My Corona Lock Down Secret Super Power: Reading with Purpose

The #covid19 lock down has had its shares of pros and cons. While being stuck indoors, long hours teleconferencing, anxiety about future and social pressure to reinvent oneself has been stressful; it’s also been a much needed break, a chance to slowdown, reflect and reconnect with people. Shall we just say that it’s been ‘The Best of Times and The Worst of Times’?

Personally, the start of the lock down was an extremely difficult phase. Not only was it the disruption, but my office laptop and tablet crashed in space of 12 hours, just before the lock down orders were passed and all vendors shut down. And my old faithful, a 14 year old Toshiba running Ubuntu, was out of action because I forgot the BIOS password I had set. So, starting last week March till almost mid- April, I was back to Old School. Writing using pen and paper, and reading. Slow, but not bad at all. It was almost like going back to drinking Darjeeling Tea on a palate jaded by one too many fizzy drinks.

Reading online is easy, more graphic, more alternative explanation, easier to research side topics. But then rediscovering reading from a book was an exercise in itself. After a long time, I had to really focus on following an author’s chain of thought and learn linearly. Normally, I go through fiction, or, non-work related reading at about 500 pages a week, about an hour every night. But then when I got down to reading work related material, I was stuck. Ok admit that I didn’t pick the easiest material to go through. Picking up “Principles of Corporate Finance”- Brealey Myers and “Macroeconomics” by Boyes & Melvin, may have been the right idea in terms of expanding horizons but they were difficult reading. What I found surprising was that I had gone through both books in B-School, and together at 1,500 odd pages, they were not considerably higher workload than other courses. And yet here I was struggling. Truth be told, I have covered about 250 pages between both books, and forgotten almost all that I read in the last couple of months. Wow!!!

 And that’s when the realization hit me. During University, at any point of time, all of us went through at least 10,000 odd pages of new concepts every three months or so. Not only did we just skim through, we internalized and memorized them. At work, we easily go through 30 odd pages daily, but with Power Point, I have a feeling that our ability to absorb new material has also taken a hit. No wonder that Apps like Blinkist are doing so well (Here’s a link to the different book summary services if you are interested).

Nothing against audio books, video tutorials and reading apps. My objective was to reacquire my ability to focus and learn. And learn fast. And therein came the idea of “Reading With Purpose”. Fiction, stories, travelogues, are not as dense in new concepts as technical literature. We know the flow, and go with it. Whereas, trying to understand Capital Asset Pricing Model, a decade after B-School is not the easiest. I got derailed by each of these reasons:

1.      Unfamiliar Jargon- Being out of touch, every technical bit throws you off kilter, Arbitrage Pricing Theory. You start researching and get distracted.

2.      Depth of Understanding- While material makes sense at the time of reading, in an unfamiliar subject, after some time, you realize that you have covered a hundred odd pages, but can’t clearly differentiate between the various thoughts. Overall, there’s sense, but you don’t have a grasp of the fundamentals like you would have had in Grad-School

3.      Motivation- In University, you had very high levels of motivation. Learn, or you don’t make it. Today, all of us are established in some form or other, and the fire in the belly doesn’t burn so hot.

4.      Speed- Used to be able to go through about 15 odd pages an hour. And now struggle to get through 5 pages hourly. At this rate, I will not even be able to read through a book a month. Ideally, as a business leader this speed should be around 20 pages per hour.

Does this mean that we are going to lose our ability to go out of our comfort zone and learn new skills? Frankly, the thought scares me. If we lose our ability to unlearn and learn continuously, then we are obsolete. You start growing old, when you stop learning.

So, with all this lock down time on my hand, I have been experimenting on creating a system for Reading. I call it Reading With Purpose. Before you start off any new book, think about the following:

• Why? Jot down why are you reading in a clean page with, if possible, a visualization of what happens when you complete this.
• When? Professional reading is not the same as going through the latest sci-fi from Orson Scott Card. Have a dedicated time for it. Whether it’s early in the morning, or an hour after dinner, or on the commute home. You need a time to focus. Recognize the need and find a slot. For me the best time is an hour early in the morning when I am starting the day. I don’t rush, I don’t have other thoughts buzzing in my head, and what I read, I ponder over the rest of the day.
• What?  The operative word here is ‘purpose’. Before I start a new book, not only do I write down what I am seeking to achieve but also spend time making a mental map of my learning path. How each of the topics relate to each other, and then how sub-topics relate to each other. Then I write this down. Having a map to aid my exploration helps deal with anxiety and helps slot knowledge into pigeon holes.
• How?  Just like you can swim anyhow, but having proper technique makes you efficient, here are two tips that really came in handy:

o  Avoid Sub-vocalization- We tend to speak the words we read, while effective in helping us comprehend, it slows us down dramatically. You read much faster if you can skim and read in blocks of text. Isn’t easy, but is a real speed booster.

o  Reflection- I encourage you to use the topic map we created at the start and make notes. End of every session, put aside the text, and try to recall what you covered. And then jot down key points on the map.

o  Priming Each Session- Start each session with a skim though of the topic map and the ground covered so far. As you skim through your notes you see the ground you have covered and everything falls in place. Seems difficult the first few times, but gets much easier.

• What Else? As reinforcement, why not capture anything into a mental map. An info graphic, a doodle, an acronym. I have a Read-Write/ Kinesthetic learning style, so the best reinforcement for me comes from being able to create my own mental maps or infographics. As a follow up of each book read, I am creating simple info graphics summarizing the whole book into a single page, and or, a short PPT for more detailed topics. Will be hosting them on my website, www.rajarshibanerjee.com . Coming soon :-) .

Here’s to Reading With Purpose and Lifelong learning.