Information foraging and how we read books
This week I came across an interesting theory that suggests humans "forage for information" on the web the same way animals forage for food. We want to get the most valuable information in the shortest amount of time. The brain has evolved to become remarkably agile at finding what it needs on the web developing different skimming techniques with fancy names like the F-shaped Pattern or the Pinball Pattern.
None of that information foraging behavior however seems to apply to the way we consume non-fiction books. Instead, we usually follow a linear pattern, valiantly making our way through a thick forest of words. It’s deeply rooted in our psyche that the "right" way to read is to consume every page and we tend to feel guilty when we don't finish an entire book. I know I do. For the past year, I've spent too much time focusing on the number of books I had aimed at finishing and not enough honing skills that would help me make the most out their content.
What would it look like to adopt a more utility-maximizing way of reading books like we do with web pages?
Here are some of the tactics I'm trying at the moment with a caveat that I'm far from mastering any of them. Let's take the animal analogy one step further:
Forage for ideas: Not all text is created equal. That's particularly true of non-fiction where you often find yourself sifting through an avalanche of examples and case studies to illustrate one single idea. When you read with ideas as your target, you'll see yourself gliding through information that doesn't add much value. A lot of books really should just be written as short pieces. This week I devoured a fantastic article about the underrated importance of the manual trades in the information society. The author turned it into a book which I realized I had read years ago and had dropped after only a couple of chapters.
Expand your hunting ground: Stay in a book for too long and your mind is likely to wander. Despite the authority books convey as institutions of knowledge, they are a fundamentally unnatural environment for the mind to focus. Augmenting your reading by watching an interview of the author on YouTube or listening to a podcast discussing their ideas helps create a multidimensional experience that breaks with the linear rhythm of the page.
Leave the desert land behind: One of the biggest barriers to being exposed to good ideas is our moral belief that when you start something, you have to finish it. I've dragged myself trough my fair share of uninspiring prose. But would you ever feel bad about not reading the entire content of a website? If you think of books as land where ideas grow, then you'll leave the desert land behind in search of greener pastures. There's no shortage of them.
What techniques do you use to make the most out of reading? I want to hear about them!