going to get all the information in these crazy, huge reading assignments in a freaking

weekend? I want to share a quote with you that I learned over the week-end while doing

research for this video. It goes like this, "The mark of a successful college student

is the mastery of knowing not only what to study, but also how to study it." This applies

to your readings as much as it applies to anything else in college.

In last week's video, I went over some strategies that you can use to figure out whether or

not you actually need to do a reading assignment at all. In this video, I want to start focusing

on how you should actually tackle the reading assignments that you do need to do. I have

three main goals that I want you to keep in mind here. Number one, you want to learn the

right information from your readings. Obviously, you can't learn every single thing in the

book so you want to figure out what is important and get that into your brain. Number two,

you want to retain that information for as long as you can and be able to use it later.

Number three, you want to reduce your study time and the amount of time you have your

nose stuck in the book. To start improving in all of these areas, the first thing that

I want you to think about is the 'why'. Why are you doing this reading? A lot of people

would say, "You're reading to learn," and, obviously, yes, that's the point of the education.

I think there's another more immediately practical reason that you're doing a reading. That is

how you're going to be assessed on that reading. Being a strategic reader means using different

strategies for different reading purposes. Those purposes are defined with the assessments

you're going to face in class which lead back to your immediate goal of earning awesome

grades. Most students tackle their reading assignments like zombies. They look at the

reading assignment and they go, "Must run my eyes over x number of pages by tomorrow

night." That's it. Don't be a reading zombie. Otherwise, your exams are going to turn into

a chainsaw. Know what it is that your brain needs to pull out of the reading and focus

on that. Here are four common reasons that you might

do a textbook reading. Number one, you're going to be facing down a multiple choice

test. Number two, you're going to have to do an essay, actually creating something from

scratch in your own words. Number three is the evaluation of data in labs which applies

to more technical and scientific majors. Number four, is the summarization of research for

class presentations and reports. The type of assessment that you have to do will dictate

what kind of information you need to pull out of your readings.

For instance, if you're going to have to do a multiple choice test, then you're going

to want to focus on the details of the reading assignments, taking smart, concise notes about

all the little things in a class and then turning those into questions that you can

study rapid fire later on. If you're in a class where you have to write essays, then

thorough knowledge of the main ideas is more important. You're going to want to focus more

on summarization and making sure that you can communicate what you learned in your own

words. There's a tip from the video I did last week

on figuring out whether or not you even need to do a reading assignment that applies perfectly

here as well. That is to gauge your classes. As a semester goes on, be mindful of what's

in the syllabus and what your professor generally uses to assess you and then apply that knowledge

to your readings. This will take practice, but as time goes on, you're going to find

that this mindfulness really pays off in the time it saves you and the clarity it gives

you when you're looking at your book. Once you've gauged those classes and figured

out the type of information you want to pull from your reading, how do you actually go

about doing that reading? To start out, let me give you a universal tip that applies to

any reading you do. It's this, "Don't read your textbooks like you read a newspaper."

People who read the newspaper aren't reading to apply what they're learning. They're just

reading to get the gist of the day's events. You're not reading for gists, you're reading

for application. Also, don't expect that you're going to learn efficiently by just reading

and rereading passages over and over again. The writer, Virgina Voeks, said that, "How

often you read something is immaterial. How you read it is crucial. Think of a book like

an art museum. You can walk through the Met in New York ten times, look at all the paintings

each time you go through, and still know next to nothing about any of the art there. You

might know the general layout, where certain pieces are, but if I ask you for details,

"Which artist created this painting? Where was this dog-thing sculpted," you won't have

a clue. Books are really the same. Possibly running

your eyes over the pages is like casually strolling through an art museum and not actually

studying any of the pieces. It's actually worse because the brain is better at remembering

emotionally evocative pictures and imagery than it is at remembering squiggly, arbitrary

lines on paper. Instead, try to read in the same way that you'd talk with a friend who

challenges you intellectually. You listen eagerly, you contribute your own words to

the conversation, and, eventually, both of you create information that comes together

to make something new. This is called active reading. It's crucial for being able to retain

what you learn from your textbooks and be able to apply it later on.

In my next video, I'm going to over a framework of specific techniques that you can try out

to start using active reading. To round this video out, I want to leave you with a technique

that you can use to create a small win in your studies. Here it is. Create two different

habits for your textbook readings. The first one is going to focus on getting you to read

consistently. The second one is going to focus on getting you to start using active reading

instead of passive reading. The first habit I think you should try out

is reading daily. This might mean planning ahead in advance what you're going to read

for a certain week and maybe even reading some outside material if you finish everything.

It's all about getting into the habit of reading every single day, making a consistent effort.

For the second habit, try to write down a small amount of notes for each reading you

do or create a small summary for each reading. It doesn't have to be anything large, you

just want to get into the habit of doing it and being more actively involved in your reading.

With both these habits, you can experiment with making them either input based or output

based. Input-based habits have a fixed amount of effort that you have to put in to them

so read for fifteen minutes. That's only fifteen minutes of effort and then you're done. On

the flip side, output-based habits are based on making something concrete. Write one page

of notes could be an output-based habit. The amount of time and effort you need to put

into it isn't fixed. Personally, I use both of these types of habits

in my own reading. For my actual reading habit, I use an input-based goal, read for fifteen

minutes every single day and then once I've gotten into that, I usually read for longer

and I start getting more engaged. Then, I use an output-based goal which is to write

half a page of notes on what I'm reading to make sure that I'm actively learning.

Whichever type you choose, it's also important to build a small reward into your habit. Getting

good grades is a good reward, but it's something that's a little too far off to really count.

I would say, find something else that rewards you for getting the reading done every single

day. For me, that's ticking off a daily habit [inaudible 06:13] which I've made a little

bit more valuable by creating a challenge in the College Info Geek guild. If you want

to join that, you can go to the companion blog post for this video which you'll find

linked down in the description. Otherwise, you could do something else like

watching an episode of your favorite show on Netflix, playing a video game, or something

else fun. Make sure that you're building this loop of, "Here's a cue to do my reading, I'm

going to do the reading, and take the notes, then give myself a small reward to reinforce

the positive feeling I get from doing that reading."

That's it for this video. If you want to get my tips on active reading which will come

in the next video, then make sure you subscribe to this channel and you'll get those right

when they come out. Otherwise, I will see you in that

next video.