heres how i think about it i read information that i might not always remember the exact details of what i read but what im doing is building an understanding of an idea the more you learn about something the more you learn how much you dont know about that thing you should be coming up with a lot of i dont knows  there are a ton of people out there who seem like they have all this knowledge and understanding but what they really have is a bunch of facts memorized andor siloed knowledge i might not have a great immediate recall of things i just read but if i found it interesting i know its in my brain somewhere i constantly am reminded of things i read somewhere am able to make connections i hadnt realized yet and think of things in fairly unique and creative ways  its like this if you gave me a recipe for how to make tomato sauce to read for 15 minutes and then tested my memory for accuracy to the recipe id fail every time but if you just asked me to make some tomato sauce id make a great sauce because ive read a million articles and recipes and gained an understanding of how to do it not an exact step by step replication of something else