Hi guys and welcome back to Brain-Friendly Thinking! To become creative in a certain topic,
it’s important that we dig deep into that topic. And a great way to do this
is by reading advanced material. However, reading advanced texts can be very daunting.
Structured skimming can help us to understand these texts more easily.
A lot of the times creative thoughts are generated by a deep understanding for a certain topic.
Einstein was not just creative in any and every field he came across. No,
he was specifically creative in physics, because he knew so much about physics.
The reason for that is that it’s the combination between the ideas, the associations which we
follow, the new combinations which we make which are the core of creativity.
If you would like to find out more of why this is the case, I made a complete video about this,
which you can watch right there. But the important thing is, if you want to be more
creative in that topic, you need to dig deeper. There are several avenues that can help us
to dig deeper. But one of the most useful avenues these days is by reading advanced texts.
Elementary texts provide a good entry point into a topic. And they provide you with a broad overview.
But in order to achieve this, they usually stay at the surface. Advanced texts deal with the essence
of the topics. And because of that they draw on multiple layers of understanding. They presuppose
an understanding of the fundamental concepts and of the fundamental techniques, but also
an experience in using these techniques. And this is true no matter whether we’re talking about
physics, shooting movies, choreographing a dance. Advanced texts are written by
experts for experts. If the author talks about a concept, we might not have the context to
judge the importance of the concepts. Or to see how it connects to other concepts in the field.
One of the ways to overcome this is to survey the text before you start reading the text in detail.
This gives you several benefits. It gives you an overview of where the author is going,
how the concepts are used and which of the concepts
might become important later on. Now when I tried surveying for the first time,
it did not work for me. Because I had no idea what I should be looking out for.
And it was just a mental drain, it felt like a waste of time and at the end I was exhausted
without having much to show for it. This was until I came across the concept of structured skimming.
It is like surveying, but it gives you a certain structure of what you should look at. And there’re
different ways of doing structured skimming, but I would like to show you one possibility
that works very well for me and, hopefully, will also work for you. I’m using ABC-active
together with the THIEVES methodology. If you use a different method of structured skimming,
make sure to tell us in the comments below. I already talked about ABC-active before on this
channel. We start with a blank ABC-list, and as you’re reading you write the core concepts
and key words into your ABC. And later on, you use these words to reconstruct the context and the
understanding you gain from the text. The THIEVES methodology was developed by teachers to help
students read textbooks more efficiently. Now, I’m not reading a lot of textbooks these days,
but I found that, with a little bit of tweaking, THIEVES can be played very well to many
non-fictional texts. What is THIEVES? THIEVES is an acronym. An acronym that shows you
what you should be looking at as you’re surveying the text.
THIEVES stands for title, headings, introduction, every first sentence, visuals and vocabulary,
end of chapter questions, and summary. Let’s go through them one by one and see what they mean.
Title is simply the title of the text you’re reading. Headings
means all the headings of the sections, chapter, sub-chapters of the text. If I’m looking at them,
I’m trying to find words which seem to denote important concepts about the topic.
Take introduction, for instance. A lot of texts will have a chapter called introduction
which is generic and it doesn’t tell you anything specific about this text.
If I’m reading a text about cell biology on the other hand and there’s a chapter “The
Cytoskeleton and Cell Motility”, I gonna write down cytoskeleton and motility.
Because they seem highly relevant. Even though I don’t know yet what they might mean.
Next up: introduction. A good introduction is a lot like an elementary text. It introduces the
most important concepts and it shows where the text as a whole is going.
What problem is it trying to address? What topic is it exploring in more detail?
The summary or conclusion on the other hand answers the question: so what? What have we
achieved? Did we solve our problem? What are further steps that should be taken from here?
Introduction and summary or conclusion they serve as bookends. So, reading those you will find that
you get a lot of the important concepts that are necessary to understand the text.
And also, you will get a feeling for what the author is actually trying to achieve.
The first sentences are like mini introductions to chapters, sub-chapters, even paragraphs. How
detailed I go with this depends a lot on the level I’m reading at the moment. If I’m reading a thick
book, then maybe I only read the first sentence of every chapter. If I’m reading a paper or a chapter
or sub-chapter, I might even go as deep as reading the first sentence of every paragraph. Depending
on the skills of the author, this will, again, give you many more important concepts, because
good authors will often mention them in the opening sentence of their chapters and paragraphs.
Visuals are great if you have them. They can be tables. They can be graphs. They can be drawings.
Very often visuals summarise something that is said in the text. And therefore,
they give you a very condensed view of what is important in the text and how the concepts,
that are introduced in the text, will be used later on. Vocabulary… this is something specific
to textbooks. A lot of modern textbooks they have some words in bold which are important vocabulary.
The texts I read these most often these days don’t use that. So, I don’t look at them.
End of chapter questions, again this is something very useful for textbooks.
The text I tend to read don’t have them. I will look at equation instead,
in case the text has any equations. Otherwise I will just drop it.
So, looking at all of this, I collect a number of keywords which I think will
turn out to be important concepts. And I write them into my ABC-active.
Then I go and read the text in detail. Most of the time I just continue the ABC-active
which I have already started anyway. And very often it turns out the concepts
really contain the key concepts of the text. So, very often I don’t write so many more words into
my ABC-active when I read the texts. But the words which I have already written down before
now become enriched with much more information. And with… And with a much deeper understanding.
Sometimes as I read the text, I find that some words which I thought were very important,
are actually not very important. And because our mind subconsciously looks for these little cues to
make the judgement, we can take much more out of the text than what we would have done otherwise.
So, structured skimming is a wonderful way
to deepen your understanding and to take more out of the text.
Well, so much for structured skimming. After reading the text
and filling my ABC-active, I still continue to work with the words to deepen my understanding.
If you’re interested in what I’m doing, I made a complete video where I show the process.
Otherwise, if you found the video useful, please don’t forget to give it
a high-five. Consider subscribing, if you haven’t already. And until next time: keep thinking.