Three simple tricks to read textbooks more effectively

just because you can read words doesn't mean that you can read textbooks very effectively textbooks are different than most other reading material they're dense so they pack a lot of information in a very small space they're efficient they don't tend to repeat themselves very often and they have a hierarchy to them you can't skip a bunch of chapters and read chapter 11 and expect to know what's going on finally in math and science text in particular there are also work examples or problems or proofs all of this means that you have to read textbooks differently

than a newspaper or a novel tip number one is that reading a textbook should be a lot more like sipping a beverage then chugging it what i mean by sipping is that you should limit yourself to 10 15 minutes or maybe a half an hour max of time that you spend focused on reading the textbook and this can just be as little as a few pages you know three four or five pages now you're not going to read this straight through you're gonna be backtracking you're trying to put the pieces together in most cases it's

better to understand the fundamentals of something really well rather than get little tidbits here and there about the subject if you don't understand how to multiply vectors really well all of the later physics is going to be hard for you tip number two is to read actively and i mean something very specific by this one of the drawbacks of textbooks is that everything is laid out there they're not going to lie to you absent some mistake that was made in the textbook and the tendency that we have is once we read over something and we

think it makes sense we just accept it as being true or being natural or normal but you want to try to resist that temptation it's better to think of yourself as a fact checker or a very suspicious detective you want all the pieces to add up and you want to be sure that you yourself have added up all the pieces you don't want to rely on someone else to just tell you what the pieces are so when i come to an example problem i try to cover up the answer to that problem so that all

i'm focusing on is the question itself and i try to answer that question before i look and see how the textbook answers it now maybe i get that question right and i understand everything and it's great or maybe i make a mistake somewhere i make maybe i make a stupid mistake maybe it's a big conceptual mistake whatever it is the process of doing that lets me understand what i know more deeply now this is a kind of metacognitive knowledge so it's increasing your understanding of what you know and that makes your studying more efficient in

the long run my third tip here is to read proactively now i mean something very specific by this as well before you crack open your textbook for that next study session you have i recommend that you get out a piece of paper and you write down what you remembered from the previous reading or studying session that you had with the textbook this has a couple of different benefits one is that it is a check on your understanding what were your major takeaways from what you read before the second is that it helps you remember that

material more effectively it is a bit of free recall practice that you're incorporating into your studying but the third and perhaps most important benefit is that it engages your prior knowledge so that you understand what you are about to read more effectively so you're bringing to the fore the relevant ideas and problems and examples that the textbook is going to build on remember that a little bit of forgetting is quite beneficial for deep long-lasting learning here is a video about why good luck i'll see you next time