Incremental reading
Incremental reading is a system of tools and strategies used in assisting reading, learning and retention of written knowledge.
Incremental reading enhances the speed of reading, while simultaneously improving comprehension, applicability, and knowledge retention.
Incremental reading simplifies and accelerates the process of transforming written articles into knowledge that lasts for life.
Incremental reading uses spaced repetition to ensure high recall with minimal effort.
The general idea is to create a "funnel of knowledge", where the information from the web is converted into a personalized "selection of material", that is distilled into key highlights (extracts), that get transformed into active knowledge through cloze deletion, stabilized in memory, and ultimately applied creatively in problem-solving.
Incremental reading and spaced repetition were both pioneered by SuperMemo. Incremental reading was born in 2000. After two decades (2020), its adoption was still poor, but so was the adoption of SuperMemo and spaced repetition in the early 1990s. Spaced repetition exploded, and so will incremental reading at some point (see: Inevitability of incremental reading).
Incremental reading is implemented in SuperMemo for Windows (including SuperMemo 16 (freeware)).
See also:
- Incremental reading (5 min. video)
- Incremental reading step by step (3 min. introduction)
- How to read a book in an hour? (19 min. video)
- Advantages of incremental reading
- Disadvantages of incremental reading
- Why is incremental reading not popular?
- Incremental reading (manual)
- How can I read faster?
- Minimum definition of incremental reading (to avoid confusion with Zettelkasten, and other implementations derived from processing paper notes)
- Minimum definition of incremental reading (video) from Pleasurable Learning
- Reading the Internet: the first description of the rudimentary implementation of incremental reading in SuperMemo 9 (1999)
This glossary entry is used to explain SuperMemo, a pioneer of spaced repetition software since 1987

Figure: A typical snapshot from an incremental reading process in SuperMemo. While learning about leptin, the student extracts important portions of the text (in blue), and marks keywords that will be used to form questions that will enhance memory in the long term (in dark orange). The questions are reviewed along a spaced repetition schedule. See this video example for an explanation. The brain picture was taken from here