#46 Why I’m no longer reading non-fiction books digitally

Trigger warning: This post describes actions to books that some of you may find disturbing.

This summer, I did something I’ve never done before: annotate a book with a pen whilst reading. It marked the beginning of my decision to exclusively read non-fiction books in their physical form.

Why? I read a book on my Kindle whilst on holiday and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, as I came to the end, I faced a familiar feeling: incomplete retention of the content when I read a non-fiction book on the Kindle.

It prompted an experiment: I ordered the same book in print, started from page one with a pen in hand, and began marking, annotating, and writing down key takeaways. The result was a profound change in how I absorbed and retained knowledge.

My benefits

Reading it physically took significantly longer than in digital form, despite having already just read the book. A big part of that came from flicking back through each chapter whilst I was reading it, looking back for the most impactful information, and putting some of my thoughts down in words.

A Kindle allows you to navigate back through a book and highlight and annotate, but those are features I’ve always found quite clunky and never utilised. The key advantage of my new approach lay in easy access to the most impactful bits and, crucially, my personal notes on applying that knowledge to my own life.

What does the research say?

I’ve done this for a few books and am getting a lot more value from each book, so I decided to look through some academic studies on physical vs. digital reading and found some key advantages:

1. Comprehension - Reading comprehension outcomes are higher for printed texts.

2. Engagement and distraction: Digital environments tend to encourage shallow processing due to skimming, technology-induced distractions, and multitasking.

3. Concentration - Screens make readers less inclined to engage in what psychologists call ‘metacognitive learning regulation’, such as rereading difficult sections and checking how much one has understood along the way.

4. Tactile feedback and emotional connection - Readers tend to remember where in a physical book specific passages appeared, fostering a stronger mental connection.

Implementation idea

Consider whether your method of consuming information is optimal for getting the most value out of it. We each have our preferences, and digital may work better for some, so please reply and share your approach.

Best, Alex Joshi.

PS: Actually, I lied; I did, as a kid, write ‘property of Alex Joshi’ in my copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.’

On my bedside table:

• Blog post: The written word by Morgan Housel (link) - He wrote the ‘The psychology of money’, the book I read and annotated this summer.

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