Levels of Reading
I’m a voracious reader but as I’ve gotten older and become a parent who has less free time, I’ve started to be more discriminating about what I read and why. I recently read The Creator Economy which contained this quote that struck a chord:
If you’re reading books to try to understand something that no one else understands yet, that’s research. But if you’re reading books without any goal in mind, that’s entertainment. (An enjoyable activity in itself! But not a primary aspiration to orient the world around, or else no one would be doing anything new.)
I’m ok with reading for entertainment sometimes, but I want most of my reading to be more than that. I would also be lying if I described most of my non-entertainment reading as research though.
Rather than a dichotomy between entertainment and research, I like the distinction outlined in this Farnam Street post between “levels of reading”:
- Reading to entertain
- Reading to inform
- Reading to understand
- Reading to master
The important thing, I think, is to be clear to yourself when you are reading something or choosing something new to read about what your goal is. Depending on what “level” you are approaching the book at should determine the work that you do while reading and when finished to summarize what you’ve read so that you don’t lose the insights the book gives you almost immediately after finishing it.
Furthermore, having a clear goal with why you are reading the book will also help you with writing notes about the book. Write notes with an eye to what you want to do with your insights from the book. Whether it’s just to understand a topic or research you are doing, tag and organize your notes with those lines of thought and questions you are trying to answer. Later on when you find yourself working within those lines of thought or thinking about those questions, those notes will be easy to find and make use of.