Last year I realized that I was not what you would call a well read person. Most of the books I read were from the fantasy fiction genre. I just couldn’t or rather wouldn’t pick up books if they didn’t have witches and wizards.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read and learn from other books. I just felt very uncomfortable picking them up. There was also another problem that was bugging me. Even the books which I did read, I couldn’t recollect much of it or even speak a few sentences about it coherently. After a bit of introspection, I realized what the issues were.
A) It was not that I didn’t remember the details. The real issue was I remembered way too many details. Or rather it was only the details I remembered. I was missing the forest for the trees.
B)The reason I was not picking up books other than fantasy fiction was I had become too comfortable with the genre. Reading something else was like walking in an unknown territory. I just felt very uneasy.
Now that I had a fair idea of what my problem was I decided to tackle it. That decision led me to googling books on how to read better. There were a couple of books that came up and I zeroed in on the book How to get more out of your reading by Norman Lewis to start my betterment journey.
The book is divided into four parts and in the coming paragraphs I am going to talk about what I learnt from part-I, how I implemented the advice and what the result was.
Reading is an experience: The depth of the level at which a person read will define the richness of this experience. As the author writes,
“Just reading” robs you of the experiences that are intellectually and emotionally enriching.”-Norman Lewis in How to get more out of your reading
Recall is not all about memory: Recall is more dependent on the level of involvement and the richness of emotional and intellectual experiences one has while reading. This I have experienced. I can distinctly remember the scenes in a story which made me feel deeply.
Skillful reader dominates the material: This he does by actively looking for something whenever he reads. More importantly he/she knows what he is looking for and what to do once he has got it. Basically he/she reads with a purpose.
How to dominate the material: By analyzing and synthesizing. Analysis comprises of breaking the writing into sections. While synthesizing means determining what is the relationship between these sections and how do they playout in overall terms.
I experimented the above learning on the story The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond. I picked it up because it was a short story and I had wanted to read it since a long time. I purchased the book on Kindle and I was ready to dominate the story.
I first decided what I wanted to get out of it a.k.a my purpose. My purpose was to be able to know what happened in the story, how it impacted the lives of the characters and what was my learning from it.
As I was reading on my Kindle I could not use different colors for highlighting. So I just highlighted the items relevant for determining what happened and how it impacted part of my analysis.
Once I had completed reading the story I went back to the highlighted parts and jotted them down. I then had very good amount of material to decide what learnings I could take from the story.
My level of material absorption was definitely better. Knowing what to look for did keep me motivated to go on. It felt like I was on a mission. I still need to try this on materials that are difficult to read but it definitely feels amazing to be able to recall main ideas and articulate them in a coherent manner.
Determine what is the end goal you would like to achieve by reading the book or the material
Divide the book in sections relevant to your goal
Determine how the sections function in relation to each other
Summarize the whole thing