Integrative Reading For Practical Use Value

Pick a subject you love, One you may work in. Or a hobby. Or any interest. You know something about it already. But you don’t know everything. Read anything on it and you are more attentive and curious and interested in what you may not have known than what you already know on the topic. You pick up something that changes your idea or adds a new concept or tool you hadn’t considered before. You reflect and immediately see how you could use this new information in what you do, when you do it.

This is integrative reading. Forced or rote/study reading requires you to ‘find’ a spot for that information that is not directly useful in your daily life. This kind of casual but yet still interested reading may be useful one day, but it requires you to take more notes than with integrative reading. The hands-on nature of the information has a deeper effect on you when it is integrated not forced. You are aware that you might use this new knowledge soon.

You know it will benefit you. But this may limit our scope with reading. A more practical way of doing this is to start reading from interest. Find a purpose with reading. A hook or angle to what you already know and use, and mentally apply the new material to that. Enrich even some small aspect of what you do, or a component part of it. This will widen the scope and let you integrate the new information in proper place more easily.

Original note – Reading for integration of new knowledge in useful context. Not casually or with the intention to repeat. Only read stuff you’re really interested in now, To use. Useful reading vs light-reading. Integrative reading vs study/forced/rote reading. Practical reading vs distant reading. Deep vs surface reading.