How to remember what you read | Nishant Kasibhatla

my name is Nishan kasib batla I'm a Grandmaster of memory and a Guinness record holder I'm also a professional speaker now when people hear that you know I'm a Guinness record holder or a Grandmaster of memory the first thing is they somehow assume that I was born with a great memory I mean which is kind of you know it's it's normal that people would assume that but the thing is I was born with a terrible memory in fact when I was in primary school I almost failed my uh the end of the year examinations so

I knew that I had to do something to improve my memory and of course what I did was I started something really small I started memorizing five-digit numbers just to you know exercise my brain and I started memorizing 10 digits 15 digits and then I came to know that there's something called as the Indian book of records and if you're watching from India or if you are from India probably you heard about the limco book of records so I saw that there's a guy who memorized a thousand digit numbers and I'm thinking holy cow know

how is it even possible because I could not even memorize 100 digits so that was kind of a starting point for me so I kind of kind of push myself and with a lot of practice with a lot of dedication with a lot of uh exercises and I actually broke that and that and then I continued my journey went to the world memory championships became a grandmas of memory and then much later uh broke against record and a lot of people asked me hey is it something that you're born with or something that you trained

for and I said I trained for this they said okay can you teach it to us so that's how you know the teaching part really started and U uh my workshops or my Keynotes or my courses or my YouTube channel so this is my way of showing my journey you know I went from an absolute uh lousy memory to Breaking the Guinness record and here's a very important message if I can do it probably you can do it too but the reason I say probably is because I don't know what kind of dedication you'll have

I don't know what kind of practice you're going to do but if you use the right techniques if you use the right amount of dedication and if you're have if you're committed about it absolutely you could be starting with absolute zero confidence about your memory but in a month in a couple of months if you use the right techniques you can definitely be much better I mean maybe I don't know you can even be a grandmas of memory just like the way I did so that's in a nutshell you know my story see many times

a lot of people they struggle with retention when they're reading and pretty much it happens because they might be ignoring some fundamental principles the way I call them and let me just give you some of them here so the I see reading especially since we're talking about retention for reading I see reading as a multi-step process you know it's not reading is not like you know you open the book you read it you close the book and then boom yeah I learned it I've learned it and that's not the way it works but unfortunately a

lot of people really do that so what is the multi-step process I'm talking about the first thing is pre-reading before you begin the process of reading you must do something which I call it as pre-reading now what that means is you just quickly browse through what is the information that you're about to read now the objective of the pre-reading is not really to understand anything or even to remember anything is just kind of you know setting you in the mood of reading you know kind of gauge the difficulty of the material so get yourself familiarized

with the concept of what is it that you're about to read so just that maybe two or three or maybe four minutes depending on the how much amount of information that you're reading for that session that actually gives you a huge advantage over people who just boom jump into reading so that's the first step which is pre do not ignore that that's a bad thing if you do that the second thing is actually reading now of course everyone does it you do it uh reading so the The Twist here is when you are reading make

sure you're focusing on two very important aspects number one you're reading with attention number two you're reading for comprehension now do not mix reading with scrolling and that's what happens a lot of time these days you know you've got a you're reading and then you you have your phone nearby and then once you pick up the phone you start scrolling it could be Instagram it could be YouTube doesn't really matter what it is but the thing is when you're are not focusing and know you're are messing up big time on retention you can't really retain

the information so you pay attention and you read with an intention to comprehend that's what reading is and here comes one of the most important Concepts what you do after reading now reading is not just read and then stop with it you need to do what I call as post reading so after you read you know pause and ask yourself okay what is it that I've learned today give some work to your brain because if you don't test yourself then it's very likely that you might forget the information pretty soon when I say pretty soon

it could be an hour after you read so get into the habit of uh recalling what is it that you've learned so when you combine pre-reading with reading with postreading I mean you're really covering some of the fundamental principles of reading and that'll actually uh set you an advantage your others who don't use this or use all these steps actually okay so let's talk about the importance of focus importance of concentration while reading now I see memory as a three-step process I call them the three Rs of memory the first R is registration now registration

is the process of storing information into your brain so when you're reading you're storing information into your brain that's the first rart the second rart is retention retention is how long can you hold the information in your brain and of course the third R is recall recall is your ability to bring out the information when you need it now here's how focus is absolutely critical for the three hours because number one if you don't Focus you can't register well if you don't register well you can't retain well and if you can't retain well you can't

recall well so if you want to improve your recall you have to focus at the right from the start so that's how important focus is so don't take it for granted work for it and make sure you focus that's going to be highly rewarding for you in the process of not only memory but generally in your life as well so one of the simple when especially when it comes to reading one of the very simple things is just before you begin the process of reading ask yourself a very simple question and the question is this

am I in the right place for reading right now in other words is the place that I'm reading right now conducive for reading for the next 15 minutes for the next 30 minutes or for the next uh 1 hour so just asking that question will make sure that you clean up your room a little bit or maybe you know take away the distracting elements in your room or maybe you want to shut the door or do something just ask yourself is this the right environment for reading and that alone will actually help you to make

sure that the reading session will go with less distraction or maybe you'll come to a time where you'll have absolutely zero distractions one of the other things that you might want to really pay attention is changing the way you read when you approach different kinds of material you know it's not like one technique for all let's say for example you're reading textbooks uh compared to reading a novel or compared to reading a technical document so yeah your reading style has to definitely change you can't be using one technique for all and the the reason is

because all these way all these different documents are written in different manner so let's take for example textbooks you know for textbooks the absolute critical thing you should be really doing is pre-reading like I already talked about you know preading is a very important concept let's say for example you have a textbook that is 300 Pages now a lot of times what happens is people uh open the textbook they read the first chapter and then they read the second chapter then they the third chapter now my suggestion is spend one hour and you try to

do pre-reading for the whole textbook now what you do you mean by that is you know look at the chapters and go into each chapter even before you begin the year before read the first chapter read the first chapter read the important elements of that just browse through it go to the next chapter go to the next chapter now again if you don't understand anything that's okay if you don't remember anything that's okay the objective of this is to see what is there what is the scope of the whole textbook and how each uh chapter

is linked with the next chapter because that understanding actually help you to have better memory better comprehension later on when you actually get into the reading so that's about uh textbooks uh the second thing is let's say novels for example now for novels definitely don't do pre-reading because that's going to kill the joy you don't want to pre-read and you know know the plot beforehand so for novels I think probably the best technique is you know find yourself in a place where you can really chill relax enjoy the process of reading that's all I can

say for novels now when it comes to technical documents ments now that's a little bit of complicated stuff because most probably you're reading something for the first time in your life so you really don't have much knowledge about that information so for reading technical documents one of the techniques that I talk about is you read the first component or the first unit or the first section of that pause and ask yourself okay if I were to rephrase this in my own words how would that look like so finishing one section asking yourself how can I

rephrase it in my own own words actually helps you to uh look at the document in a much better fashion so again you need to change the way you read for different types of information and also it also depends on the objective now are you reading just to gain understanding or are you reading for examinations so it also depends on you know how much Focus how much attention how much testing you need to do yourself to make sure you uh pass that objective that you have in front of you when it comes to improving a

memory one of the other important aspect that you should keep in mind is the importance of visualization uh whether you're reading or whether you're simply remembering doesn't really matter visualization plays a very important role so let me ask you a question go back to your school days do you really remember everything you learned from your school the probably the answer is no it's impossible right but probably you remember one or two concepts where your teacher helped you to visualize for example in my own life I still remember the way the teacher my teacher explained the

concept of you know uh every action has an equal and opposite reaction now that just a phrase it doesn't mean anything for a young child who's learning that concept for the first time but my teacher explained the concept with the help of a rocket you know the rocket going up there's thrust of the engine so every action has equal and opposite reaction and just like that not only I understood everything but I remember that for the rest of my life so again in your life you might have remembered some Concepts simply because your teacher or

your any person who helped help you to learn help you to visualize that so I mean that's also probably why you've heard this thing before right uh a picture is worth a thousand words so why do you say that because why do we say that because whatever you see in a picture format your brain tends to remember that information for a long time now how do we use this in reading now this is a tricky thing because it also depends on what kind of information that you're reading if you're reading things that are easy to

visualize let's say simply example let's say I'm talking about photosynthesis in photosynthesis you know you have the leaves you have the sun you have the roots all of these things are pretty easy to visualize so when you're reading don't just read it like you know just a drab text no visualize you know the sun rays falling on the leaves and the water is being going into the roots you know just try to see visualize that that will actually help you to remember better now what if it's not easy to visualize so for that I would

suggest that that you know try to organize the information into a picture format you know it could be a flowchart it could be a mind map for example or draw some icons or draw some little pictures to help you visualize so the I mean ultimately whether you end up visualizing or not the very act the very effort you put in trying to visualize makes the whole learning process a fun process so the question you need to ask yourself is okay how can I visualize this information it's okay if you failed answering that question but asking

that question is critical because sometimes we underestimate ourselves you know when you ask the question hey how can I visualize boom your brain might Supply an answer for that so yeah try asking that question when it comes to reading I think one of the very important U uh element that many people are worried about whether I'm doing right or wrong is the concept of note taking note taking is a very important concept it actually can help you to not only to organize your notes but also if done right it can also help you with Recall

now here's a fundamental question that you must ask yourself when you're taking notes is my note taking only organizing the information or is it really aiding me in the process of recall is it helping me to internalize information so let me you I mean there again not taking is a whole big concept so I'm just going to give you maybe a couple of examples so simple ideas of how you could organize your notes so first technique it's called the outline method now it might look boring but it really works what is an outline method outline

method is pretty simple now before that let me tell you typically how people take notes now I worked with students I worked with people all over the world and I've seen people taking notes now what happens is the typical notes look like this they write a sentence and write another sentence and write another sentence maybe a phrase maybe some keywords it's all a list of sentences or a list of words now that does not Aid you in recalling when you're doing the postprocessing of note taking so so a good technique would be use the outline

method now what's an outline method first of all on the top you write the topic and on the left column first you write the subheading the main topic and below that you write bullet points don't randomly write sentences write the heading and write the bullet points now why is it important so first of all first key idea then you got bullet points second key idea then you write the bullet points the third key idea bullet points why is that important because after you have done with the note taking when you want to test yourself all

you need to do is to go back to the notes and you cover up the bullet points and you ask yourself okay what is this all about what is the first point okay what did I write this kind of note taking will facilitate you to test yourself but if you're writing random sentences how do you test yourself uh you can't do that so outline method is very simple it might look boring but it's just a way of neatly organizing the information to facilitate recall at a latest stage that's one and probably the second one it's

a very popular technique it's called mind mapping now I have a slight Twist on mind mapping now mind mapping you know is you know you have the central idea on a in the central page on the center of the page and then you draw branches and the first uh point you put on the first Branch second Point put on the second branch and the sub points within each of these points you put in the lines around the branches so you definitely have seen a mind map before now one of the important concepts of Mind One

of the important elements of Mind map in fact there two now number one mind maps require you to draw colors you know use different colors to make it really appealing to the brain that's a great thing I'm not saying it's not a good thing the second element is draw pictures draw little cute pictures icons blah blah blah now here's the thing if you have colors at uh that that you can easily access if you can draw boom it's a good thing for you what about people like me I'm not carrying colors with me all the

time I can't draw I mean I I I'm I I I don't consider myself an artist in any measure so I can't really draw so a lot of times people think oh I don't have colors I can't draw so mind mapping is not for me well here's the good news so that's reason why I have a concept I call it as info mapping so again if you can draw if you can have colors go for it use it but if you don't don't be discouraged so what you do is you do exactly the same thing

like a mind map but you don't have to make it colorful you don't have to draw pictures the very process of you taking the information from the book and putting it in picture format that process itself will help you to internalize information and also just like I told you with the outline method you can cover up the branches of uh one of the branches and then you can recall okay what are the uh what are the key points what are the key lines on this thing and then you can slowly reveal and see whether you're

getting it right or wrong so again don't take notes just for the heck of it I would say take notes that actually will help you to recall better to help you to internalize what is it that you are learning if you ever started doing some research on memory or anything you definitely would have heard about a word called pneumonic devices or pneumonic techniques it might look like you know very technical sounding word but in if you want to put it in simple words nemonic devices are simply a way of converting or transforming the information that

you want to learn into an easier format that's all it is it's not like some scientific terminology it's just you take the information you reorganize it and try to make it make your life easier so I'll give a couple of examples which probably you aware of so how do you remember the colors of the rainbow you know most people they remember uh Roy G Biv you know so what you do you take out the first letters of all the colors so the red is the first color so you take out the r and you take

out Indigo the first letter is um sorry orange is the next one so O So Roy G B that's how you remember so you have the information you take out the first letters now you have just one small thing to worry about now for those of uh my friends watching from India Pakistan Nepal Bangladesh you definitely have remembered the colors of the rainbow in the other order now we don't know what the heck Roy G B is we remember it by Vib jar now what is vijar no one knows but we learn it from violet

indigo all the way to Red doesn't really matter but the point here is it's organizing the information that's one example and the another example is uh when you are learning uh you know the mathematical expression how do you solve a mathematical Expressions probably you heard about pdas or bodmas so depending on which part of the world you you studied so the same thing uh B is brackets o is operators D is division m is multiplication or pamas would be P's parenthesis you know E's exponents so it's the same thing you take out the first letters

and you try to recognize that or you could take the help of Rhyme now I don't know if you have heard this but if you want to remember which of the months in the calendar have 30 days and which has 31 you know we know February is an exception here so you probably heard about this rhyme 30 days had September April June and November now I that's how I learned it you know that's how my dad taught me that's what a lot of people in the world remember which months have 30 now again you take

the information you reorganize it and make your life easy so how can you use it since there's no want technique for pneumonics it's basically you look at the information that you have in front of you and ask yourself okay can I visualize it can I use the first letters can I use the part of Rhyme or can I use visualization for example let me give an example of visualization as a pneumonic device so let's say you want to remember the capital of Cuba is Havana how do you learn that so you can convert that information

into pictures for example Cuba I would think of because Cuba itself doesn't have a picture for me so I think Cuba as a cube it could be Rubik's Cube or some other Cube Havana I think of the word heaven and you could think of something else like a if you you know another word another language and Havana has a different meaning in your language yeah you take that so we have Cuba and we have Havana so Cuba is Cube Havana is heaven you just have to link them together in a fun way for example one

of one of the ways I learned it was I'm solving Rubik's Cube and suddenly I Sol it and I felt I was in heaven so that's it so when you think of what's capital of Cuba you think of the Rubik's Cube and then you sol it you in heaven oh haana so these are some of the examples and uh the the interesting thing is you'll have fun while doing it so definitely give it a try and see if you can reorganize it and make it easy for you with the help of rhyme with the help

of first letters with the help of visualization with the help of Association or what have you doesn't really matter so make your life easier by doing uh this kind of rearrangement so one of the question that I get is you know can can you use the pneumonics for remembering people's names yeah absolutely it it definitely does especially you know the rhyming like the Cuba Havana technique I talked about a lot of times you know people from India they can easily remember my name Nishan it's because it's a common Indian name but if I'm in a

different part of the world so they've not heard this word so the way I tell them is my name is Nishan sounds like Nissan you know the card Nissan now again yeah of course Nishant and Nissan they're not exactly sounding similar is just a way to trigger the actual word and also Mak your life a little bit easier so in fact not only names you can also use this for technical Jon anything that you are when you're reading something you come across something that you have not heard before that you have not known before it

could be name of a word name of a person name of a concept you can see can I visualize that and just by using that for example when I was uh learning how to speak English one of the first things I learned was to focus on vocabulary focus on actually speaking the English language with someone who is better than me so vocabulary English just like the way I did Cuba with Havana you can replace Cuba with one English word and haana with the meaning you can link them up as well so yeah just this has

has multiple uh uses not just for reading but also whenever you want to learn something you can use pneumonics when it comes to reading uh a lot of times you know probably they they read something about speed reading and stuff like that online and they get excited oh I want to read faster you know I'm reading too slow so can I can I make my life better should I read speed or not now that's a good question and of course reading faster will save you time will save you energy but the thing is this is

my take on speed reading the order of importance is this number one you work on Focus number two you work on comprehension only then worry about speed because your speed should not affect your comprehension now what's the point I can read 10,000 words per minute and then you ask me what do you learn I said ah I learned something that's not going to really help you that much right so your reading has to Aid your comprehension so so that means you need to really adjust your reading speed so again it can't be too slow because

sometimes if you're reading really slow that itself can get you distracted right and sometimes you're reading too fast you know you can you really uh mess up with your comprehension so don't worry too much even though I teach speed reading I know I have courses on that but that's not the one you should be focusing on if you're struggling with retention if you're struggling with Focus comprehension first focus on that and once you do that once you have logged that in then the next aim is reading faster so that comes later if you've been struggling

with retention especially when it reading while reading or otherwise uh there are actually some daily habits that you can incorporate to make your life easy now again these are this is what I do and I highly encourage you to do the same thing too and the very first thing especially when it comes to retention uh when it comes to reading is the first habit that you want to incorporate I would say is get into the habit of reading because unfortunately ever since we have the you know smartphones and you know all the digital Revolution a

lot of times people are not really reading that much you know one of the biggest things that I see uh which is really detrimental to your whole process of comprehension and learning and reading is people look at an article online and then they say oh it's a very long article I don't think if I have the time to do it so let me just bookmark it and then you bookmark it and then you just forget about all the bookmarks or uh you're reading something but you're not you're stopping it like a lot of people say

Hey you know I bought this book is it a good book or what book do you recommend so I recommend some book they buy the book and then what happens to the book that just book that book that book just becomes a you know attracting thing on the bookshelf now that reading book I mean buying books is not going to help you bookmarking the articles is not going to help you only thing that really helps you is the process of reading it and all that stuff so my suggestions habit number one is make it a

habit of reading every day because people have lost the uh the habit of that that you know they're not doing it that much so start with maybe 10 minutes you know every day 10 minutes I sit in a place where I'll not be disturbed and I'll read for 10 minutes with real attention with real comprehension so let me do that that's number one and the other habit is I mean uh do not underestimate the importance of pre-reading and postreading so one of the other habits that you must definitely incorporate in your reading is reading is

not a standalone process every time you read start with a pre-reading couple of minutes three minutes maybe and after reading do with the uh post reading which is you know trying to recall what is it that you have and the other habit thatth you are that you can definitely uh incorporate in your life is the importance of any kind of meditation or mindfulness practice now again it depend again meditation is a whole new science and I've got a whole video on that on my channel so uh it's it's a big thing so I'm not saying

use this meditation technique just chuse anything because meditation at the at the core with will actually help you to a person who is more aware who's more attentive who's more mindful now guess what where you'll be using all these things while reading when you're reading you have to be conscious you have to be present I mean you'll be conscious of course but you have to be present um and you should be with that in that flow and meditation can really help you so couple of again uh quick recall uh you have uh that make it

a make reading a daily habit use some kind of meditation or mindfulness practice I do every day 30 minutes from Monday to Friday now that's my practice has been doing it for more than 20 years now so 30 minutes every day I do it um I encourage you to do it as well and uh the other thing is uh postreading and pre-reading so these are some of the daily habits if you do it every day I can definitely say that even within as little as a week you will see a huge change in the way

you read in the way you understand in the way you focus and in the way you internalize the information and benefit from the reading that you're doing in in your life so definitely go for this now I'd like to leave you with this you know being a memory expert one of the most important questions I get all the time is hey how can I improve my memory now like I said memory is a three-step process you got retention you got uh sorry you got registration you got retention and You' got uh recall so at the

starting of all of that at the even before you do the registration the important element is pay attention in fact one of the most fundamental memory technique I can give you in your life is this pay attention because that really it might look very simple and I I know that if you are in school your teachers must have told you a million times in the class please pay attention and they were right it's just that we are not doing it especially in today's world with smartphones and you know all the distractions you know we are

not paying that much attention so pay attention and everything that I told you in this uh series here is actually going to be really helpful for you and the most important thing I like to tell you is this is a a journey so you don't have to become an expert in a day tomorrow you don't want to show up as okay you know I'm a different person no everything takes time you know even the longest journey starts with a single step so pick one that works for you maybe you want to start with pre-reading okay

get a hold of that get used to that and then make it a habit then you slowly add on something else you know maybe let me work on attention let me work on Focus then you work F work on comprehension then the post reading then the note taking it's a journey and slowly when you add new skills to Your Arsenal to your toolbx to your weapon box whatever you want to call that so that's going to really help you when you really reading something with you know with a big object like you know reading something

because you to give a presentation you're reading something because you to pass an exam so all these things will help you and then you can open your tool boox and say oh okay I'm reading a technical document boom I'll take this and I'm going to use it oh I'm just reading for fun okay you know what oh I'll take that tool and do that so you'll have an awareness and understanding understanding of what tool to use when but I would say take it as a journey and most importantly enjoy the process because probably you've learned

this before when learning is fun learning is easy so don't fret over learning if I know if you're really frustrated about learning break it down make it simple go piece by piece but definitely aim for having fun because when you're having fun you're actually solving most of the issues that people have when it comes to learning when it comes to recalling when it comes to memorizing information if you like to learn more from me all you need to do is to go to my YouTube channel there'll be a link down below somewhere and also I

have uh some courses online courses that you can take and uh also like I said I I'm a professional speaker so you can go to my website remember Nishant docomomo company to speak at your next event so I'll be do I'll be more than happy to see how I can help you with that so it's been great uh talking to you uh through this channel and uh I hope really get some valuable insights and most importantly action gets results any amount of reading any amount of watching any amount of listening is not really going to

help you that much so take something take a little bit apply it in your life and see the difference I wish you all the best in your journey