 'visualize the material' or 'draw a concept map' or 'make a prediction about the material, keep reading, and correct the prediction' or 'what do you already know about this material' etc etc., and find that going down the list in a random fashion has helped make it more interesting and engaging.

How to enjoy talking about it, retain more and enjoy more: read aloud.

I don't do this systematically, but sometimes there's something in the material that spontaneously causes me to come up with such a mental image.

An example from some time back, when I was studying for what I think was either a Data Communications or Operating Systems course:

In the dispatcher/worker model for e.g. a web server, there's a single dispatcher thread doing an infinite loop, waiting for incoming requests and then handing them off to worker threads that sleep until awakened by the dispatcher's task.

This brings to my mind a vast underground library with an undead lich standing in the front hall. At his feet is a vast pile of bones. When living visitors come in and ask to see a book, the lich uses his magic to animate a fresh skeleton from the pile of bones. The skeleton goes to get the book for the visitors and then falls back apart at the lich's feet. Any visitors to the library must wait for the skeletons to bring the books to them: for whatever reason, they are forbidden from fetching the books themselves.

Correction: "tsuyoku", not "tsukoyu".

I have found that, at least for myself, once I spend a lot of time studying something (at least 3 months) in depth, it automatically becomes interesting. The key is only to push myself to get past that initial 'inertial' barrier in my mind.

I used a similar thing when cramming for selected topics in plant physiology. The Photosynthesis, for example, we had to draw the cycles etc. (and I realize it is way simpler, but it was only tangentially related to our specialty.) I still remember (10 years later) how...

...there was a desert across which they had to post Electrons (small hard balls). At the left border of the desert and in the small oasis in the middle of it, two outposts of very dedicated dystrophics stood. They could not move far out into the wilderness, but they had catapults which sent Electrons to the right, so that they eventually reached the right border of the desert. Aliens in blindingly golden ships threw them food packages labeled '620', '340', etc. After they ate, the dystrophics could load The Electron into the catapult. The desert was a bit sloped, which helped.

...then my study mates told me that was insane... and Travels of The Electron were discontinued.

This post reminds me of ADHD. Here is a quote from a 2009 Washington Post article :

According to the theory, the trouble is a lack of motivation as well as a deficit of attention: People with the disorder can't generate the same degree of enthusiasm as other people for activities they don't automatically find appealing.

ADHD has long been assumed to have something to do with low dopamine. So perhaps something to raise dopamine levels would be helpful. Some people claim that taking L-tyrosine, a dopamine precursor, can raise dopamine levels and help people pay attention to things that would otherwise not hold their attention.

I have a basic question -- why do you want to stuff all that technical minutae into your memory?

We now live in the age of the great amount of information available at our fingertips. If I don't know something specific, but know the context and how to ask for what I want, in a few seconds Google will tell me. Lookup is fast and cheap, knowing how and where to find the information is almost as good as knowing the information itself.

Given this, I think the focus should be on understanding how the specific systems that you're interested in work in general, not on the particular details. Details you can always look up when you need them as long as you understand the broad outlines and the context. If you know, say, that insulin causes the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream into the cells, you don't need to keep in your memory the fact that this happens through GLUT-4 transporters -- when you need to drill down into particulars, such information is easy to find.

In a way that's a variation of old advice: focus on understanding, not on memorization.

Essentially, this is an issue of managing complexity. That's a huge topic and I don't want to delve into it here, but brute force (as in, whacking the bits with a spaced repetition hammer until they fit into your brain) is rarely a good approach.