Deep Reading
Recently I've been reading much more and I've been thinking about how to read effectively. An asymmetric amount of useful information that I have learned has come from books, or papers, or articles. I find that the most fruitful periods of intellectual stimulation and feeling progress in general come when I am constantly reading and trying to deeply engage with the texts that I choose. Over the course of reading more and more, I've started to adopt techniques that help me engage more deeply and read faster and more efficiently but the emphasis isn't on speed for me. It's just a byproduct of reading more and engaging further. I think By reading in this way I've been able to remember more and apply useful things gathered from texts much more effectively. The most important concepts or ideas that have increased both the effectiveness and enjoyment of reading are below:
While reading think about how the thing you're reading makes you feel. This is by far one of the quickest ways to get deeply tunneled within a text and apply your full attention towards the thing that you're reading. It also engages a form of active recall or summarization that you may have read as a separate reading tip but this method is particularly effective because you're thinking about and wrestling with the text as you're going through it. Then once you get to a good point, you can reflect on larger themes as a whole but this is one of the 10 out of 10 tips.
Removing subvocalization and getting used to internalizing and truly understanding words just from visual stimuli also vastly increases reading comprehension and efficiency.
Reading in chunks is also a great way to read faster. I also feel that I understand more as I read purely by visual stimuli instead of reading in a more linear or word-by-word fashion.
When I come across a tricky or particularly interesting topic, I'll slow down, maybe subvocalize or read word by word, and think deeply about the idea and how it connects to other things I've learned. This creates a network of deeply connected ideas throughout the text that you're reading and also starts to weave across other texts or ideas you may have come across.
In general one adjacent skill that is incredibly useful to develop is better memory and visualization. There are plenty of times that I can remember seeing a specific quote or section of a text in my head. Even anchoring to specific words greatly helps to entrench core ideas and things that are worth remembering. Get good at visualization. One useful exercise is to replay your entire day in your head with as much detail as possible, all the way down to the textures on the walls or the colors on People's clothes. The more that you do this, the easier it will become to recall more and more detail and then all of a sudden you will notice that you are remembering pages from books in more vivid detail and can recall specific sections like you are reading them again.
Chances are that if you are living with any sort of modern technology, Your systems responsible for attention and dopamine production are probably fried unless you are deliberately exercising these systems and consciously removing things that would otherwise fry your brain. It is incredibly useful, when trying to maximize reading effectiveness, to remove all of these traps that fry your brain. Unfortunately this means just about everything from Twitter and Reddit to YouTube and constant short videos. I think time will reveal that these things likely destroy both attention and many other desirable cognitive qualities that we value. Remove all of these things until you feel bored and then when you feel bored (this is a good sign), continue being bored until Your boredom goes away. This is then a great time to read and your brain will be hungry for stimuli more than you have probably experienced before.
It's worth noting that the last two notes will probably be the largest amplifiers to your reading practice whether you're studying, reading for fun, or reading to increase informational awareness in general. The other tips are also very valuable but doing the last two, you will see a step change in how magical reading feels.