how to consume more of what i read
11 MIN READ
Reading Strategies
Reading Efficiently by Reading Intelligently
We all need to be able to read well, whatever job we do. Whether we're looking at a project plan, spider web page, trade journal, press release, electronic mail, or any other type of text – being able to read it efficiently and effectively is a primal professional person skill.
Possibly you read something that should be useful, but fail to find anything relevant in it? Do you have to re-read documents several times to empathise them? Or practise you sometimes struggle to remember what yous've read?
In this article and video, we await at a range of strategies for becoming a better reader. By carefully matching your approach to your fabric, and taking control of the reading process, y'all'll learn how to become the best results from the time and effort you put in – on both page and screen.
Click here to view a transcript of this video.
Reading in Impress vs. Reading Online
A 2018 Pew Inquiry Center survey shows that we increasingly read books in a range of formats and on a variety of devices – non just on paper. And chances are you subscribe to digital newspapers and magazines, or read spider web pages, email and social media every day.
However, the printed medium remains important, so our reading skills need to be flexible enough to cope with digital and physical formats.
Each has its pros and cons, and it'southward important to consider them when you lot're choosing something to read and when you're reading information technology.
Here are 4 key differences between reading printed and digital texts:
1. Authorization
It can be harder to approximate the quality of online information, peculiarly if the publisher'south or author'due south identity is unclear. Remember, digital texts may have been bailiwick to less editing, checking and reviewing than those in impress. Many of them, though, can really exist more than accurate, since they're much easier to correct and keep up to date.
two. Extras
Printed texts may be accompanied by illustrations, photographs and diagrams, while digital texts tin can employ many more than "added extras," including audio and video elements, quizzes, and links to other texts. These additions can enrich the reading process, but can also become distracting, or increase cerebral load.
3. Gild
Most printed texts are designed to be read sequentially. With digital texts, y'all can navigate every bit yous like, making it easier to find what you demand. Nonetheless, at that place'due south also more risk of missing something important, or of getting sidetracked by irrelevant cloth.
four. Engagement
While printed texts tin can exist underlined or highlighted, many digital ones are even easier to engage with. Past copying and pasting, adding virtual bookmarks, notes, and even sharing comments online, you tin handle the data improve. Simply exist selective with your annotations to prevent the writer's original ideas getting lost.
Tip:
When you're reading on a phone or some other digital device, apply technology to help raise the experience.
On an iPhone, for example, the Safari web browser has a "Reader mode." This strips out menus, ads, and other "ataxia," making it easier for you lot to focus on the text.
Several apps, including Aldiko and Wattpad, allow you to highlight primal passages, to get out notes every bit yous read, and to share them with other readers.
five Means to Read Faster and Read Smarter
Online or in impress, the post-obit five strategies can aid you to read more effectively.
1. Know What Yous're Reading – and Why
Earlier y'all begin, ask yourself iii questions:
- What is the purpose of the text? For example, is it to entertain, inform, explicate, or persuade?
- How useful is information technology? Is information technology relevant, accurate, impartial, current – or not worth reading?
- What are you lot reading it for?
Your answers will assistance you to select what to read, and to cull the well-nigh effective reading strategies. In the long run, you'll make meliorate use of your time, and empathize, think and utilize more of what you read.
And so, don't but dive direct in. Invest a few minutes in preparing to get the most from reading:
- Use the comprehend, championship page, introduction, and whatever other general information, to become an overall sense of the content and approach.
- Dip into the text here and there, to tune in to the author'due south tone of voice.
- Find any additional features that might assistance you to engage with the information.
- Read the Contents, look at how the information is organized, and commencement spotting the sections that will likely be most important for you.
These steps should ensure that you're reading something worthwhile, and are ready to tackle it in the most productive fashion. And you'll have a practiced idea about how "closely" y'all'll have to read the text.
2. Identify Primal Information
If you've decided that you don't demand to read something in item, find the quickest ways to extract the basics. Apply affiliate headings, abstracts and summaries. Look for illustrations and graphics. And focus on "user-friendly" features like fact boxes, bullet points, and FAQs.
It helps to know where to look for the central information. So spotting item structures in writing can help your reading exist even more efficient.
For example, a news commodity usually summarizes a story in the start few lines, and then adds layers of item, which you may decide yous can "skim read."
In an stance commodity, the important information is likely independent in the introduction and the summary, with supporting arguments in between. When you lot've read the start and end, you tin make up one's mind how much of the centre you need to explore.
A characteristic article tends to accept its most important data in the main trunk of the text, so you lot may decide it's best to start there.
Our article on Speed Reading has further help and advice for when a fairly depression level of detail is needed, and fourth dimension is tight!
Tip:
When you're reading digital texts, you can utilise the search tools in your browser or text editor to observe primal words or phrases.
At that place are besides many apps to speed up your reading. Spreeder lets you set your preferred screen size, paste in text, and control the speed at which it's displayed. Spritzlet shows web pages one word at a time, challenge reading speeds of up to ane,000 words per minute are possible. BeeLine Reader uses graded colors to depict your eyes from line to line, to brand reading feel easier and faster.
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3. Increment Your Agreement
When you need more than merely a bones agreement, continue using introductions and summaries, but explore them in more than detail.
You can still "speed read" chapters, but spend plenty fourth dimension on the fundamental words and concepts and brand sure that you haven't disregarded any important points.
Pay attention to diagrams, charts and graphs, as they are often used to explain circuitous ideas within the text.
And make uncomplicated annotations, or highlight important words and phrases, to ensure that you lot're reading to the level of particular required.
Tip:
Many online manufactures and electronic documents were not originally designed to be read on a screen. If you find something difficult to use that way, consider printing it. A report into on-screen reading showed longer texts are easier to grasp in print than online.
iv. Think and Review the Text
When "deep reading" is required, perhaps to teach, or to recall for an exam, SQ3R is a powerful technique.
Its step-by-step approach involves surveying the cloth, using key questions to guide you, and so thoroughly reading, recalling and reviewing the text. Information technology checks that yous really sympathise what you're reading, and increases your chances of remembering information technology.
You'll also do good from making more detailed notes as yous read. Practice "active reading," by highlighting and underlining as you go, and by recording key information. Also, y'all tin utilize Mind Maps to boost your understanding and powers of recall.
Try putting the ideas you read into your own words, too, by writing them up. Our article, Paraphrasing and Summarizing, explores several techniques to help yous to make sense of and recall the texts you lot read.
And talking to others tin also make reading fifty-fifty more productive. And then share your questions, comments and follow-on ideas.
Tip:
If yous're reading large amounts of hard, technical textile, try using a glossary. Or, even better, compile one of your own! Keep this beside you every bit you lot read, and add to it equally your knowledge of the terminology grows.
v. Control Your Reading Environment
To give yourself the all-time chance of reading effectively, always think near where and when to practise it.
For example, in bed, shortly before going to slumber, reading for pleasance might be a expert way to relax your mind. But it's likely not the all-time time or identify for in-depth study!
So, schedule hard reading tasks when your brain is at its best. Is This a Morning Task? will help y'all to piece of work out when this is.
And ensure that your reading environs is comfortable but not too comfy! Find somewhere quiet, free from distractions, and where the seating, temperature and lighting all aid you to focus.
Tip:
For more detailed information on how to select the almost appropriate reading strategies in whatsoever given state of affairs, have our Bite-Sized Training session Read Smarter.
Fundamental Points
Flexible reading skills are vital to cope with a wide range of material, in a diversity of formats.
Nosotros need to adapt our reading behavior for printed and digital texts accordingly – including using technology to help.
Reading strategies should be based on the type of text you're using, and what yous want from it.
- Know what you're reading - and why.
- Identify primal data.
- Increment your understanding.
- Think and review the text.
- Control your reading environment.
Source: https://www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.html
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