The Note-Card Retention System
Turn passive reading into lasting knowledge with mark, transfer, and spaced revisit
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 72%
Retention is treated as an active process with three simple steps plus deliberate review. First, you always read with a writing tool so that any passage tugging on your curiosity gets underlined and the page corner folded. Second, at the end of each chapter or book you go back through those marked passages and transfer the most important to a notebook or note cards. Third, and most importantly, you revisit those cards once or twice a week, cycling through them, re-reading and re-ranking by importance. The mechanism works because physically writing something ingrains it more than digital highlighting, and because constant spaced revisiting is the only way material stays top of mind. Without the revisit loop, marking passages alone does nothing.
Origin
Jim Mullane, who runs the Get Better With Books Instagram page, developed this analog three-step process for himself, citing his own note cards for Ryan Holiday's Ego Is the Enemy kept on his windowsill and reviewed weekly.
Core principles
- 01Retention requires active, not passive, engagement with a book
- 02The physical act of writing ingrains a message more than digital highlighting
- 03You will not remember something unless you deliberately revisit it
- 04Importance is re-ranked over time as your understanding changes
How to run it
- 1
Read with a writing tool in hand
Always keep a pencil or highlighter with you while reading. Every time a passage makes you pause or tugs on your curiosity, underline it and fold the corner of the page down.
Pro tip Fold the corner even when you highlight, so you can find marked pages fast without flipping through the whole book.
- 2
Revisit marked passages at the end
At the end of each chapter or the whole book, depending on the book, go back through everything you underlined and take time to digest the important parts.
Watch out Skipping this step means your marks stay buried in the book and are never processed.
- 3
Transfer the keepers to cards
Take what you underlined and jot it into a notebook or onto a small stack of three or four note cards, one book at a time.
Pro tip Note cards are portable and can be left somewhere visible, like a windowsill or desk.
- 4
Cycle through the cards weekly
Once or twice a week, when you have free time, re-read the stack of cards. Re-rank them by importance, keeping the vital ones on top and demoting ones that matter less now.
Pro tip Treat the re-ranking as a signal of your evolving understanding, not a chore.
Watch out Without constant revisiting you will not retain the material no matter how well you marked it.
In the wild
Mullane read Ryan Holiday's Ego Is the Enemy with a pencil, underlining and folding down corners as he went. Afterward he distilled the key passages onto a small stack of note cards and kept them on his windowsill. At least once a week he cycles through them, re-reading, deciding what deserves more focus and what to move to the back of the pile. The deliberate weekly review keeps the book's core ideas top of mind long after finishing it.
→ The book's key concepts stayed retrievable and top of mind weeks and months after the single read.
Common mistakes
Marking passages but never revisiting
Underlining and folding corners feels productive, but without the weekly card review the material is not retained. The revisit loop is the load-bearing step.
Relying on passive consumption
Listening to an audiobook while doing chores is passive; retention drops sharply compared to physically marking and writing out passages from a book.
Is it for you?
Best for
Non-fiction and self-development readers who want to actually apply what they read.
Not ideal for
Fiction or narrative books consumed purely for enjoyment where retention is not the goal.
From the transcript
“the process that I go through it's it's just three simple steps number one is I always read with a pencil or a highlighter”
“the most important thing is you have to revisit them constantly right there's no way that you're gonna remember something if you don't constantly remind…”
From the episode
How To Get Better With Books - Jim Mullane - #177
Jim Mullane