How To Absorb Textbooks Like A Sponge, by Matt DiMaio

Most people read a textbook the way they read a novel, page one to the last page, straight through. It does not stay in your head. Instead, preview the chapter in several cheap passes before you read it closely.

1. Flip through every page without reading, just to see it. How long is the chapter? Words vs. images? Any graphs? What jumps out?
2. Go to the end and read the quiz questions first, so you know what the author thought was important.
3. Go back to the start and read only the bold print: titles, subtitles, headings. That is the author's own breakdown.
4. Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph for a section-by-section overview.
5. Now read the chapter once and take notes. One pass is enough.

"You are not reading this for comprehension. You are reading this for exposure... now you're going to have a map of all the dots." Repetition is the mother of learning; the passes prime your "reticular activating system" (buy a blue car and you suddenly see blue cars everywhere).

Skimming a book's visual density predicts how it should be read Reading a textbook front to back like a novel fails to retain it Skimming for exposure will increase later comprehension [[reading-a-chapters-quiz-questions-first-tells-your-brain-what-to-look-for]] Classical Pedagogy American "New Math" Reform Declarative Knowledge