In a sense, there are two different kinds of reading—reading for entertainment and reading for knowledge. The purpose of reading for entertainment is to immerse yourself in another world, sometimes one of fantasy, to escape from day-to-day living. You read to become emotionally involved, interested, and inspired. The purpose of reading for knowledge is to learn more about the world of matter and ideas. You read to collect information, to evaluate, assess, and think actively about a subject.
Because each kind of reading exercises a specific set of mental muscles, it’s important to know why you are reading. Do you want to relax and keep yourself entertained? Do you want to skim and just become acquainted with the material? Do you want to add to your storehouse of facts? Do you want to remember everything you are about to read? Do you want to think more deeply about and ponder an issue? When you know why you’re reading, you’ll know better how to read.
While reading for entertainment, encourage your imagination to become as vivid as possible. Take time to picture the scenes, to visualize the characters, to feel the emotions. If you read mysteries, exercise your imagination by making up your own ending, or even three or four possible endings. George Bernard Shaw used to write an outline of each book he read before he cracked it open.
Reading for in-depth knowledge usually demands a more deliberate focusing of attention. When you read to achieve a solid understanding, give yourself definite objectives for both the amount and the quality of your reading Put yourself in a quiet place where it’s easy to concentrate. Remove any external distractions—turn off the radio or television and, then settle into a comfortable—but not too comfortable alert posture.
Very quickly skim over the material and determine how far you want to read. Pay attention to headings and topic sentences. Be on the lookout for key points that establish the logical structure of the presentation. To help remember the material, assign a key word or phrase to each paragraph. Note down key words either to the side of the paragraphs or on a separate piece of paper. These words should summarize the main idea of the paragraph. Later, if you read through a list of key words, you quickly refresh your memory.
Besides picking out key ideas, take some time to evaluate and weigh ideas. Are the main points supported? What evidence leads to the conclusions? What might be missing from the presentation? Rethink the subject in your own terms, putting it into your own logical framework. It’s always easier to remember your own words than someone else’s.
Build good reading style. Avoid the tendency to skip over words that you don’t fully understand. Unknown words tend to clog the flow of our comprehension, so be willing to take the time to consult a dictionary. You may be surprised to discover that you don’t know the accurate meanings of words with which you are familiar.
Avoid subvocal speech. When reading for speed and comprehension, don’t sound words in your head or move your lips as you read. Most reading experts claim that for top performance, you need to click your brain into higher gear by focusing on ideas, images, and meanings, rather than on the sounds of words.
Pay attention to how your eyes move across a page. Slow readers tend to make many small jumps, picking out only one or two words with each fixation. Fast readers tend to make fewer and more widely spaced jumps. They take in more with each glance. As a result, they tend to read down a page, rather than across a page. As an experiment, next time you read a newspaper, try to take in more with each glance of your eye. Don’t rush, simply allow your eyes to see with a wider angle.
Letting Word Flow
If reading exercises your mind by making you analyze and synthesize ideas, writing exercises your mind by making you clearly formulate and express ideas.
Clustering allows your mind to wander freely around concepts. Because the structure is open-ended, you can add ideas anywhere. Like a plant growing outwards, the tree structure encourages ideas to take root, develop, and branch out. While the presence of one central thought keeps your ideas focused, the branching structure allows your ideas to reach out freely. You splash ideas onto a page, writing as quickly as thoughts appear, keeping closely related ideas clustered together, and distantly related ideas separate. The various ideas are clearly separate, yet connected. Because the lines show relationships, you can, in a glance, see the relative importance of each.
Exercise : Get a pen and a piece of paper. In the centre of the paper, write the word Freedom. Draw a circle around it, and write down any thoughts, feelings, and associations that you have about the idea of freedom. Record these thoughts by drawing a circle and writing one or two words inside the circle. Connect related ideas by drawing lines between them. Let your ideas branch out in every direction. Write down the ideas as quickly as you can until no more ideas come into your mind.
Clustering can be an end in itself—a way to think about what you want to think about—and it can be a means to organize your thoughts—to write, to plan out projects, to explore the options in a decision, to take notes, or to study a subject. Clustering encourages you to switch direction of thought quickly and effortlessly.
Next time you need to write out your thoughts, use the clustering technique. For practice, try clustering the following subjects: the arms race, current fashion trends, the uses of wood, how to solve domestic quarrels, the reason history repeats itself, television commercials.
The creative process
Creativity is at the heart of intelligence. Yet trying to define it is like trying to hold down and capture a drop of quicksilver with your fingertip; the moment you think you’ve got it, it breaks apart into dozens of drops that roll off into different directions.
Does an idea have to be entirely original to be creative? Must something be artistic or aesthetically pleasing before it’s creative? Can creativity result from detailed methodical work? Is creativity always accompanied by a feeling of inspiration, a spark of insight, or a sense that the idea came out of nowhere?
Some psychologists think that creativity is nothing more than innovative problem solving. From this point of view, there is nothing extraordinary about creative thinking. It happens as a consequence of methodical insight. Other psychologists think that creativity is a kind of wild, uncontrollable process that taps the unconscious mind and involves great leaps of insight. From this point of view, creativity is mysterious and unpredictable. There is some truth to both views.
Creativity involves having an idea yourself rather than borrowing it from someone else. You witness the birth of the idea in your mind. This can happen through persistent attempts to solve a problem, say by applying a series of well-defined steps to a project, or it can happen as if by magic, when an inspiration appears. Suddenly and unexpectedly, seemingly without any violation on your part.
In the opening exercise, you could have done any number of things—from standing on your head, to making jungle sounds, singing a song, tapping your fingers in rhythmic patterns, or thinking about quantum physics. The point of the exercise was not to make you have a creative breakthrough, but to get yet thinking about what creativity means to you.
A creative act can solve a problem, serve a specific purpose, or fill a functional need. Alternatively a creative act may not serve a practical purpose, but fill an emotional or aesthetic need. Whether creativity is applied to designing a bridge, inventing a recipe, painting ceiling, or writing an autobiography, skill and diligence are required to produce an innovative product.
The creative process can be divided into two main phases— exploration and application. In the exploration phase, you generate and manipulate new ideas. You bring unrelated material together, make fresh connections and look for unusual patterns. You imagine, fool around, break the rules, and let ideas simmer in the back of your mind.
In the application phase, you judge and implement your ideas. You determine how applicable the idea is, whether it meets your criteria. And you launch the idea into action, taking it from ‘what if’ to ‘what is.’ The two phases are complementary—during the generation phase, you widen your thinking; during the application phase, you narrow your thinking.
In creative thinking, as in high jumping, timing is everything. If you try to be practical, cold and logical in the exploration phase, you’ll focus on limitations rather than on possibilities. Similarly, if you are free and associated during the application phase, you may not get your idea into action, or you may not see the pitfalls of your idea until it’s too late. Know when you need to focus, and when you need to loosen up.
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