How to Read with Absorption
“Reading is not about speed. It’s about absorption.”
~Chris Do. Quoted from Pocket Full Of Do.
Reading is a window of knowledge, we love reading, we love to extract information from what we are just read. Yesterday, I just finished reading a book named Pocket Full Of Do by Chris Do. The book is amazing, I enjoyed the words by words and can’t wait to extract what I read into stories.
The book covers a lot of essential knowledge like mindset, creativity, marketing, and more. I’m not going to review the book but I will try to extract point per point from the book into my stories. So this one is about how to read with absorption.
Your Reading Purpose
When reading something, we usually know what’s our purpose reading it. We read school books to get assignments done and prepare for exams, we read self-development books to be better in our life, we read fiction books to entertain ourselves with stories. “Some people read books just to complete a checklist, or even just to boast to others that they read such a book”, Chris said in his book.
Your reading purpose will determine what you get from what you read. In this reading with absorption tips, you need to know what is your reading purpose first.
Read with the Intention Not to Remember, but to Understand
When you read books for assignments or exams, there is a chance that you just want to remember them so you can answer all the questions. This is not the best way to read, the knowledge usually didn’t last long. Try to read with the intention not to remember, but to understand. Have this in your mind, your new knowledge, whatever it is, will bring benefits for you, not just for the particular condition, but forever.
Read to Teach
“The best way to learn is to teach”, Chris Do said in his book. To have a better understanding of what are you read, you need to make it easy to learn. And the best way to learn is to teach. Reading to teach will transform how much you retain and what you’re able to apply in your life. Even if you don’t teach, pretend that you do.
To make your new knowledge absorb nicely onto you, you need to apply it in your life. There are so many things you can do to apply your knowledge such as sharing it with other people. That’s why to understand a story, you need to retell it to others. Just like this, I retell my new knowledge into Medium stories, very applicable right?
Tips to Make It Better
Sometimes after reading new knowledge, we are very excited to share it already but we hold up because we want to at least finish the chapter first. This is one of the mistakes many of us make: Letting the excitement fade. You need the excitement because it is the fire, let your fire fade and you will forget about what do you want to write before.
The first tip to overcome this problem is to have your notebook around. Yes, when you read something, you will face new knowledge that excites you. That is the reason why your notebook is important for this. Make notes about ideas that are important to you, and how can you apply this. Just write it down, anything that crosses your mind after reading the sentences, write it down.
You might also want to highlight sections you want to remember. Sometimes making notes is not enough, you will need to open your books again to find the important things you’ve noticed. Then make sure that you highlighted it as well as make notes!
Whether you write in your notebook or write in the book you’re reading itself, that’s all good. Also, don’t forget to add some explanation about your notes so that when you’re confused about what it means, you have the explanation.
Sketch It Up
If you rather love to do some sketch-up things, then try to visualize your ideas as diagrams or illustrations. Draw diagrams and illustrations of what you’ve learned, insights you’ve gained, and discoveries you’ve made. Just don’t let your notebook empty.
All of these tips will help you be more understanding about what are you reading and have chances to implement your new knowledge better. After all. reading is not about speed, it never was. It’s about absorption.
