Best way to learn from books

[Saturn]

What is the best way to learn from books?  Not novels, but non-fiction books geared towards educating you on something specific.

How do you go about studying them?  I'm not just talking about your reading technique (though this is important too), but also the overall method you use to pickup the main ideas and specific details of each section.  Do you take notes on what you read?  What are your notes like?

How effective is your method, and how efficient?

What are your views and experiences on reading programs that promise radical results and have unorthodox methods, such as PhotoReading? (https://www.photoreading.com)

Also, what are you opinions of audiobooks?

- Saturn

[faulty_damper]

The best way to learn is to apply it immediately.  If it says to add 2 cups of water, then add 2 cups of water.  You don't read the entire book and then try to apply it as you'll forget most everything you've read because the information was meaningless to you when you read it.

Your post was too broad.  What non-fiction books geared toward education you on something specific are you refering to?  You weren't specific.

If you are learning something, then you are NOT studying it.  Studying something usually means in theory.  Learning something means in practice.  There is no need to take notes when you are learning something as you will be applying it immediately assuming you are given sufficient time to comprehend and understand and know how to do whatever it is that you want to do.

So do you want to learn something or do you want to study something?  You should make up your mind.

[faulty_damper]

What are your views and experiences on reading programs that promise radical results and have unorthodox methods, such as PhotoReading? (https://www.photoreading.com)

I'm assuming this 'method' is the method of looking at the entire page instead of reading one word after another in succession the way we were taught in elementary school.  If you can read staves, then the process is similar to this method.  Actually, you can just use the method in sight reading music and apply it to books.

I'm also going to assume that this 'method' is the process of seeking just the valuable words on a page and "ignoring": the, in, that, which, you, I, it, and, a, for, etc.

I'm also going to assume that this 'method' uses a different part of your brain to "read" the page so instead of using the part of the brain that reads, you'll be using the part of your brain that sees.

I don't know if this technique is in this 'method' but in order to increase your visual accuity, you need to subject your eyes to lots of information.  When you look at a page, the words and the words surrounding it are clear but the rest of the page is "blurry".  However, if you subject your eyes to lots of information, you'll increase its accuity so instead of seeing just the few words clearly on the page, you'll be able to see the entire page very clearly as if your eyes were focused on the entire page instead of in one area.

To test this, look at a book.  See if it is in fact "blurry" or hard to make out around the area you are focusing.  You can see words but you will not be able to read them.  Then increase visual information.  How do you do this?  The simple way is to get someone to drive a car while you look out the window at the ground.  Do not move your eyes to focus on anything.  That massive amount of information you are subjecting to your eyes will cause you to become dizzy and nauseous.  After a few minutes of this, look back at the book and see if you can now read the entire page while only focussing on one section of the book.  Voila!

Another method to increase visual information is to use a book.  Open from page one and look at the page.  Don't read anything, just look at the page.  You shouldn't spend more than half a second looking before you turn the page.  Half a second on the second page, then look at the third page and spend half a second before turning the page.  Go through the entire book like this.  You'll soon be able to pick out words on the page even though you are spending less than half a second looking at it.  After you've gone through the entire book, go back to the beginning and proceed to do it again only this time, a bit slower.  This time, you'll be able to pick out even more essential words on the page.  "Essential"?  You naturally ignore these words: the, you, these.  But you'll notice that the words with meaning (ignore, words) you'll focus on.  Why?  I haven't a clue why this is so but you ignore these words and focus on the ones with actual meaning.

The result of using the method above is this:  You will be able to read at least twice as fast without actually "reading".  I was able to attain results that were at least seven times as fast on my first try.  Time it: read a few pages the normal way (word for word).  Then read the same number of pages using this "looking" method making sure you are able to see the essential words.  Then just simple mathematics will tell you just how much faster you were able to read.

Best reading skills to you,
fD in Sf.

[newsgroupeuan]

Let's take "A Brief History of Time" By Stephen Hawking

1.Read paragraph
2.Think about what it it is about
3. What it implies
4. How did he come to that conclusion
5.close book after each chapter and digest

[bachopoven]

flipping through pages and returning for slower reading is a spoiler for fiction. but of course , for the intended target, it helps. I'll try it.

[Saturn]

The best way to learn is to apply it immediately.  If it says to add 2 cups of water, then add 2 cups of water.  You don't read the entire book and then try to apply it as you'll forget most everything you've read because the information was meaningless to you when you read it.

Your post was too broad.  What non-fiction books geared toward education you on something specific are you refering to?  You weren't specific.

I completely agree with your advice.  For books where there is advice that can be followed, it ought to be followed immediately, because the best way to learn something is to practice it.  However, this only applies to books with advice that is immediately practical.

I suppose I was a little broad on my post, but I didn't know how to be more specific.  I was really referring to any kind of non-fiction books.  Let's say I go to the library and borrow a book about the holocaust.  I can't really "apply immediately" the things I learn in the book, because it's all historical.  Merely declarative, not imperative information.

So what can I do if I want to read this book, and remember most of the general (and some of the specific) points of it?  I don't want to forget it the day I return the book.

- Saturn

[faulty_damper]

You bring up a really big problem when it comes to history.  Have you read James Loewen's book, Lies My Teacher Told Me?  It sort of deals with the problems of teaching history in the way you described how books are read.  Part of the problem with history is that it pretty much leaves all things of controversy out anh gives only one side of the authors biased opinions.  Read Loewen's book and it may help you read the books you want to read.

But this way of reading the books seemed to be better than just reading them as usual.  Try to immagine what is said in the books as you actually seeing these events.  This is quite difficult especially because these books are never written out like the way intriguing novels are written so it really requires you to use your immagination to force the images into your head.

For dates and events, you will have to put these dates in chronological order.  The way these books throw out dates means you'll need to actually visualize the passing of time.  So if it mentions Nazi's had a birthday party on July 3, 1946, and the next date is October 18, 1946 where a plane was shot down, you'll need to imagine something tangible to place these events in the correct order.  Imagine a callender, or the seasons; summer is hot while fall is cool.  The more you are able to tangibly associate images with ideas and events, the easier it is to remember these useless facts.

And repeat what you have imagined.  If Billy Bob had a birthday party, pretend that it was more interesting; a naked woman popps out of a cake with the date this event took place written across her butt, July 3, 1946, Bob's Nazi Birthday.  Then she turns around and bends over to remind him that today is his birthday.  And he gets a great cheek kiss.

But this is the last day of Billy Bob's hapiness as he will be shot down within a few months in October.  You see, during his party his Nazi friends hired a psychic who has no name.  She looks at Bob and says, "October 18 of this year, you will fall down a miserable death."  Then, upon hearing this, he became outraged and took out his pistol and shot the poor hag repeating aloud "October 18th?  October 18th!  You ugly hag.  How dare you say I will die October 18th of this year!"

Well, soon enough in October, he gets into his plane for a mission and gets shot down.  Guess what day of the month it was.  The 18th.

So the dead hag psychic was right.  He died on October 18, 1946.