As I said in a previous post, one of my goals is to read more. I'm not looking to read more simply for reading's sake. I want to read for retention and read with the ability to recall. Here is what I've done to help me do so.

1. Copy Quotes Instead of Underlining. One of the things that I have seen many people do when reading is to underline, pin pages or highlight. Not that this is bad, but you have no way of being able to find that information quickly. Say you remember a quote from a book, you will most likely have to flip through good portions of the book in order to find it. By creating word documents for books, they instantly become searchable by your computer to track down topics quickly (faith, leadership, awesomeness, etc.).
   
2. Create a New Word Document for Each Book. I like creating a new word document for each book instead of keeping all my quotes in one document. It allows me to look through specific books quickly and easily, as well as organizing the books more along author and content as opposed to a "good thoughts" document that could end up being pages long. Some books I have read have contained over 10+ pages of notes. To put this in one document would be WAY too long.
3. Research Paper Quote. Within the word document, I make sure that each quote is ready to go into a research paper, even though it most likely never will (i.e. Author, Title, pg.). Though odds are against me that I will use it in this manner, I can be sure that when I need to quote it, I am doing so accurately and correctly. You may think it sounds tedious, but if you copy the author, title and pg. prefix, all you need to do is paste it once you have copied your latest quote.
   
4. Read Different Books. If I'm not intentional, I'll find myself reading books that are very similar to each other. I try to alternate topics whenever I start a new book and try to alternate between old and new when reading through the same topic again. (i.e. New Jesus Book. New Leadership Book. Old Jesus Book. Old Leadership Book). This keeps me from getting caught up in one exclusive topic, and thinking that only new books or old books are worth reading.

Leaders are readers. Read away.