Reading Deeply: Going From Passive to Active

Note to self for this section:

• Add in specific references & data for failures of passive learning

In the previous section, we explored the idea that you should never 'read' the whole book. Some parts will always be more important than others and it is these important parts that we want to focus most (80%+) of our effort on.

For these important sections, our goal is to make reading more active.

All the research onto learning points to this idea that passive consumption does not lead to learning. Students who just passively listen to lectures do terribly on tests, and people who passively read rarely understand or even remember most of what they've read.

Some examples of passive reading approaches:

• Naked reading. Reading the book as you would a novel, just letting the words flow into you.

• Highlighting. Reading with a pen in hand, but just highlighting interesting passages.

Though I'm not quite as skeptical, some suggest that reading this way is as useful as not reading at all.

To truly understand something well requires active reading. This includes asking questions; seeing 'behind' the text; compressing, weaving, & integrating information into long-term knowledge, and so on.

In this section, I'll be looking at some common/effective approaches to making your reading more active.

Again, do not make the mistake a mind: You should not be reading everything deeply. It is a skill to teach yourself when not to study something deeply. This frees more energy to focus on the things that are important to you.