It’s a process I’ve developed called surgical reading and it means that when I’m reading a non-fiction book, I focus on locating and removing the most valuable pieces of information from it quickly as possible. This allows me to read many different books across a single topic at once, so I can look at it from multiple perspectives. My goal is to quickly locate valuable knowledge and use the information I acquire in the real world to solve problems.
Emphasis mine
You can take any path you want, but for me, the index is my first stop after the title. Armed with a guess of the book’s point of view from the title, I use the index to understand what topics we’re going to cover and hopefully how we’re going to approach them.
I was wondering if there could be a simpler way of reading multiple papers at once. The fact that academic writing is obtuse and uninspiring takes away the fun of reading them. I usually focus on putting out the papers that have something substantial to say, like a practice changing paper or something that represents an idea.
Here’s something more:
To start reading multiple books, I recommend using this technique across all of them, letting the indexes guide you. Feel free to stay in one for a while if you want to. Write notes, highlight words, or draw tiny cats everywhere…I mean the options are pretty limitless here.
I usually read the PDF’s, and primarily to address the space crunch. I offload everything to Dropbox and pull the papers, on demand, which syncs well with the desktop and other internet connected devices. I have no complaints. However, annotation on epubs (e-books) is a pain. I prefer more of an active learning.
I dont believe that reading multiple books will serve the purpose that serves the author. I keep books for something additional. Over and above what I gather from my daily reads. And I read a lot.
It’s fun though and a better option that social media, any day. Choose wisely.
RadOncNotes 