Dive into the rabbit hole on Wikipedia.
SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recall, Review. It is a more planned, structured reading method to improve reading comprehension and information retention. “Survey” describes the process of pre-reading some information, skimming through it to get a rough understanding of what’s going on. By then asking yourself questions, you’re creating curiosity and perhaps some expectation that now you crave an answer, creating motivation for a proper read. Your reading process is now more active, as you’ve already got a rough idea of what’s going on and want to answer your questions. After reading, try to recall as much of the information you’ve just read. You can use the survey and question part for guidance. Finally, review the information by connecting it to existing knowledge and explaining what you’ve read in your own words.¹
Granted, when I did this for the first few times, it felt a bit pretentious and even silly. Like, yeah, I know what I just read. Why go through these weird steps? It also disrupted my normal reading flow, as I had gotten very used to reading from cover to cover. Now I had to interrupt my reading for the survey, question, recall, and review parts. My personal approach is pretty much like what I’ve just described, only that the review part includes me writing down information into Obsidian and creating flashcards for my spaced repetition system, so I’ll automatically review the content in the future, helping me remember it. As unnatural as it may feel at first, I’m convinced that I remember more from things I read now than I used to. That might be because of the spaced repetition as well, but SQ3R is what makes the spaced repetition part of my reading process, so it’s still a win for me.