I vividly remember the day as a freshman in my university; I joined the debating club of my college. Excited to be a part of it and to excel in debating as an activity. I used to ask my seniors how to improve and become a better debater and read articles about it. I distinctly remember, coming from both my seniors and the articles I used to refer to Read as much as you can!
Fast-forwarding to the present, I am a consultant in one of the top consulting firms, and yet if I have to give it to, one thing has helped me reach where I am in Reading. One thing is for sure, where ever you are or whatever you do, reading should stick with you. You may be looking at strategy plans of your business, web pages, journals, research papers or e-mails, etc. Being able to read efficiently and effectively is a really important professional skill.
Maybe you go through an important document that should be useful to you, but you cannot understand how it is relevant. You probably will have to re-read the document to understand what you have read. Or you struggle to comprehend and remember whatever you read.
In the following article, we will cover a wide range of approaches to better shape your learning curve by improving your reading skills. By matching your approach to the material at hand and taking control of the reading process, you can improve your overall learning.
Importance of continuous learning
I don’t know if there is even a need to put out that continuous learning is important for your growth and development. Like nutritious food is indispensable for your physical growth, a constant flow of information is important for our mental growth. Heraclitus rightly said, “The only thing that is constant is change.” It holds right now more than any other time. COVID has taught us how all the planning and predictions can fall flat. The only way of dealing with constant change is continuous learning. The following are some reasons why you should totally never stop learning:
1. Staying Relevant
To stay relevant in this technology-driven fast-paced world, you need to update your knowledge constantly. Learn new things that can help you expand your skillset. This way, you won’t be left behind. You will be able to be on top of things with the ever-changing climate. If you fail to keep yourself updated, you won’t be valuable and lose your relevance.
2. Add feathers to your hat
Let’s say you are doing certifications of new courses now and then. You automatically beg for the certificate and related accolade. As a result, you learn the skills that can help you do your job in a better way. This will further make you get endorsements from your colleague and bosses.
3. Keep the fire kindling
When you expose yourself to new ideas regularly, your mind also functions without limits. It helps you think out of the box in innovative ways about a given problem.
4. Brace for unforeseeable future
The habit of learning helps you adapt to unexpected situations. For example, it would not be much of a difficult task to stay ahead of things and get a new one for yourself (maybe for better). Also, people in the constant habit of learning do not like to stay in their comfort zone. They crave new opportunities.
5. Gives you fresh perspective
Continuous learning helps you change your attitude as well as perspective towards a lot of things. When you learn new things and ideas, you can see sides of things that others often happen to miss.
Reading resources: Offline v. Online
With every passing day, we are moving closer to a more digitally dominated world. The definition of books and newspapers is now shifting to e-books and e-newspaper/ magazines. The chances are that you subscribe to digital media more, be it emails, specific web pages, or social media altogether, on an almost daily basis.
Printed media has its own significance, and even physical books and newspapers have larger-than-life supporters. Therefore, your reading skills should be flexible as well as adaptive between physical and digital formats. Each of the formats has its own pros and cons to consider when you are reading. The following are 4 key differences between printed and digital texts:
Authority
It is harder to judge and gauge the quality of texts available online. Most of the time, due to the highly decentralized nature of a lot of platforms. Moreover, a lot of web pages do not have strict publishing criteria. Therefore, it often dilutes the information and makes it harder to find a credible source. However, there is simply more data and information available, and in a lot of cases, up to date as it is easy to update information in the digital platform with changing externalities.
Extras
Printed text may or may not have visual graphics/ pictures and diagrams. While the digital texts can not just have visual graphics/ pictures and diagrams but also more “added extras.” It can include interactive audiovisuals, quizzes, and links to references or related/ non-related texts. Now it depends on whether you would like to have your experience enriched with these extras for an “immersive experience.” Or, you think it is more distracting and unnecessary increased cognitive load.
Order
With the physical text, in most cases, you are bound to stick to the prescribed sequence. Or you will miss out on critical pieces of information. With digital text, it is much easier to navigate within the corpus/ content. It is easier to find the relevant pieces of information without having to go through the trouble of flipping pages and running fingers on the texts. Also, with all these conveniences in the digital text, you are likely to miss out on important information.
Engagement
Most you can do with a printed copy of a text is running your highlighters/ underlining on the part you feel is important. With digital texts, on the other hand, you can engage better by adding public-private comments/ notes on the selected texts. In addition, you get additional options like putting a virtual bookmark and easy to share options. These help you handle the information better, but you need to make sure that you do not temper the author’s original ideas with all your annotations.
Improving Learning through Effective Reading
No matter what format of the text you are using, online or offline. The following five strategies will help you enhance your learning in life through effective reading.
1. Always know what you are reading and why
Before you start reading, ask yourself three very important questions.
- What is the main objective/ purpose of the text? For eg. Is it to persuade, inform, entertain, etc?
- Is the content and the source credible and content useful? It should be note-worthy, meeting its objective, and helping you in your purpose?
- What is your motivation to read it?
It is practically impossible to read all the things written on the planet, regardless of how enriching the experience would be. Your answers to the above-mentioned questions will help you choose what the right reading for you is. In the long run, by doing so, you would be making much better choices and saving loads and loads of time. Therefore, you should never dive straight in. Instead, spend some time analyzing what to read and how you can get the most of it.
- Use the preface, executive summary, introduction, and other general information to get an idea of what is the content and the approach.
- Take a plunge into the text to see the tone of the author’s voice in the text.
- See if there are any peculiarities that can enhance your experience.
- Read the content and look for parts and sections that are most important for you.
The above steps ensure that you are reading something that is going to be helpful and worthwhile. You will also be prepared to tackle the reading in the best possible way. This way, you will also know much deep you will have to involve yourself in the reading.
2. Identify the Key Highlights
Suppose you have come to a conclusion that you don’t have to completely immerse yourself in the reading. Instead, you can use some quick techniques to extract the basics. First, look over the index, chapter titles, and abstract- summaries. Next, find the illustrations, graphics, and infographics that catch the essence of the content in a meaningful way.
It is always great to spot parts where the critical information lies. However, it comes with a little bit of practice. Knowing where to look for just the information you need is simply great and effective. For example, a news article generally summarizes the zest of what is written in the first few lines. The rest is just layering done with details that you can quickly skim on a surface level. Likewise, in an opinion article, the essence can be captured just by reading the first few lines and probably the last para. After that, you can easily decide how much of the middle part you want to explore. On the contrary, a feature article contains critical information in the body/ middle part. Therefore, you can decide to skip the starting and straight away jump to the main body.
3. Increase your comprehension
For any reader, speed and comprehension are always in a certain trade-off. It is about finding the right balance of speed and understanding. If you think the text you are reading is of great importance in terms of understanding and is limited. You can focus on comprehension as you do not have to focus on speed. Similarly, when you have a lot of text to cover, you utilize some smart tactics. You can speed read chapters but focus on the important keywords and concepts at large. Pay attention to the diagrams, charts, and graphs, as most of them aim to make difficult concepts easy.
Make some annotations, or highlight important words that you think are instrumental in the overall understanding of the subject. In the end, it simply boils down to maintaining high speed without compromising much on the comprehension part.
4. Recollect what you read
Students generally and even professionals have to retain the information they read, maybe for examination or periodic reviews. In order to make the information stay as a part of effective reading, you have to do more than just reading. You need to periodically recall and review the text. It checks what you are reading and helps you remember it.
Making notes as you read is again a wonderful strategy. Practice “active reading,” have a pen or a highlighter in your hand, mark all the important keywords, and take notes of important stuff alongside. Again, you can use techniques like Mind Maps to enhance retention and the power to recall.
Another great technique is called paraphrasing. You can try putting whatever you read in your own words by taking note of it. It helps you process information when you put it in your own words and subsequently write it down. Finally, my favorite technique of all for retention and review is teaching. If you read with the mindset that you have to deliver information to someone, you are extra conscious. And when you actually prepare to teach and deliver it to someone. You are able to internalize the information and engage in a dialogue about it.
5. Look after your reading environment
The environment is pretty crucial for effective reading. You should constantly think about where and when you should do it. For example, reading on the bed before you go to sleep is good for leisure reading but not for deep studying purposes. Therefore, you need to introspect and see when your brain is most active and schedule your reading time accordingly. Make sure your reading environment is ambient. It should be quiet, adequately lit, ambient temperature, and comfortable seating, all of this will help you focus better.