There’s whole bunch of section online, dedicated to mastering the art of reading. Backed up with scientific & psychological insights. But what about the light hearted readers or beginners who want to delve deep but lose motivation and focus on the way or those who find reading cool but usually preconceive it as a boring task.
This post will talk about the basics of how you can reap the maximum from your books. Why will this theory help you read? Because, these are my own practical observations over the course of a few months. I’m going to break down the steps into a few pointers which will help you begin the journey or continue reading if you’re already there somewhere.
The list of observations that impacted my own ability to reap the maximum out of books :
- Choosing an easy fiction book
You quickly want to get deeper into reading, to impart your knowledge in the world. But that happens only when you yourself has reached a level of understanding the book entirely. To begin, I would suggest you to borrow (not buy) a short & easy fiction novel or a sequence of short stories suiting your genre. The easy read will help you get a stick to the reading habit. Note: initially, we don’t want to make the language too complicated to hold on.
2. Not having too many options
Suppose you go to a salon, find a rack of magazines, what do you do? You simply pick one of them & just start scanning without much thinking. Similarly, for reading a book, too many options can be overwhelming. Try not to jam yourself with unending options & wasting too much time on the summary. You see, there will always be a load of books in the world & you surprisingly cannot read all of em! Start with one. Or two. 3 tops.
3. Reading off topics
Thick fat books can be too much. One of the ways to stick to fat books is to read them topic wise. Subject or chapter wise reading will help maintain curiosity. It will keep you informed about a particular topic fully. Halfway reading through a topic is infuriating & will definitely put you off the reading habit.
Also, our main goal is to not just read but to gain from reading, hence, brief topics or chapter reading is the utmost way to help you develop a habit. We definitely don’t want to feel over burdened after reading. To make it a memorable learning experience, it is advisable to stick to small but effective reading habits.
Read less to grasp more.
4. Switch on DND mode
One of the major reasons of decline in cognitive ability of our generation is that, we’re always distracted & trying to multi-task. While one may argue for the benefits of multi-tasking, one should know the importance of focus. Thus, if you want to get the maximum out of reading, you need to dedicate yourself to reading. Ten minutes of reading, followed by an urgent mail or a phone call is not going to help you hold on to reading material. Whereas, a dedicated focus will help your sub-conscious to reason out a new perspective. It’s hard, but let’s try?
5. Makes notes or pointers
When you’re at a stage where reading becomes interesting because you’re getting to learn so much, you think you will remember it all. But alas! Human brain cannot keep all the consumption in “headlines”. It therefore stores the un-important details in the back much like you store it in your hard-drive. To get more out from the paragraphs, try making a sticky note in the page (only if it’s your own book) or mark the line that hit you the most. This way, after you are done with your session, or even much later in life, you can go through the marked points & get a perspective!
These are a few points that I’ve learnt over the months. Like you, even I’ve had a fair share of struggles to continue finishing a book. It’s a challenge I’d say, but some work needs to be done for the brain right?
All the best!
