The annotations that make revision more effective are not highlights or underlines. Those indicate what felt important on the first read. The annotations for revision indicate:
First read: - Circle: a concept you do not fully understand yet - Star: a concept that surprised you or changed how you think - Question mark: something that seems incomplete or that raises a question
Subsequent reads: - Date + note: when a circled concept becomes clear, note the context that clarified it (“understood this after the database migration incident in March”) - Exclamation: when a starred concept appeared in your own work (“applied this in the payment service redesign”)
The annotations build a personal record of how your understanding evolved. The starred concepts are what to focus the quarterly exercises on — they are the frameworks you have internalised enough to apply, but not so completely that review is trivial.