Academic Advice

Here’s How I Read My Textbooks In The Fastest Manner

A modus operandi which helps the author get the maximum out of his books

Are you a student who always compares how his textbook is thicker than that of a generation before? Are you struggling to absorb the humongous stock of knowledge that 21st century books contain within their pages? My past self would have screamed Same Pinch!

I will tell you a single trick which changed the way I read books, forever. From reading, to devouring, I switched from the domain of ‘I don’t know’ to ‘Do you know?’

I was made aware of this tactic by my clinical tutor, when I was in the third year of my medical school. Being the only person in the group who attended the clinical rotations, I happened to come under the radar of the university gold medalist, who was a class apart. I don’t know if it was my sincerity behind his motivation to reveal this trick, but I’m glad he did. Noticing me squandering my time trying to see patients I had no idea about, he summoned me in the OPD.

There I was, standing like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. The tutor asked me questions which he believed I should have known the answer to, by then. And I blurted out whatever I knew, thinking that he would be impressed. Far from that, the tutor expressed his disappointment by asking ‘Haven’t you ever read that book?’

I shifted my gaze to the manual I had been holding in my hands.

“Must haven’t reached the page where the answer lies, sir”, I ejaculated immediately, not wanting him to form a ‘meh’ opinion of me.

What happened next was the magical moment that transformed my reading skills. He described how he reads his books, and how he had read the books of the successive course well ahead in time, giving him a head-start.

Photo by Tamara Gak on Unsplash

He described what I call ‘X-ray scanning’. The idea is not to read the book word by word in one go, or two, because the latter is the maximum number of attempts you would make. The trick is to imbibe it as a whole, layer by layer.

1. The first step is to have a look at all the images, and their brief descriptions below. This gives an overall idea of the text that follows — an important premise that you can build upon, much faster.
2. Secondly, you need to start out reading the important headings within the text, to know the topics covered. Then, initial few paragraphs that describe what the complete text is about, to gain a deeper understanding. At this point, you need to just skim through the material without indulging to the point of somnolence. The first step of reading is not reading; it is gliding over the text.
3. Next, when you have a broad idea of what is described in the text, choose one topic that you want to delve into in considerable detail, and show your passion at this moment. Dive. Dive deeper.
4. When you are done with that topic, move onto the next. Repeat this until you feel that all that is gold, has been grabbed. Remember, your goal is to selectively pick up all the diamonds, while leaving the coal behind. You don’t want to scour up the entire mine. Time is limited, and so is our ability to retain.
5. Switch to another book covering the same topics. Expand your knowledge with the backup of multiple sources. What’s missing in one, lies in another. No book is the same.

The above mentioned tactics have been a great help to me. Earlier, I would begin a book with such a heightened passion that I would even read the author’s introduction, but the desire would always snuff out after reading four pages word-to-word. The time elapsed would amount to nothing less than two hours, and the intense mental investment would put me to sleep, only to wake up with half of the learned matter washed-off. The next day, the remembered text would turn out to be even lesser. Moreover, owing to the dedication showed in reading the first four pages, I would just never want to read it again, even when I retained almost nothing. Hence, all of my books had their initial four pages well highlighted with four different types of highlighters, with almost every word underlined, while the rest of the book would be new enough to be resold.

Now, however, I get to read multiple topics from a single book, with a preserved interest. And since I read it in layers, with only the most important stuff read in detail, the hunger for more stays. I displace that passion onto another book, reading out new topics much better described in it than the previous one, and also going through the same topics already read in the previous one. The latter task consolidates what I had already learnt from my excursion into the previous book, and uncovers more dimensions to the same concept, which I thought I had come to know everything about.

This trick seems very simple at the surface. And it really is. The effects of it you don’t realise unless you actually act it out. Once accustomed to it, you would be amazed to realise your own potential, which had lain dormant all these years.

With this new reading method at my disposal, I ended up reading about fifty books, apart from my textbooks in the final year of MBBS. All this, without compromising my academics. I delved into medicine as hard as I delved into psychology and history. I was better able to manage my time, all thanks to this.

Your mind is a suitcase if you stuff it with matter helter-skelter. It reveals within itself a cosmos, when you learn to arrange the data inside.

Next time you read a book, scan it like an X-ray, and see for yourself, what lies within you.

The Unknown Doctor