At various points throughout my university career, I struggled. A lot. Sure, I still had my “trick” of taking tons of prescription stimulants and powering through classwork, but at some point, it just wasn’t enough. Back in high school, I could still somehow find the time to catch up with my classmates. In college, the workload was just too much (to be fair, I was also running a $2 million-a-year business on the side). This, ultimately, is why I changed majors three times during my time at UC Berkeley.
At two separate points, in both my freshman and junior years, I reached out to upperclassmen for help. How were they keeping up with the immense amounts of reading and remembering it all? There had to be a way to do it, or the professors wouldn’t be assigning this much reading to begin with.
In both instances, the “tricks” they shared left something to be desired. They seemed far too simple to actually work, and so I brushed them off as nonsense. I had no idea that they were actually among the most effective and proven strategies for improving reading comprehension and focus.
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We all know the frustrating feeling of staring blankly at a page, unable to focus, knowing that we are simply wasting our time. Or how about realizing, after spacing out for entire paragraphs or pages, that you have absolutely no idea what you just read?
This frustrating waste of time is not only normal, it’s a very common problem for even the most experienced readers.
This issue, of course, is one of focus, attention, and motivation. In a perfect world, we would only read things that we have a burning, intense desire to read. We would be so enthralled by every word that it would feel like eating salted popcorn. The reality, however, is very different. The simple fact is that a great deal of the reading we do, whether for school or for work, is simply not that interesting to us. And even if it is, the sheer amount we must do stretches the limits of our attention span.
Not to worry. There is a simple solution to this phenomenon. One that will “trick” your brain into paying attention to anything you read—no matter how boring or dry. Best of all, it doesn’t involve some experimental pill or potion, and it takes minutes to learn.
Before we dig into this skill, we first need to understand an important framework known as SQ3R. At first, this may sound like some sort of robot that spends its time hanging out with Luke Skywalker. But in fact, it’s a system developed by educational philosopher Francis P. Robinson in his 1945 book, Effective Study. Though you may have never heard of it, the truth is, SQ3R is actually used and taught in many US schools and universities. That’s probably why it was taught to me by two separate people during my university days. And about the funny name, it’s an acronym for:
Survey
Question
Read
Recall
Review
SQ3R is different from the way you likely read today because it breaks the process of “reading” down into a handful of distinct steps. In doing so, it primes your brain for the knowledge it’s about to receive in a few different and ingenious ways.
During the Survey step, we quickly skim or scan the content before we read it to prepare our minds for new information. If you’re a trained SuperLearner, this is also where you’ll begin creating visual mnemonics to be filled in with more detail later.
Next is the Question phase, which happens simultaneously alongside the Survey phase. In this phase, we ask ourselves questions to improve our motivation, such as “For what reason am I reading this?” “What’s in it for me?” or “What do I expect to see here?” Doing this helps create curiosity, which in turn generates motivation and enthusiasm for reading. More on that in a bit.
Next, we Read, either by speed-reading or in the normal fashion. When reading, you reap the benefit of the previous S and Q steps, so you do not reread or dwell on irrelevant details.
With reading done, we Recall. We attempt to remember what we’ve read, and along the way, we create and improve detailed, visual mnemonics. This happens after reading each paragraph, page, or chapter, depending on the density of the material. This is our way to ensure that we actually recall the content we’re reading.
Finally, we Review. We analyze the content from multiple perspectives. We assess what we’ve learned and try and connect it to previous knowledge. We perform spaced repetition on the material for an extended period of time. Believe it or not, the most effective readers spend more time on this step than all previous steps combined. That’s because if you don’t review the material, both immediately after and in increasing intervals, everything you’ve done so far is useless. You’ll just forget it anyway.
So, now that we understand the SQ3R model overall, let’s learn how to optimize it, starting out with the superskill of pre-reading.
The skill we call “pre-reading” is actually two processes in one: Surveying and Questioning.
If you look up the verb “survey” in the dictionary, you’ll see a few definitions. To survey something means “to investigate, examine, question, and record information about it.” That’s a fantastic definition because this is exactly what we want to do during pre-reading.
At first, pre-reading may seem counterintuitive to you: Doesn’t it add extra steps, slowing you down? Actually, the opposite is true. According to researchers, pre-reading helps us speed up, while priming our brains for reading with higher retention.9
How can a quick skim actually improve our reading? First of all, pre-reading enhances our focus and motivation, eliminating drifting off and rereading. At the same time, it actually makes it easier for us to read at higher speeds when we do read. This effect is especially important for dense materials or mixed reading with lots of pictures, like textbooks. How many times have you read a textbook, only to get stuck on a side box in the margins? Typically, these side boxes are there to define terms you don’t know or give you some important contextual explanation of a new concept. But breaking your focus in the middle of reading to study them is both slow and ineffective. By first pre-reading the text and any cutaways, we are able to investigate and examine the information we’re about to learn. In essence, we are clearing any potential roadblocks that could hinder our reading or comprehension when we reach the first “R.”
Pre-reading isn’t something we made up in our SuperLearner courses, though. As I alluded, it’s supported by a great number of scientific studies.10
So how do you actually do it?
When we pre-read a text, we’re essentially skimming. But not your normal type of skimming. Instead, we’re spending a couple of seconds per page, skimming at a speed of about five to eight times our current reading speed. We are not reading the text—or even trying to. Instead, we’re looking for titles, subheadings, proper nouns, numbers, words, or anything that doesn’t seem to fit in. When we pre-read, we gain an understanding of the structure of the text, and we build a sort of mental map. If there are “cutaways,” or terms that jump out at us as unfamiliar, we stop our pre-reading and gain a better understanding before resuming.
As we go along, we start to generate thoughts, opinions, and ideas about the text. We may think to ourselves, “Oh, this is interesting! They’re going to talk about Buzz Aldrin here,” for example. These will serve as temporary markers, and we’ll be able to upgrade them later with more detailed visual markers after we read the text. The Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, is once again very helpful here. In pre-reading, we’re looking for that 20 percent of details that give us an 80 percent understanding of what we’re going to be reading—or at least what the text is about.
This means that when you actually read the text, all you have to do is fill in the rest of the details. This skill takes time to fully develop, but it’s a pivotal one in speed-reading—or reading in general. Practice it diligently, and it will make you a much more effective and focused reader.
Keep in mind that even though you don’t register the text at this speed, you are building a map and becoming more familiar with it subconsciously. This is like getting a feel for the layout of a neighborhood by driving through it at forty miles an hour. Don’t get frustrated, and don’t get hung up on understanding the text. Just understand the flow, and take note of any interesting points that might jump out at you.
This alone is a major benefit of pre-reading, but as we’ve mentioned, it’s not the only one.
The next step in the SQ3R framework is no less important in pre-reading: questioning.
Remember our dear old friend Dr. Malcolm Knowles and what he taught us? Adult learners must harness prior experience. They also demand a pressing need and an immediate application of what they’re learning. In short, adult learners need to be curious about what they’re learning. They need to understand how it connects to their existing knowledge. Modern researchers have proven this time and time again. The more we can connect learning to a person’s previous knowledge and experience, the better.
As we’ve mentioned, though, the unfortunate reality is that much of what we read will not fulfill these requirements. Even if we’re in a field we love, a lot of the reading we do will not be immediately applicable to us.
Fortunately, if we learn to generate the right types of questions, we can overcome this hurdle altogether. You see, the human brain simply can’t resist a good question. We are problem-solving machines. Questions, therefore, cause our brains to fire up and pay attention unlike anything else.
Do you know what else our brains love? Being right! If you’ve read anything by behavioral economist Dan Ariely, you know that our brains are prone to all sorts of cognitive biases. One of the most important of these is confirmation bias. This is the tendency to pay extra special attention to things that confirm our beliefs. We do this at the expense of new information that could change the way we think—even if that new information is true. This is normally a really bad thing—especially during election season! But when we pre-read, we can turn this on its head and use it to our advantage. By asking ourselves certain types of questions, which compare new knowledge to our own, we supercharge our focus towards finding out one all-important thing: Are we right, or not? This one trick alone can make even the most boring material, such as tax law, much more interesting.
Perhaps, for example, you see that the text mentions Baltimore, Maryland. Ask yourself: What the heck does Baltimore have to do with tax law? What happened there? Was there a precedent set? Make a predictive assumption, and then, as you read, check to see if your prediction was right. Doing so will make you very motivated to read through the text and figure out just what the heck is going on. While you’re at it, you should find things that don’t seem to fit in, and ask yourself what they’re doing there.
Another effective class of questions is to ask yourself: How will I use this information? As you pre-read the text and begin to get a feel for its contents, try to envision scenarios in which it could affect your life. Imagine how you could benefit from having that knowledge. How could you use this knowledge in your day-to-day life? Who are some people in your life with whom you could share it? When might it be useful for sparking up a conversation? It sounds basic, but simply giving your brain this “why” is often the difference between intently focusing and feeling your eyes glaze over.
When I was struggling with pre-reading training, my mentors and coaches, Anna and Lev, offered me a tip that has stuck with me to this day. They challenged me to consider questions of perspective—mine, the author’s, or even third parties’. Though we are not yet reading the text itself, we are seeing keywords, and those keywords are enough to generate some pretty opinion-laden questions.
These include:
As with all pre-reading questions, these thought exercises are designed to put your cognitive biases on “high alert.” When you finally read the text, you’ll find that you have a laser-like focus and determination to prove yourself right—no matter how boring the text may be.
You might wonder how one can generate all these questions without actually reading the chapter. In reality, it’s pretty easy. Let’s say, for example, you were pre-reading an article about nutrition. Just by noting a few prominent keywords, such as “paleo,” “grains,” “animal protein,” “cancer,” “obesity,” or “insulin,” I can already tell a lot. And by seeing which studies and which experts are cited, I can tell even more.
Before I even read the article, I can assume what stance the author is going to take. Based on that, I definitely know whether I agree or don’t. I may think of a few of my vegetarian or vegan friends at the same time and consider whether they’ll turn blue in the face or love every word. I’ll even consider where I feel the author may be biased, misinformed, or just plain wrong.
As you can see, once you’ve completed your initial pass-through of pre-reading, you’ll have a lot of questions you’re eager to answer. This has a massive effect on concentration, comprehension, and retention. If you suffer from attention deficit disorder, as I do, you know that if you really want to know something, you can be laser focused. After generating all these perspectives and questions, you will be just that.
If you really want to know why on earth Baltimore is in this text, you’ll focus harder than you ever imagined you’d focus on tax law.
Many students flock to our accelerated learning programs to 10X their memory or triple their reading speed. But the truth is, I often feel that pre-reading is one of the most valuable “Easter eggs” in the SuperLearner method. People rarely anticipate it making as big of a difference as it does, and best of all, it’s something you can implement today, with little to no practice.
Try it out on the next chapter of this book, and you’ll see what I mean. Place your finger on the first page of the chapter (or open the “X-Ray” feature on your Kindle). Then, flip through the pages at an extremely high speed. As you do, start asking yourself questions about the details you’re noticing.
The results will surprise you.
From now on, I suggest that you pre-read just about everything. While I might not use pre-reading for a suspenseful fiction book (spoiler alert!), this skill is useful in everything from long emails to blog posts and even scientific textbooks.
What are you waiting for? Turn the page and try it out.
9 H. Y. McClusky, “An Experiment on the Influence of Preliminary Skimming on Reading,” Journal of Educational Psychology 25, no. 7 (Oct 1934): 521–529, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0070829.
10 Jessica Marinaccio, “The Most Effective Pre-reading Strategies for Comprehension” (master’s thesis, St. John Fisher College, 2012); Minoo Alemi and Saman Ebadi, “The Effects of Pre-reading Activities on ESP Reading Comprehension,” Journal of Language Teaching and Research 1, no. 5 (September 2010): 569–577, https://doi.org/10.4304/jltr.1.5.569-577; Akbar Azizifara et al., “The Effect of Pre-Reading Activities on the Reading Comprehension Performance of Ilami High School Students,” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 192 (June 24, 2015): 188–194, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.06.027.