How to improve retention of information

I've always been terrible at retaining knowledge and I think it's a skill I need to work on. From all the info I consume in a given day e.g. Financial times etc, I probably only retain 30%-40% of it. I have a tendency to disregard info or switch off, if I don't find the info interesting. A few questions:

  1. Do you think retaining 30-40% of all you consume in a day is normal?
  2. Do you have any advice on how to improve this?
  3. How do you turn from a passive consumer of information to an active one?

    I've decided to pick up the following books:

Mastering the market cycle - Howard Marks Blink - Malcolm Gladwell Thinking Fast & Slow - Daniel Kahneman Valuation by McKinsey

These are well regarded books but I don't want them to be read today and the lessons forgotten tomorrow. One of the ideas I had was to write notes on what I learnt from these books, would anyone recommend that?

Also any book recommendations would be great! Thanks in advance.

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